Attic24

Carrot cake

Ok, I am trying to think calm thoughts, to be quiet and calm and think straight so I can try and string words together coherently. But the truth is I am SO EXCITED I can hardly contain myself, can hardly type because I am brimming over with delight and happiness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the cause for such celebration, for such complete joy?
A recipe.
A simple, beautiful, old fashioned, no-frills, wonderful, ecsquisite recipe.
I can't begin to tell you how happy I have been this morning :: apron on, radio on, pottering around in my kitchen, baking this cake. Happy, happy happy.

So. Let me elaborate before you shake your head and assume I have gone completely off the rails into loony-land. This is all about Carrot cake. Yes, carrot cake. Oh how I adore this cake! If you were to ask my Little People What is Mummy's Favourite Cake, they will instantly declare it to be Carrot cake. They know me, they know this to be The Truth.

But do you know what? Up until this very day, I have never ever been able to find a carrot cake recipe that produces a cake that works out. And even if the cake has somehow worked out (ie risen and been cooked properly, not too dry, not soggy in the middle etc) it is often not the exact sort of carrot cake I like. I don't like added extras (walnuts, sultanas, coconut, pineapple???). I prefer a light, airy sponge to  a dark, dense one, but it still has to be moist. I cannot stand dry cakes. And the frosting on top : I have never ever been able to make these work out either. Most recipes I have come across use a  cream cheese frosting, and for me this just does not work. The frosting never sets properly, it remains slippy and slidy and runny and just not right.
But today, in my quest to try just one more recipe to see if it could be The One, I hit gold.
I produced a cake which, in my humble opinion, ticks all the boxes of a perfect carrot cake.
Sponge :: light and airy, yet moist and tasty.
Ingredients :: simple.
Frosting :: NO cream cheese involved, this frosting recipe was a total revelation.

So let me share my find with you. It comes from a little neat booklet of recipes created by an old fashioned UK Flour company called Be-Ro.
One weekend when I was visiting the in-laws, M had produced the most amazing orange cake, so I asked if I could have the recipe. She showed me her little "Home Recipes" booklet from Be-Ro and I scribbled down 3 recipes that appealed to me at the time:: Moist orange cake, Strawberry Muffins and Carrot Cake.
I immediately liked the sound of the carrot cake recipe, because it is simple. I had quite high hopes for it being The One, just from looking at the ingredients list.

Into a bowl, put the following ::
225g Self Raising Flour
1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice.

Stir in the following ::
150g soft, dark brown sugar (now I used light brown sugar cos that's all I had, and it worked great. Not sure how different the dark sugar would make it?)
150g grated carrot (2 medium carrots, I grated them very fine)

Make a well in the centre and add ::
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
150ml oil (now then, I used olive oil which is all I had, but truly this was not the best, should have been a light, flavourless oil)

Now Beat it! Yeah! Put music on and give it some welly! I used an electric whisk on High power, and really whisked it good. The mixture is sloppy, like a heavy batter.

Pour it into a lined tin (the recipe said an 11x7" tin but I don't have one, so I used my 8" square brownie pan).
Bake for 40mins, 180 C / 350 F / gas 4.

While the cake is baking, make the frosting.
Put into a heatproof bowl the following ::
50g butter
2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice
rind of half the orange.

Put in microwave for 45 secs or so until butter has melted.
Beat in 225g icing sugar until smooth.
This makes a lovely, pale yellow, orangey sweet topping. It is quite simply perfect.

Once the cake has cooled, spread the Frosting liberally over the top. My little touch was to add some finely shredded orange rind for decoration.

Cut into squares, and marvel at how light the sponge is, how well the zesty frosting sits in a  nice generous layer without sliding off.

Now make yourself a brew, sit in the sunniest part of the house and eat. Oh!!!! It is so so so perfectly cakey and good! Sweet and moist, light and airy. Almost too good to be true.
Eat one more piece just to be sure. Mmmmm yes it really is Delicious.

Ok, I need just one more bit to really, really make sure this is The One.
And it is.
The One.
Happy happy happy.

Bags and Balls and Bowls

Hello my lovelies, having a good day? Oh good, yes me too, I do love Thursdays. I've been to the cafe to crochet with Lovely C this morning which is indisputedly the highlight of my working week. Although shhhhhhhhhhhhhh don't tell J but it is not the first morning this week I have spent drinking coffee and nattering with friends.  I've  remembered what I have long known about going out about town and meeting friends for coffee ::  it sure beats staying home and wingeing about housework.

So :: yesterday was my calenders and the weather, and today it's bags, balls and bowls. Gosh, you can always look forward to such IMporTanT things when you visit with me, can't you?! Don't I just dazzle you with a variety of subject matter?!

On Saturday, a big box arrived in the post, covered in brown paper and smelling of fresh lavender. It came to me from the lovely Kim of Ragged Roses, and was the PIF gift that I had been picked out to win back in the summer.

She had warned me not to get too excited about the gift, had said that I might be disappointed.
I said that she could not possibly disappoint, that I would be excited to receive a screwed up newspaper because I just love the whole experience of receiving and opening parcels regardless of what's inside. I am quite, quite sad and childish in this respect.

