Blueberry and Lime Drizzle Cake

Delicious Drizzle

Hello all,
Still feeling a bit rough here but I'm insisting on carrying on. We've just done cake club and here is the cake I made for it. It's my second attempt at a drizzle cake, my first attempt was a brick, used as a doorstop for a while! This was a much greater success though. The recipe made a huge cake that I have to say is absolutely delicious, thankfully there's loads left so Mr Lardshow will be taking some to work tomorrow. apparently some of his colleagues want to join cake club. Who am I to say no? I used some of the duck eggs we got the other day and they really have made the cake light and fluffy but not too rich.

So the cake is made up of 250g caster sugar, 4 eggs, 250g plain flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, zest of 2 limes, 200g blueberries and 225g butter all those beautiful, magical ingredients that when whizzed up together in the kitchenaid turn into gorgeous goodiness (Yes, I know it's not a word).

As the eggs came from a farm I made sure i gave them a good wash before cracking them open.

I thought they'd crack open really easily but the shells seemed really tough.The yolks were huge and such a glorious sunshine yellow.

So you cream the butter and sugar together and then gradually add these perfect eggs, if the mixture looks like it's about to curdle just add a spoonful of flour and it will come back again. You then need to add the rest of the flour and baking powder ooh and the lime zest. I managed to fill the kitchen with lime zest and covered my pyjamas in it, ooh lemony, sorry limey fresh! Make sure you keep back a spoonful of flour to gently toss the blueberries in. This helps to stop the mixture turning grey and keeps the blueberries whole and not mushy in the mixture.

Line your cake tin on the bottom and the sides and plop the mixture in and then pop the cake in th'oven as Mr Lardshow would say. It's a long cook, I struggle with not opening the door all the time to check it's cooked...

While you're waiting for it to bake, get on with the lime drizzle, for this you will need the juice of 2 limes and 100g of icing sugar. Now you should you use a thin skewer to make holes in the top of the cake, however I don't have one so I used a knitting needle...it was clean I promise!

OOH! OOH! TAKE THE CAKE OUT OF THE OVEN!!!!!! 

Sorry, I forgot that part, the cake will take about 50 minutes, you'll know it's done when a fork that you've poked in it comes out clean.

So leave the cake for 5 minutes and then spoon the drizzle into the holes that you've made and leave the cake to cool completely in the tin.

Now make the icing, more limes and icing sugar! 5 tsp of lime juice and 125g of icing sugar. Take the cake out of the tin and plate it up. Drizzle the icing generously over the cake and down the sides if you can. Sprinkle some lime zest over the top. Put the coffee pot on, slice, eat, enjoy. 

Done!

P.S This makes a cake that will last for a good few days under a big glass cloche, a tin went to work with Mr Lardshow for Simon, Marlon and the rest of his work colleagues who are literally wasting away in their office. There's also plenty left for Pain Management Group tomorrow. NOM!

I cooked a chicken (but forgot to take any photos)

Good evening my lovely readers,
Well I am cream crackered! It's been a busy couple of days and (don't tell the pain management ladies) I haven't been pacing at all. I've managed quite a few things that I'm really proud of. I drove on my own for the first time in months yesterday, I went to yoga, I did a shop, I went to pain management and today I cooked a whole chicken!

Mr Lardshow's parents have come down for the weekend for the first time so I am in a house full of Lardshows and meat eaters, the cats are in heaven! So after much debate about what to cook for them we decided on a roast chicken. Up to this point I have got away with just cooking pieces of meat but today I bit the bullet (not the chicken) and had a go. After trawling through my cookery books I found a nice simple recipe from the voluptuous Nigella. Mr Lardshow was dispatched to a good butchers and bought a high quality free range chicken. Hopefully the chicken had a happy, clucky life.

The happy chuck was popped in the oven with lemon, potatoes, shallots and a whole bulb of garlic sliced in half with some olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper. Lots of mathematical doings were done to calculate how long it needed to be in the oven but in the end I opted for going and having a bath and leaving the responsibility of the chicken to Mr Lardshow. As Baldrick sort of used to say 'I had a cunning plan'!

So, by the time I got out of the bath the chicken was done and all we needed to do was put the Yorkshire puddings in, warm through the mash and steam the veggies. Dinner was done! As is now the norm, I spend all of dinnertime staring at people's plates quizzing them on whether the meat is cooked and hoping it tastes ok. Tonight though I had the added bonus of Mr Lardshow senior constantly offering me random bits of chicken to taste for myself...I declined!

