An Easy Spicy Applesauce Cake

Hello Friends!

I don't know about you, but I am baking a lot more these days. Is it the craving for comfort food and something sweetly satisfying?  Is it driven by the need to do something familiar and soothing? Or is it the need to make sure nothing goes to waste?  I am using up a lot of out of date things that might otherwise have lingered too long in the cupboard and ended up wasted.  I know one thing, as a nation we must be baking a lot more as, following on from the toilet paper shortage of seven weeks ago, we now find ourselves struggling to find flour, sugar and eggs!

I found some chunky, home made applesauce lurking in the freezer. It has been there since last Autumn.  It needed using, and as I have not been baking much since Christmas I found I have some slightly out of date flour and baking fat that needed using up too.  I don't know why, I suddenly fancied an apple cake of some sort, so I Googled Applesauce Cake.  I found a lot of different recipes, so I took elements from several of them, converted from metric and cups into Imperial {I am an old fashioned girl when it comes to my baking} and devised my own recipe, which follows.

Cooling in the tin

A slice showing the chunky apple sauce and raisins

It makes quite a dense texture, maybe I didn't add enough baking powder?  Maybe I should have used self raising?  It is not unlike a Bread Pudding {do not confuse with a Bread and Butter Pudding}and for that reason I really like it.  A lot. It is good warm with yogurt, or a drizzle of Golden Syrup.

Here's what I did.

4 oz butter
7 oz sugar {I used golden granulated}
up to 10 oz apple sauce {smooth or chunky} unsweetened if using a sweet apple.
8 oz plain flour, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
a scant 1/4 fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder {optional}
2 oz dried fruit {cranberries, raisins, sultanas etc} optional
sugar for sprinkling {optional}

Cream together the butter and sugar.  Stir in about 8 oz of the apple sauce and combine well.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Add more apple sauce if mixture is too dry, and make sure all ingredients are well incorporated.
Tip into a greased and floured 20cm round baking tin.  Sprinkle with a little sugar, if using, or add when cake comes out of the oven, depending how you want it to look.
Bake on Gas Mark 4 for approximately 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Cool in tin for 15 minutes then carefully remove from tin to finish cooling.

I may try adding walnuts next time, which I think would be a good addition.  I will also bake it in a suitable loaf style pan too.

As there are no eggs, if you use a vegan baking fat I think it would be good for vegans too.

with home made yogurt for pudding

Next up to the oven are the two long term resident oranges in my fridge. I fancy an Orange Drizzle and maybe a small batch of Orange and Blueberry Muffins.  Waste Not, Want Not, and my freezer has space now, at last, but not for long.

Today is VE Day. Normally, street parties and all manner of social gatherings would have occurred, along with events from Buckingham Palace and all up and down the length and breadth of Great Britain, but Covid-19 has put a stop to almost all activities.  A lot of people put up bunting, and this afternoon a few of us gathered, carefully observing social distancing, in a neighbour's car port. We each brought our own cup of tea, and our own plates of food.  We sat, a good six feet apart, and chatted for over an hour.  Up and down our street similar groups gathered outside on the pavement. I cannot begin to tell you how good it was to talk to people face to face instead of over the phone, but it was a strange time too, celebrating that which brought us all closer together seventy five years ago, by keeping our distance from one another.

Here is my tray.  I picked a tiny posy from the garden, including Forget-Me-Nots and London Pride, which seemed appropriate inclusions, and Treasure had his own, special, tiny picnic hamper too.

Did you do anything to celebrate VE Day? I hope you managed something to alleviate the current mood.  We do know how to put on a good street party in Great Britain, and excel at celebrating all the anniversaries, jubilees and royal weddings!

Until next time
Deborah xo

Over the Garden Wall

Hello Friends!

Yes, most of my contact with the outside world these days is over the garden wall, snatched chats with neighbours if we happen to be outside together.

While clearing an overgrown area the other evening, I spotted a bright yellow tennis ball.  It belonged to the little boy next door.  Two months ago I would have gently thrown it back.  Now, I called to his Mum to ask if it was okay to throw it back. How our lives have changed! She was happy so I carefully pitched it over the shrubbery.

I pondered upon this for a while, a little glimmer of what was once a normal behaviour, now changed forever.  Even when we are able to relax a little, in all likelihood Coronavirus Covid-19 will still dictate our lifestyle to us.  Unless a successful vaccine is found, like other diseases, in time it may be eradicated, but otherwise it's here for the duration.  For people with certain medical conditions {me, for example, with asthma} this means the current adaptations may be permanent. Whoa boy! Endless disinfection and hand washing.

