The Beigel Fairy's Been

I went to Brick Lane last night with the department I work in at one of my clients. Their annual team-building trip to the German offices got cancelled because of budgetary reasons so they decided to flick the finger at the bean-counters and take themselves out instead, and I got towed along in their wake.

I like going to Brick Lane for a few reasons - the obvious food and drink being top of the list, but I also like it because my auto-pilot regime for getting home seems to include a trip to the 24-hour beigel shop at the north end of the road.

As a result I found I'd left myself a lovely present of a big fat beigel in the fridge this morning, rammed to the hilt with really tender salt beef and enough mustard to blow an elephant's nose off. So I quickly thanked myself for my drunken thoughfulness, then scoffed it for breakfast.

Yum yum.

I Just Lost The Game

After my longest winning streak of about a year, I just lost The Game. :-(

If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, here's the rules...

RULE 1: You are playing The Game.
RULE 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
RULE 3: Loss must be announced.

Christmas Cake 2007, Part 3

I finally finished icing the cake at 04:00 this morning, so I'm a bit shell-shocked this morning.

Lugging the bloody thing in to the office was a bit of a challenge as well, but I cobbled together a carry case out of a couple of archive boxes and it seemed to do the trick.

Here's a brief blow-by-blow account:

The ingredients. I used most, but not all of this.

Cooking. The design needed 4 cakes in total, 2 chocolate, 2 lemon.

Cut up and ready to ice. The bucket and top section came from 1 cake.

The finished product. Well, nearly.

I just like the halo from the fridge light.

The finished product. The lights are musical as well.

So there we are. I'm not quite sure where I can go from here as I think everything else will sort of pale by comparison. I need to come up with something though as I'm getting a food mixer for Christmas and I'll be itching to use it.

Any ideas for a theme for a cake?

Christmas Cake 2007, Part 2

When it comes to practical DIY stuff I have to say my skills are 'elsewhere'. That's why I'm quite pleased with my latest attempt at building something.

Here's the plans I made:

And here's the finished product in 3 easy steps:

I'm starting to get the impression that this crazy Christmas tree cake might actually work...

Christmas Cake 2007, Part 1

I've been plotting and planning for the last week or so, and I think I've now got the blueprints for an ambitious Christmas cake for work.

It's top, top secret classified information, and I haven't even discussed it with colleagues, but if you can keep it a secret I'll let you have a peek at the plans so far...

Remember, loose lips sinks cakes. Or something...

iCake

I baked another cake.

I'm having a lot of fun making these. I keep catching myself giggling like a bit of a loon while I decorate them. Keeps me out of trouble I suppose...

Bobble Hat, Part 2

Bit of trivia before I start - knit one, purl one is called seed stitch or moss stich. That's something I didn't know a few weeks ago, but is now horribly burnt into my brain.

Anyways, I finished my knitting project with about half an hour to spare - I was frantically sewing the seam and putting on the pompom the morning of the baby shower, conscious the taxi was due to turn up any minute.

It turned out pretty well in the end so I'm quite pleased with myself, although I don't think I'll be making long-term use of my new-found talent. (Except that my cousin has recently sprogged, I have some wool left over, and I've just found a pattern for some booties. Now, where did I put those needles...)