Cakes and Knitting

I finally finished the Wendy Slip Over that I have been knitting for the Knit-A-Square charity.

 I don't know why it's taken me such a long time to complete this one - I  finished most of the knitting weeks ago but for some reason couldn't find the motivation to finish off the last few rows and sew it up.  Anyway, it's finally done and I've got away to a flying start on the next one, which I am knitting in moss stich as a change from stocking stitch.  At the start of the year I set the goal of knitting 15 items for charity during 2015.    I'm afraid I'm running a bit behind and will need to speed up a bit if I'm going to meet my goal.

I went traditional with my baking this week and made Queen cakes using a recipe from Great British Bakes by Mary-Anne Boermans.    

My mum and my grandma were both "cooks", my grandma as her job and my mum, like most 1960s housewives, cooking almost everything from scratch for her family.   To buy a cake, pie or pudding was unheard of, and from a very early age I used to sit on the table, alongside where my mum was working,  helping to weigh out ingredients, grease tins, count out cake cases,  and give the bowl a stir.  I'm sure the foundations of my mathematical skills were laid down in the kitchen.     I can clearly remember the first batch of cakes that I ever made on my own - Fairy cakes made from a recipe cut out of Women's Weekly magazine.  I couldn't wait for dad to get home from work to taste them. 

I still make Fairy cakes, each no more than a couple of bites,  perfect with an afternoon cuppa, and which I prefer to the oversized muffins and buttercream-piled cup cakes that have come  here from the USA.   And, if I do fancy a bit of buttercream, nothing beats an old-fashioned butterfly cake, especially with a small blob of homemade lemon or orange curd added before the wings are stuck back on.  Delicious.

In My Kitchen March 2015

In my kitchen are root vegetables.  

I have been doing a lot of cooking with a  selection of  traditional winter vegetables.   In these "between" days, when winter hasn't quite gone and spring hasn't quite arrived. I want to eat  comforting, warming foods, and food made using root vegetables fits the bill nicely.    Parsnips are my favourite and among dishes I enjoy eating at this time of the year are Spicy Parsnip soup, Parsnip Gnocchi,  and Roast Parsnips.    Another dish that I made for the first time, and which hubby and I both liked very much, was  Root Vegetable Cakes (from The Kitchen Revolution by Rosie Sykes, Polly Russell and Zoe Heron).  These used a mixture of swede, parsnip and leeks.  We ate them with fried eggs and homemade tomato relish.

In my kitchen is kale

This came from a local Farmer's Market.   I served it shredded and gently cooked in an inch or so of water, as a green vegetable.  

In my kitchen are Tiramisu wafers.

These are lovely for elevenses with a mug of milky coffee.





I was interested to read about The VegOut Challenge that Francine writes about in her blog Life In The Food Lane.   It is an interesting challenge and one that I would like to try a bit later in the year.