Traditional Victoria Sponge Recipe

One of our birthday traditions is home made cake.  The birthday person gets to choose the type of cake and it's always "sponge and jam please!"  I've tried offering lemon drizzle or chocolate but Victoria sponge wins each time.  

I suspect everyone has their own reliable recipe but just in case you haven't, here's mine:

SPONGE

200gm room temp butter

200gm golden caster sugar

200gm self raising flour (or plain + 3 tsp's baking powder if you've run out of SR like me!)

1 tsp baking powder (in addition to plain mix above if using)

2 tablespoons milk

4 medium eggs

Heat oven to fan 180 celsius or non fan 200 celsius.  Butter two cake tins about 20cm across and line the bases with parchment to make it easier to remove the cooked cake.  Throw all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  (I use a food mixer for about 4 mins).  Divide mix between the two tins and bake for about 25 mins.  When springy and golden on top, remove from oven, turn out onto a rack.  While it's cooling, make the filling:

FILLING

100gm room temp butter

150gm icing sugar (sift if it's lumpy but I usually miss this step as it creates such clouds of sugar dust!)

vanilla to taste - either from a pod, or a paste or extract.  (I use seeds from a whole pod or if I don't have one, about 1 tsp vanilla extract.)

Beat the butter till smooth, add the icing sugar in stages and add the vanilla once the butter and sugar are well mixed.

Spread the filling on the base of one of the cakes only once cake is completely cooled and top with jam flavour of your choice.  We always use strawberry but raspberry or apricot would work nicely.  You can also just use fresh fruit if you know you'll eat it all quickly!

Place the other cake on top and dust the top with sieved icing sugar

I couldn't find the candles so cut out the recipient's name welded with the word "cake" using a Brother scan and cut.  I cut two with one mirror imaged so I could stick them together with two pieces of wire sandwiched between them so it would stick in the top of the cake.  Next time I'll also cut out candle shapes!

And in final exciting news - after several months of planning, designing, researching and tearing out of hair, the new web site is inching closer!!  I can't wait to show you how pretty it looks, how clean and shiny and how easy to use but you'll need to wait a little longer while we jazz up its frou frou, buff its whizz and reassure it that it's gonna be fine and everyone will love it before thrusting it out into the limelight to take its place on the digital stage.  Soon I shall be saying goodbye to The Week Day Home and Blogger where we have been hosted for the past 4 or 5 years and shall move to a new host and a brand new name and logo which is having its first outing here.  I'll try and sneak the yoga cows in somewhere because so many of you have said they make you giggle and that's the whole point of this blog - to share ideas about crafting, food and life, to laugh at cows and hopefully inspire your own creativity.  You'll be the first to know when it goes live!

Far Breton

I'd never heard of Far Breton before finding it in one of Richard Bertinet's cookbooks.  (Regular visitors will know I'm a fan.)  A far is a type of custard pudding and is a specialty of Brittany.  A sweet batter is poured over rum soaked prunes and raisins and baked.  Very sensibly is also eaten for breakfast and is not limited to just being a pudding.

It's simple and, as I'm finding with many sweet French recipes, benefits from the batter being made in advance and left to rest for a few hours or overnight.

The illustration suggests making individual puddings by baking in a flat based large dish and using a round cutter to create nice portions.  I opted for a big dish of pudding we could all dip into depending on how greedy we were feeling.  This is an ideal, comforting dish for rainy days.  We are having too many of those just now but this is a heart warming treat to chase away the winter gloom.

It's a bit like a clafoutis but a little more dense.  Most of ours disappeared while still warm from the oven and we finished it off cold the next day.  Both ways it was lovely!

I've seen some suggestions online to make this with apples instead of prunes. Maybe the addition of Calvados would be a good idea.  I certainly plan to try it out :)

Kipferl biscuits and a dog in a jumper

These lovely, light biscuits are worth sharing. The recipe is from Konditor and Cook, a chain of bakeries in London with the emphasis on German baking. I do like German biscuit recipes and if you try this one you'll see why.

INGREDIENTS (this link takes you to the Telegraph from where I got the original recipe.)
50g ground hazelnuts
60g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
½ tsp vanilla extract
125g salted butter, cut into sugar-cube-sized pieces
200g plain flour
for the vanilla sugar
If you start from scratch and want ‘instant’ vanilla sugar, use 1 vanilla pod to about 250g caster sugar. It’s more economical, however, to mix scraped-out vanilla pods with sugar and infuse it for a longer period (ideally at least a week) in a tightly sealed jar. For this recipe you will need 100g vanilla sugar.
METHOD
Heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Spread out the ground nuts on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment and toast them in the oven for five to seven minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
In a mixing bowl, blend the caster sugar with the egg yolk and vanilla extract, using a wooden spoon. Add the cubed butter and mix until the pieces have broken down a little. Add the flour and toasted ground hazelnuts, stir, then knead to a smooth dough with your hands.
Divide the dough into three pieces and roll each one into a sausage 16-20cm long. Cover with clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut each length into 16 pieces (half, then quarters, then eighths and so on). Roll each piece into a ball, then, using the palms of your hands, shape it into a small, tapered crescent moon. Don’t make the ends too pointy or they will burn.
Place the cookies 1cm apart on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Bake for about 12 minutes, until pale golden brown.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a minute or so, then push all the cookies towards the centre of the tray and sprinkle with the vanilla sugar. It’s best to cover them completely. Leave to cool. When the cookies are completely cold, lift them out of the vanilla sugar. They will keep in an airtight container for up to two months.

