the weekend {& cake}

Oh the weekend is here...Hooray!  I love the approach of Friday afternoon, the cheerfulness that only Friday afternoon school pick up in imminent rain cannot diminish because it's that time that the weekend truely begins.  Two little days that bring so much joy, and the night before that is even considered part of the weekend for the hair gets let down, the kids are allowed to stay up a little later having learnt the term "not a school night"....

...Not much is planned for the weekend, we'll do a lazy Saturday breakfast, head out and about! Oh we have tickets for Jesus Christ Superstar Spectacular and I'm kinda excited about a night out sans kids with my man.  Sunday is free as a bird and that's how I like it.

What are you up to this weekend?

Oh here's a fabulous cake recipe...I never thought of mixing carrots with lime.  Turns out to be quite the surprise combination!  It's a winner in my book.

What you need....


200 g butter, softened
240 g caster sugar
4 eggs
180 g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
200 g carrot, grated (that’s 2 medium carrots)
60 g coconut, shredded
60 g walnuts, crushed
zest and juice of one orange (or lemon)

Icing:
200g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
juice one lime (more if your icing needs more liquid)

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Grease and line a 23cm springform cake tin. Place butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric beater until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Sift in flour and baking powder then mix to combine. Add carrots, coconut, zest, walnuts and orange juice. Mix to combine and pour into cake pan. Bake for 40 - 50 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool in the tin for 10 minutes then move to a rack. Let the cake cool completely

To make the icing combine the softened cream cheese, icing sugar and lime juice and spread over cake.

Enjoy
xx

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Almond Apple Cream Cheese Cake

• 
  
• It doesn't take much to motivate me to bake.  I found a packet of Philadelphia cream cheese in the fridge the other day, picked it up and was determined to transform it into something delicious.  Well, this cake is delicious.  It's part cheesecake part apple tea cake...a combination that just hits all the right tastesbuds!  You serve it chilled, so it's a great cake to make in advance, pop it in the fridge for 2-3 hours and wow your family, friends or dinner guests with this beauty.  Those toasted nuts on top just scream decadence! 

Here is what you'll need... 

• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1  250g pkg. Philadelphia Cream Cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 2 apples peeled and sliced 
• 1/4 cup slivered Almonds

Directions

1. Heat oven to 200C.
2. Beat butter and 1/3 cup sugar in small bowl with mixer until light and fluffy. Add flour; mix well. Press onto bottom and 1 inch up side of 9-inch springform pan.
3. Beat cream cheese and 1/3 cup of the remaining sugar in same bowl with mixer until well blended. Add egg and vanilla; mix well. Spread onto bottom of crust. Mix remaining sugar and cinnamon. Add to the sliced apples in large bowl; toss to coat. Arrange over cream cheese layer in a nice even pattern; top with nuts. Bake 10 min at 200C.
4. Reduce temperature to 180C and bake cake 25 min or until center is set. Cool completely. Run knife around rim of pan to loosen the edges. Remove rim. Refrigerate for 3 hours.
   
   
   Enjoy!
   xx
   
   

{persian love cake}

At work the other day, my boss who knows I have a penchant for a good cake told be about this recipe.

The Persian Love Cake.

Seriously, the name of this cake is a good enough reason to love it.  Isn't just a divine title for a cake?

Anway, once I got hold of the recipe I knew I would love it.  Whats not to love about a one bowl (no fancy equipment needed) cake?  Plus the combination of almond meal and greek yoghurt sealed the deal.

My little apprentice and I baked it last night after dinner and it was as easy as pie...or cake!

Here is what you need...

3 cups almond meal
1 cup raw sugar
1 cup brown sugar
120 gm unsalted butter, softened or just zap it in the microwave for 20 seconds
2 eggs
250 gm greek yoghurt
1 tbsp grated nutmeg (I just used the masterfoods spice variety...lets not be too picky!)
1/3 cup of roughly chopped up pistachios

What to do...