Kim's handmade items are truly beautiful, and this parcel was an absolute delight to behold. Crisp white tissue paper, a little bundle of fresh lavender tied up with white ricrac. Yes, I would have been happy with just that (I know, I know, only I could adore lavender wrapped in tissue paper this much)

But of course there was more :: nestling inside the tissue I found a CK postcard, a bar of chocolate, a lovely hand made lavender sachet, this gorgeous, gorgeous linen bag with it's own little matching flower corsage (awwwwwwww), and inside the bag, four of Kim's wonderful rag balls.

The ragballs had scented themsleves with the fresh lavender, but I have also added some droplets of rose oil to them, so they have the scent of a summer garden. I was not sure how to photograph them, so ended up putting them onto my pink glass cake stand, but I think they will be destined eventually for my bedroom. I think the combined scent of lavender and roses is very restful and bedroomy, don't you?

The lavender sachet is already in my bedroom, I like to sniff it when I get into bed, much to J's horror actually, I'm sure he thinks I've completely lost the plot sometimes. I tell him the scent of lavender before sleep is bound to give me the most beautiful dreams, but he remains unconvinced. You can imagine him silently shaking his head at me can't you?
So thank you Kim so very much for your generosity, I love your gifts and shall treasure it all (including the white tissue paper). xxxx

Hey now, onto the crockery :: I bought myself some new bowls yesterday, and oh, I do love them! I already had the two spotty ones with the blue insides, so was delighted when I came across the flowery ones to go with them.

They come from Woolworths would you believe, and for the bargain price of £2 each, I think they are great. Woolworths is such an odd-ball shop :: more often than not it is full of such tat and rubbish that I almost cannot bare to look. But every so often there will be some really unexpectedly nice things sitting on the shelves amongst the distasteful stuff, and it's always a lovely surprise when this happens. Its like the high-street version of a car-boot sale.

I ended up buying all three of the flowery bowls which were on the shelf at Woolworths, and am using one to hold my little miniature rose plant on my bedside table. I don't know how long the rose plant and I are going to be together, because the rose does not seem to like me. I'm not especially good at caring for house plants, especially any that have flowers on. I'm not sure if I over water them or under water them but I am remarkably good at killing them off, although for the time being, this little rose is just about holding it's own (I had to relieve it of its yellowing foliage for the photo)
Sorry about photo quality by the way, the light is not good in my bedroom until very late afternoon. I know this for a fact, yet I still try and take pictures in the mornings.
In the foreground there on my bedside table, you can see my latest crochet experiments :: this week I have mostly been going to bed around 9pm and cosying up with my hot water bottle and working through some flower patterns from this book. It's been fun to try new things and learn some new stitches (I mastered a popcorn stitch flower last night, surprisingly easy to do despite the pattern sounding terribly complicated and wordy).


And this last picture is just a small snapshot of my lunch time today :: I usually sit at the dining table to each lunch but today I chose the sofa because the light was so beautiful in this part of the room. My rainbow maker had sent a flurry of little rainbows into the room and one just happened to be on the coffee table next to my plate.
It made my heart skip with happiness.
I hope you find a heart-skipping moment to savour today too xxxxx

October

First day of October today, so pages were flipped on my calendars this morning. The above picture is from the Laura Ashley calendar, and I have to confess it's the first one this year that I've not actually cared for a great deal. It seems a bit sombre and moody to me, what do you think? Perhaps it's just trying to be Autumnal?

Now this October picture on the other hand is much more what I like to think about for the month ahead :: windy days wearing woolly hats and kite flying, a month of rich Autumnal colours and bright, breezy jaunts to the park. Seeing this picture reminded me that my Mum sent Little Man a lovely old fashioned fabric kite for his birthday in August and we haven't yet been to fly it. I'm going to try and make a point of doing that during this month, gosh it has been a long time since I went to fly a kite! We all sat down a few evenings ago and watched the Mary Poppins film together, oh how we enjoyed it, most especially the kite scene at the end, with this song  ::

Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite
And send it soaring

Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite
Let's go fly a kite!

As is now my routine, at the start of each month I do like to perform a little summary of the weather as illustrated by the Attic24 view . What an incredibly mixed bag this day has provided. A breezy day of extreme brightness, interspersed with tremendously dark, heavy showers. The sun has been going in and out, in and out, in and out all day long. The rain has been pouring then stopping, pouring then stopping, pouring then stopping all day long. I have been alternately hot then cold, wet then dry all day long.
Above photo :: this morning at 10:21am :: the clouds clearing after heavy rain.

This is the view out of the velux window at the back of the Attic :: 10:22am and looking promisingly bright and sunny in one corner and ominously dark and hideous in the other corner.

A couple of photos from my walk into town at lunch time :: autumn leaves blown into the gutter, almost floating down the stream of rainfall.....

.....and the canal looking bright and beautiful. In between the rain showers, the sun came out and really shone it's little heart out today. These photos were taken around midday.

And from bright and beautiful to dull and miserable :: above photo :: 1:45pm, the rain was absolutely lashing down. The noise on the Attic24 roof was deafening.

 

And just a short while ago at 4:26pm :: bright sunshine again, after we got drenched doing the school run.
The BBC Weather Centre officially calls this " Showers and sunny spells on a windy day"
Absolutely spot on, can't argue with that.