Anyway dinner was a success, our bellies are full and we've collapsed onto the sofa to watch the end of the tennis.

It's nearly bedtime now, I'm really tired and I REALLY want to have the energy to go and see the Olympic Flame in Lichfield. I want to be a part of it in my 'Official Team GB' hoodie in spite of the pain. Cross those fingers! Night Night all xBx

Sun Tea for Miss Adele

I was chatting across the ocean to my lovely Canadian friend Miss Adele and she gave me the inspiration for this post. She said all you needed was a teabag, a jar and some sun. Not a problem you might think but that big, glowing ball in the sky has been rather elsuive of late...

This morning the sun came out! I was out in my garden with my Parentals and I found myself shielding my eyes from the sun, such a surprise and finally a chance to try out Miss Adele's idea.

So the idea is you take any teabag of your choce, the fruitier the better and you pop it in a jar with cold water. You then place the jar outside in the sun. As the sun's beams hit the jar they warm the water and help the tea to stew/brew/mash.

My sun tea is still brewing outside, I'm not sure how warm it's going to be as the sun has gone and all we're left with is a cloudy, muggy day. It was fun taking the photos and watching the water gently change colour. I'm really enjoying developing all my photos.

So what sun tea will you make?

Olympic Dreams

Now I'm not sure if any of you out there are aware but there's something really special happening in this the year, 2012...yes that's right I will be competing in the Olympics! Have you picked yourselves up from the floor? Good, then I shall I continue. A few years ago if you were to have typed in my home town into Wikipedia and scrolled down to the bottom, under 'notable inhabitants' you would have read my name, Olympic hopeful in the 1.2 metre breaststroke. Oh yeah baby I had dreams!

But sometimes dreams change and you have to adapt. Sadly I missed out on the trials for said breaststroke competition and on a very dark day my dearest mother sat me down and said my Olympic dreams were over. I tried not to take this to heart but it was hard, all those years of training, all those swimsuits, all that talcum powder!

Yesterday I decided to believe that maybe my Olympic dreams could be realised again. After a bit of a sad, teary morning I decided to be brave and try and find a local yoga class. Since starting my Pain Management group I really want to get stronger and get out of the house a bit more if I can. The days can be very long in my little white house all on my own with just the two mad cats for company! Anyway, I found a class! I had a lovely chat with the teacher called Jean and she was so lovely, she laughed when I said it might take me longer to get up from the  'Downward Dog' than everyone else.

The lovely Mr Lardshow stopped off on the way home and picked me up a yoga mat (That means I've definitely got to go to the class now!)

And so with much trepdation we contacted the official Olympic commitee and told them I was back in the game. I have to admit, there was pure joy in their voices when they heard the news. afterall, I am a medal prospect and yes i am talking BRONZE here! The post arrived here mid morning and there was something extrememly special all packaged up for me. I am taking this as confirmation that I have got into the official GB Yoga team. 

GO TEAM GB!!!!!!

Baby Bantams

We went back to the farm...

And inside the box of chicken delights there were some bantam eggs! Such excitement, much scrabbling to get enough pennies together to be able to buy the bantam and hen's eggs. Yup we now have enough eggs to keep us going until ooh at least next week. 

There's just something so perfect about the shape and colour of an egg that's come from a happy chicken. I just can't understand why any one would buy caged hen's eggs nowadays. 

I've never eaten bantam eggs before and I assumed that they would be just like mini eggs (not the chocolate ones!). When we cracked them open we were greeted with the sight of the brightest yellow-orange yolk I've ever seen  and when we fried it we realised the yolk was pretty much the same size as a normal egg. There was much less egg white, perfect for me!

So as you can probably tell I've been having a go at taking more photos using Mr Lardshow's camera, he says it's now my camera but I fear that if I say it's my camera he'll make me carry it and it weighs a bloomin ton! Much better to say I'm borrowing it... I've never really been that creative or arty (More of a home economics girl, me) but I'm trying to use different colours and textures to make my pictures more interesting. I'm now starting to look at everything with a camera's lense. The good thing is you can add shadow, depth and texture after you've taken a really bad photo!

Strawberry Cupcake

I did it, I baked, I jammed, I iced, I plopped a strawberry on the top, I got Mr Lardshow's camera and I had a go at taking some fancy, arty photos, I ate the cake, I rubbed my tummy, I went to sleep. It was good it made me happy.