Me and DIY Don't See Eye-to-Eye

I seem to have this curse with the physical world, or at least some sort of reverse Midas touch. Anything manual or mechanical I touch seems to break without me even trying.

So, I was quite pleased with myself after spending about 6 hours today sanding and glossing the window frames in my conservatory, having spent about 8 hours last weekend sanding and undercoating.

That was, until just now when I went out there to inspect my handiwork. From a distance I noticed it didn't really have the sheen I was expecting, and as I got closer a curious thought crossed my mind.

"Why has that gloss dried looking like undercoat?"

The answer is, of course, that I've only accidentally gone and put a second coat of undercoat on instead of gloss.

Grrrrr...

Valentine's Cake 2008

Blimey, 2 cakes barely a week apart. This one's a white chocolate sponge cake smothered with a home-made white chocolate cream. Ideal if you like white chocolate, or rubbish if you don't.



It's probably the richest cake I've made so far. I feel a bit queasy having eaten more than my fair share of the leftovers.

I bought the candy flowers, btw. Although I'm planning on trying my hand at sugarcraft at some point...

What's better than cake and shoes?

What's better than cake and shoes? Shoes on a cake, of course!



This was a birthday present for one of the girls in the department I worked in a while ago. They were getting upset because I only started baking after I left there so they've not had any from me yet.

Well now they have.

Next up, Valentine's day...

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...