In puppy news - I had to work really hard to resist getting a cutesy Christmas jumper for my daft dog. Then a friend saw one and bought it. So now we have a jumper for the dog. He enjoyed unwrapping his gift....

A bit cute, a lot scruffy and still a lot of fun. We've come along way together in the past 3 months, from the first 48 hours when I wondered what on earth we'd done to now, when we wouldn't be without our mischievous, friendly, muddy, scruffy pup. His paws are permanently dirty, he believes we only exist to play fetch and our (few remaining) cushions are his personal property but his tail is set on autowag and he is always pleased to see us and that's difficult to resist.

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Christmas comfort

How do you create Christmas comfort? We don't turn the whole house into a christmas grotto (anymore!). We focus on making a few areas in the house really festive using soft candle light, fairy lights, scents and food, of course, food!

I drew a simple wreath on our chalk board and surrounded it with flickering candles. This sits on the mantlepiece above the log fire and sheds less pine needles than a real wreath!

The Noel sign is at the centre of a string of fairy lights strung over the fire.

And I have a couple of identical oil burners which are always filled with cinnamon, clove and winter themed scents. I suppose something is only special if it's not what you do all year round. In summer we rely on natural light to cheer up the cottage but in the darker months I prefer not to blast artifical light into the rooms from a central overhead bulb. Pools of light in various corners feels much more cosy.

Biscuits are a must and these were actually made for some overseas visiors we had. Of course in winter, Scotland mostly looks like it's covered in icing sugar.

The apple, cinnamon and custard pie which is rather splendid is from the mad about macarons website. Enjoy :)

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Christmas Baking in Advance

I'm not a huge fan of the traditional mince pie. They always seem to have too much dry pastry and not enough filling. I learned how to make these little beauties at the bertinet bakery school last Christmas. I have strayed slightly from the recipe we used then which was for a sweet pastry base, filled with homemade (and nicely booze) mincemeat and topped with almond cream. The almond cream is genius. It creates a light, moist topping and even other people who share my dislike of this most Christmassy pie like this version. I used a pate sucre recipe from the ever reliable Jill Colonna's latest book, Teatime in Paris and filled them with a bought mincemeat. When I ran out of mincemeat, I switched to prunes soaked in rum. We always have a jar of these on hand for dropping into hot coffee or livening up yoghurt. Try it, it's just dried agen prunes with rum poured over to cover. To finish off the mince pies you can spoon on the almond cream but I like to pipe it because I'm quite messy with a spoon and Since I discovered the joys of disposable piping bags, I pipe everything. I used flaked almonds on top of the mincemeat filled pies and improvised with some vanilla powder on the rummy prune filled ones. What I love is that once baked, these can be happily frozen for two months. To revive, just take out of the freezer and allow to defrost for a few hours or pop straight from the freezer into a moderate oven for 15 mins or so. They keep their crispy pastry crunch and are amazing. Stress free Christmas bite sized baking!

Then there were almond amaretti from an online recipe which I was disappointed with because they came out soft and squishy and I wanted the ones which were crispy.

This was followed by stollen, another recipe learned courtesy of M. Bertinet. This is seriously worth doing. The recipe in his book "Crust" will make 3 large stollen loaves which again can be frozen. I chose to slice my loaves before storing in the freezer so I can defrost as needed rather than defrost a whole loaf. It's basically an enriched dough rolled up with almond cream, marzipan and juicy rum soaked dried fruits. I promise it is worth the effort.

People say you'll never buy shop bought again and sometimes that's true but sometimes not. This time, it's true.

And my go to recipe for biscotti is here. This is the fourth year I've made them and they will store in an airtight container for at least two weeks. Again it's all baking you can do in advance so you have something to offer friends who drop by.

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Raspberry and Amaretti Crunch Cake

Oh my this is good cake! It's a ridiculous thing to have made as I'm home alone this weekend and the dog doesn't like raspberries. My excuse is I'm testing it to see how long it remains nice to eat. It makes up very quickly, just whizz up some flour, eggs, sugar, ground almonds and butter then layer in a cake tin with raspberries and amaretti biscuits but be warned, it cooks low and slow. If you search for it on the BBC Good Food website (use the name from the title above) it will tell you to bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Mine took 1 hour 40 but it filled the kitchen with the welcoming smell of baking after a long wet afternoon walk. As I was sampling a slice, I got around to a little project I've seen a lot of on Pinterest.

