Christmas Cake, Part II

It's taken a bit longer than I thought to make (as in I started making it last night at 19:00 and it's now 07:55) but it's finally finished.

God knows how I'm going to get it in to work tomorrow - it weighs a ton.



There's also something not 'quite right' with it. It might just be a bit wonky. I might see if there are any cake decoration night classes going on - my icing needs a bit of work, I think.

Anyway, there you go. Same again in another 12 months...

Update
It melteded...

Christmas Cake, Part I

Not content with moving house this weekend and only being half-packed so far, I've chosen Thursday as the day to take a Christmas cake in to work.

Here's the blueprints. I think Jayce suggested this last year so props to him for the idea:



I'm going to use the same home-made cake stand I used last year so it'll stand about 20 inches high in 4 tiers when done. I'll try to make the arms with florists wire covered in icing.

More info to follow shortly...

How Not To Cook Pizza

I've been sitting here this evening working away and I've just noticed I feel quite tired. I'm normally a bit of a night-owl so 01:00 is a fairly early for me to have heavy eyelids.

I've just worked out why, and it's because of a sequence of seemingly unrelated facts...

• I'd made some muffins for breakfast at the weekend with some cheap sausages that gave off a lot of fat and I haven't cleaned the grill pan yet.


• The bedroom I use for an office is directly above my kitchen, but the stairs are in the opposite corner of the house, making me 2 hypotenuses and 1 storey away from the kitchen.


• I bought a pizza for tea tonight as I was feeling a bit lazy, and in my haste to scoff it I didn't turn the oven off. I *did*, however turn the grill on instead without realising.

The result: my grill has been happily turning the fat from the sausages to a very thin smoke for the last 5 hours and I didn't notice. My eyes did, however, and they want to close now.

And that is how not to cook pizza.

Halloween Cake, Part II

I'll keep this short because it's 02:00 and I'm quite tired now as I've just finished making my Halloween cake for work.

If you remember the sketch from a couple of weeks ago it was supposed to look like this.

First, a little bit of prep work. I've been making some vanilla sugar for the last few weeks (I say 'making', but all I did was put a vanilla pod in some sugar) so I'm going to use that in the cake.

... and I need some coloured icing, too.

I'll skip the cake baking thing, so it's just about making the pumpkin...

My first quadruple-decker cake :-). It's a bit burnt around the edges but I'm going to cut them off anyway so it doesn't really matter.

I put it in the freezer for an hour so it was a bit firmer and easier to hack around with.

A marzipan wrap so the icing has a smoother finish. I used apricot jam as a glue to hold it in place. It's also starting to creep me out a little bit.

Another layer of jam and coloured icing creates the finished product. I've carved out the face just like the real thing.

So there we go. I'm quite pleased with it, if I do say so myself...

Lobster Cake

These are some plans for a lobster cake that I never got round to making. It was going to be for the family Boxing Day 2008 get together, but I made some vol au vonts instead.

Lost a Budgie?

If you've lost a dozen or so Plain Parakeets recently, they were in my neighbour's garden earlier making a bit of a racket.

Last seen heading West by North West.



I know it's not a very good picture, so here's an identikit close-up...

My Day In Pictures

I've been working at home this week which means that apart from phone calls and 2 grocery trips I've not left the house or had much human contact.

I was getting a little stir-crazy last night so I decided to go for a walk today along Regent's Canal from Limehouse DLR to Kingsland Road.

I followed the canal towpath (and not the roads), but this is a rough route map:

http://snipurl.com/regents_canal [http://maps.google.com]

Here's some pictures I took along the way...

First off, I was amazed how quickly the noise and bustle of Commercial Road turned into this tranquil little haven. Literally, a staircase with about a dozen steps separated the main road from this.

A little park about 10 minutes along the canal. I found another staircase back to the smog, got a coffee and brought it here.

Some barges. There were a couple of dozen in total along the stretch of canal I walked. Most were up by Victoria Park though.

Some little duckies (Moorhens?). There were a fair few of these little chappies.

Big duckies. These were the only ones I saw.

Haggerston Gasworks.

One of the avenues running through Victoria Park. I didn't spend much time here, but there's a lake that probably has a nice view in winter. It's blocked by bull rushes at the moment.

Someone with a sense of humour has decorated a few of the mooring points like this.

A mural on the side of what is presumably Ron's Eel and Shell Fish Shop.

I'm feeling a lot more relaxed now as you can probably tell from my writing. I might keep this as one of my secret little happy places.

Unless I accidentally post the photos all over the the Internet. D'oh!