1. Turn on the oven to 180C and prepare and 26 cm springform pan with baking paper and butter the sides. Combine the almond mea, sugars, butter and 1 tsp salt int a bowl and rub or stir in the soft butter until you have a lovely crumbly mixture.  Spoon HALF of this mixture into the spring-form pan and with your fingertips press to cover the bottom evenly.
2. Add the eggs, yoghurt and nutmeg to the remaining crumb mixture and give that a good stir with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy.  Pour that over your base and scatter the pistachios around the edge and bake until golden 25-35 minutes.
3. Serve with more yoghurt.


Perfect to bake for someone you love...

What's your favourite cake name??

The Fairy Party

Our little girl with the big brown eyes

you have now turned four, wow how time flies 

I remember, a babe in my arms

you captured our souls with your wonderous charm

I have adored watching you grow

The love filled in my heart, will you ever know?

The power it has, the deepest joy you bring

A bright little spark, you make this family sing

And here is the much anticipated Fairy Party! A little group of awe-struck miniture fairies captivated by a "real" fairy and her magical, amazing performance.  

A selection of fairy food (mainly fairy bread, strawberried dipped in white chocolate and covered in sprinkles, hot food included home made sausage rolls, the staples like chocy crackles and savoury sandwiches and of course the cake!   A Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book selection which never turns out like it does in the book, but this little lopsided mushroom cake fitted the theme of a fairyland party and in the end was fun to make! Although my little marshmellow mushrooms wouldn't play fair and kept toppling over!!! 

The Birthday Girl in all her party glory truely had a great party.  Dress made a few weeks back here. 

Thank you Fairies! 

xx

turkish yoghurt and fig cake

I love my fig tree immensely.   It creates so much shade in our backyard that it's almost like another room under there...and then at this time of year they give a great joy of producing one of my favourite fruits.  I'm known to just stand under it, and gorge myself silly on fig after fig, sharing the joy with my daughter who has taken my lead. 


But every so often, I think they deserve to be used in a different way.  Enter this recipe and I cannot believe my luck when I stumbled across it in blog land a little while ago and hung on patiently waiting for my figs to ripen.  This cake combines so many things I love, greek yoghurt, lemon and fig.  How could I resist. 


It has a consistency like a cheese cake and the lovely sharpness that goes well with the sweetness of the figs.  I didn't have any orange blossom water, so used a little extra lemon and it was still fantastic! 


Enjoy! 

Turkish yogurt cake with figs

Ingredients (for a 22cm/9-inch spring pan):

4 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 tablespoons Plain Flour
1 1/2 cups  Greek yogurt
grated zest + juice of 1/2 lemon

1 1/2 teaspoons orange blossom water

  4 fresh figs, halved 

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until creamy and light. Add the flour and mix until combined. 

2. Add the yogurt, lemon zest and juice and mix until combined. Add orange blossom water if you have it. 

3. Whisk egg whites using electric beaters until firm and fluffy Gently fold into yogurt mixture until combined, from the bottom to the top, using a spatula.
4. Grease a spring-form cake pan with butter. Pour mixture into the pan and arrange the fig slices on top. face up. Bake it in the oven for 50 minutes or until the top is browned. The cake will rise  a lot  but will decrease when removed from the oven. Let cool before serving.

sour cherry cake

I know I know....where have I been?  A bit absent...I admit!  Unfortunately, why is it, when life gets a little busier it's the blogging that suffers.  But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, and by way of redeeming myself, here is a little sweetener! This cake was made to take to a dear friends lunch.  She cooked an amazing slow cooked lamb shoulder (oh my!) and this was our dessert.  We both have a penchant for the sour taste of lemons, and with the morello cherries, this cake is great if you enjoy your sweets not too sweet.

Here is what you need....

720g jar morello pitted cherries (although I think my jar was 690g)
125g butter
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind (I added more!)
165g (¾ cup) caster sugar
2 eggs
150g (1 cup) self-raising flour
75g (½ cup) plain flour
½ cup sour cream
60ml (¼ cup) milk

How to make it -

1. Grease a 20cm baba* or ring pan, sprinkle with flour, shake out excess flour.
2. Drain cherries well then place on absorbent paper to drain further. Combine butter, rind and sugar in a small bowl, beat with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beat until combined. Transfer mixture to large bowl, stir in sifted flours and combined sour cream and milk.
4. Spread half of mixture into prepared pan, scatter cherries evenly over top and carefully spread remaining mixture over cherries.
5. Bake at 160°C for about 1 hour 10 minutes or until cooked. Stand for 10 minutes before turning onto wire rack to cool. If desired, dust cold cake with sifted icing sugar.