I've seen a lot of mini hoops with embroidered christmas motifs. So, I bought some threads in smokey blue and silvery colours and drew a little design. I'll let you know how it goes. I managed to buy the threads because today for the first time, I abandoned the dog for 3 hours and went to town. It was lovely but I won't lie, there was guilt. During the week, I work upstairs in a little back office so the puppy knows I'm around even though I might ignore him for 2 hours. I hadn't actually left the house until this morning. He has a crate, loads of toys, water and the run of the kitchen so although my sensible brain knew he had all he needed, my puppy brain was beating me up about it. He was fine but I was greeted with....

Thank goodness you're home! Someone has eaten all the fluffy off the tennis ball.

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Stotties, good blogs and hygge

I read somewhere that dogs don't like the smell of citrus and since Buster's current hobby is chewing everything except his chew toys, I thought I'd test the theory using the power of lemons.

Dog v Lemon

Dog 0 - Lemon 1

I think I may have found the way to save our entire house. We will live in a lemon scented non-chewed world. But enough of dogs. Many of my interests follow the seasons, so in spring it's sewing and needle felting, in summer it's camping, in autumn it's baking, baking and baking. As we move into winter and Christmas, it's everything! I love this time of year and without realising there was a word for it, I have been practising Hygge most of my life. Pronounced "hooga", it's a Danish word and concept which translates roughly as cosiness and is what the Danes credit with getting them though the dark winter months. Hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good, simple things in life so the warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Sharing coffee and cake with friends and family is hygge, as is curling up on the sofa under a blanket to read through a good blog. I'd been catching up with Madaboutmacarons.com having just bought Jill's latest book....

...and got distracted by some links and landed at a wonderful foody website with a recipe for stotties, a bread from north east England I'd enjoyed many years ago while working in that area. This fabby bread only needs to prove once and is simply rolled flat before being baked for 15 mins. Then turn the oven off, let the bread sit in the cooling oven for about 30 mins and it's ready to munch. The recipe is courtesy of lavenderandlovage.com and both the bread and blog are well worth trying. I split the dough in two and we ate them warm from the oven with some butter. That's hygge!

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Village Day 2015!

We have a Village Horticultural day each year.  And every year we say we'll enter something for the show and see if we can win a prize and every year we either forget or go on holiday.  This year however, we were ready and as a family team entered 26 classes in the crafts and cookery sections.  But before I tell you how that went, here's a flavour of what trundles along the end of our lane on the way to the showground at the other end of the village...

 The village brass band.

 A ginger bread house.

 Ooompa loompa's from Willy Wonka (which we suspect was put together by the local biscuit factory).

 The local toddlers group on an under the sea themed float.

 Commemorating VE Day 1945.  The lady leaning forward is haggling with a black marketeer for some stockings.  If they kept that banter up all along the high street they did well (it's a long high street) and the float was fabulous!

 And here's a very small section of the tractor parade.  We're surprised every year at just how many tractors turn out, there must be about 50 and we're only a small village of 1800 souls!  We're beginning to wonder if our second car should be a tractor.

 The children play their part too on all types of transport.  The little pirate looked a bit grumpy despite having the best make-up of the day.

For most of the summer, I'd been completing a quilt starting 3 years ago and abandoned.  I prefer to complete one project before I move onto another and I'd made myself a firm rule that I was not allowed to start ANYTHING new until I'd got this quilt sorted.  When we had warm weekend weather I sewed outside.

When it was raining I took my time indoors trying to match the stripes on the binding.  Note to self - never do a striped binding again.

 It very nearly worked...

The fabric was clearly on the wonk.

And - ta dah!  Finally, here's the finished quilt.  I ended up really enjoying the free motion quilting on this with all the wavy swirls depicting the water round the British Isles.  And if you look at it from the reverse (which I forgot to photograph!) the quilting creates a union jack again.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

So how did the quilt do in the competition?  A second prize place which I was very pleased with.  There was fierce competition and the quilt which won was properly beautiful with perfectly matching points, lovely hand quilting and clever fabric contracts. Next year I'm aiming for first!  Unless we forget or go on holiday.

 Other classes did well too, the monsters pulled one of 5 Highly Commended's.

 As did a fimo bracelet

 My best class was in the greetings cards section.

And finally - my first 1st placement.  Hooray!!

Man child No1, won third in the sketching section despite having to enter the adult classes and a photo I took of a market in Budapest gained another Highly Commended.  I must confess to failing spectacularly in the cooking section.  Nothing for the chutneys, pickles, sloe vodka (quite happy to keep quaffing that though) or blackberry liqueur.  But it gives me an excuse to make more this autumn and we're getting close to foraging season.  

It was a good day!  And to top the weekend off in style Himself and I had both our Mother's (mine from Scotland and his more locally) visit us the day after our competitive success and all mama's like afternoon tea don't they?

We made our own Afternoon Tea menu, cut the crusts of the sandwiches and ate cake!