Serves 8.

Recipe hint: For a smooth exterior on cakes, chill tin before greasing. Butter or margarine will form a more even coating and adhere better.

* Mine was a little bigger, but I used it anyway...it just meant that it was a little flatter...but you could easily use a normal cake tin...just check the cake regularly as mine only took about 40 minutes.

I'll be blog hopping soon to see what been happening in your world.

How do you manage blogging when life gets busy?  Is it one of the first things that goes to the bottom of the priority list?


xx

Rose's upside down pear & almond cake

You know I love to bake....and I'm slowly getting back into baking since being on holidays and NOT baking a thing.....I don't even think I had withdrawals....what with all the eating I was doing to keep me busy....

....anyway, when I had friends and family coming around last weekend my mind was thinking of which cake to bake and I remembered a gorgeous cake my friend Rose had made for me a while back when I went to visit.  I loved it so much, I insisted I have a copy of the recipe....

...now about 6 months later, I finally got to making it myself and blogging the recipe so you all can make it...and it's unbelievably easy for such a show stopping cake!

Ingredients
1 tbs brown sugar
200g unsalted butter, softened
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs, lightly whisked
200g almond meal
2 tbs self-raising flour
2 tbs blanched almonds
1 large pear, skin on
custard, cream or ice-cream to serve.

What to do...
1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees
2. Line a 23cm round springform cake tine with baking paper and sprinkle the brown sugar over the base.
3. Beat the soft butter and sugar until pale (you can use beaters or a kitchen aid).  Then add the eggs, one at a time until all incorporated.
4. Stir in the almond meal and flour and set the bowl aside.
5. Cut the pear lengthways into 1cm thick slices and leave the stalk attached.  Arrange the pears over the brown sugar and spinkly the blanched almonds in the gap.
6.  Spoon the cake mixture ever so gentley  over the pears and then spread with a spatula making sure your not dislodging your beautifully arranged pears.
7. bake in the oven for about 40-45 minutes and set aside for 15minutes before turning  upside down on a plate.


Serve warm or cold with custard, cream or ice-cream or if you are wicked all three!

There is something a bit retro about an upside cake, dont you think??  goes perfect with my thrifted tablecloth I scored for $1!

Thankyou Rose for sharing this delicious recipe with me!

xx

a fancy afternoon tea {for a great cause}

What an afternoon.  Talk about stuff myself silly on sweets and treats of every description.
Bump into bloggers new and old.  Meet blogg-less people who are amazing, and that should blog, and be surrounded by a fantastic bunch of creative women all for a wonderful cause.

The talented Cathie from Melbourne Epicure was the hostess with the most-ess - with tables lined with baked cup-cakes, cake bombs (oh these were divine!) and my ultimate - lemon tart!

Their were cups of tea, in real tea-cups from real tea-pots....

And amazing donated crafty prizes that were raffled off and just a great time all round...

off course Cathie sent us all home with a little box of love!

Thankyou Cathie for a wonderful, wonderful afternoon!   I think I had to unbutton my jeans when i left!!


 Oh, and I'd thought i'd link up with this fancy girl, who has been getting fancy all week!

wearing;
jeans - Sussan
top - Asos
Cardi - Portmans
Belt - Dotti
Shoes - Siren
Bangles - gift from a friend (thanks Sarah!)

xx

the number 5

 Enjoying his new camera from Grandma and Pa

 When you want to talk numbers.....seek out my son.  He'd be quite happy to show you his collection of calculators, complete some random sums, play bingo and do a dot-to-dot!

The cake! 

And when that particular boy turns 5?  Well, excitement city!  It's all about the F-I-V-E! 

How many are you?

And his request - yep, you guessed it, a number 5 cake!  which was a blast to make actually...with the addition of a biscuit and smartie calculator to boot and which made the Birthday Boy very happy indeed!

blow em out! 

Happy Birthday my first born son, my angel, my light.  You are growing so quick.  I love your quirkiness, your sweetness, your courage and sensitivity.

xx