Which got me to thinking: I hear the news channels speaking about "returning to normal", but what if you are like me and you don't want to return to that old normal, that which at the turn of the year we took for granted.  What, if like me, you can see the benefits of our situation?  The sky is bluer, the air is clearer, the silence is oh! so welcome and I am hearing birds sing, bees buzzing all day long. I am trying, arthritis permitting, to clear my garden in preparedness to grow fruit and vegetables again. If you try not to think about the dreadful and dire situation of the virus, everything else is so calm and peaceful.  As an introvert, the joy of not having to go out and socially interact is a huge relief and I am calmer and more content with my life. The planet is healing and beginning to breathe again.  She will relish this time to heal the devastating wounds we have inflicted.

I have seen a huge change in even my most basic day to day activities, and other than the endless disinfecting and cleaning processes, I am settling into the new routine well, and happily. How I cook and eat has changed; how I shop has changed; my focus on what is, and what isn't, important has changed; how much rubbish I am throwing out has decreased unbelievably {and I didn't throw that much out in the first instance}.  I don't want to go back to the normal that was before. I want this new normal, without the virus hanging over us.  If we don't all learn from this, then do we really deserve to be the custodians of the planet?

Okay, I won't go on any more about the virus, but I wanted to share my feelings. Thank you for indulging me and listening!

I am not yet happy to start walking about along the roads, but that time is coming, so for now all my photos are taken in my garden, and here's a few things currently blooming and growing in my cottage garden.

I could preface each of these with "it's my favourite flower", for I love them all!

Arum Lily in bud

Violets along a wall

Now, two Christmases ago, the first Christmas after my darling Mum died, I did not feel like doing anything to celebrate.  I did not decorate, but ended up buying a living tree which I garlanded with fruit and nuts, and birdseed, placed outside my cottage door.  The tree did not do well, and despite repotting it has not thrived.  The other day I decided to tip it out and use the giant pot it is in for something else, so imagine my delight to find it is suddenly sprouting tiny green buds all over!

Native fern

Aquilegia or Grannies' Bonnet

Libertia peregrinans or Wandering iris

offshoot! Free plants!

Aquilegia

I just adore the delicate colouring on this pansy

London Pride {I can just hear Noel Coward singing}

Pennywort or Navelwort

Native fern

Pennywort flower

There will be many pictures of flowers and probably very little else on my blog in the coming months, but with each new bloom comes a promise of hope, a promise of a future that we must not mess up. We're being given a second chance, let's not let nature, or ourselves, down.

Until next time
Deborah xoxo

Springtime and Gratitude

Hello Friends!

I hope you are all keeping safe and well?  These lockdown conditions are not easy for any of us, not even for one of hermit like tendencies such as me.  I hope you are finding ways to keep your spirits up?

Although there is a lot, and I mean an awful lot, of work to be done in my garden before it is properly back on track, I had hoped to get my raised beds in order this Spring.  They're new, so need assembling along with compost and topsoil to fill.  Can you believe that I missed getting the compost delivered by less than half a day!  With lockdown looking set to continue, the possibilities of securing some now look remote.

Thankfully, I found some bags from last year, but nowhere near enough to fill even one raised bed, so I must prioritise how I will use it.  My only way forward now is pots.  Not my preferred way, but if I can produce enough salad crops {leaves, beetroot, spring onions and radish} in a few pots, it will be a good thing.  I found a packet of watercress seeds.  Watercress is apparently very high in nutritional value, and I like it, so that is a priority crop.  I have a couple of dustbins that have soil in, so I will try my runner beans in those.  I also think I might empty the compost pile, for there might be something good in there!

Everything else, my berries for example, will now have to rely on what would normally be the supplemental feeding.  I won't get a lot, but I will get something and for that I will be grateful.

Here are a few flower photos from the garden this week.

Wednesday this week saw a full moon super moon, also known as a Pink Moon.  No, the moon did not turn pink, apparently it is so called after the many pink wild flowers found at this time of year.

I took the first photo on Tuesday evening, it was cloudy and shortly after this was taken the clouds covered the view.

On Wednesday evening the sky was clear, and the super moon, the biggest of this year, filled my lens and spilled out of the frame.

Quite a difference between two evenings, don't you think?

I have been puttering a little with some media.  Here's a little countryside inspired picture I made with paints and stamps.  Umbels and seed heads are a particular favourite of mine.  Just faffing about with no direction in mind, just playing with what I have helps take my mind off the frightening situation in which we find ourselves now.

I am trying to find my muse, slowly but surely it will return, in this I trust.  I am starting to bake bread again, and began yesterday by baking my Hot Cross Buns for this Easter weekend.  They were not that bad considering I used out of date flour and yeast, but I will not waste food if I can help it.  Flour and yeast are both in short supply right now, so the nation must be baking!  This can only be a good thing.

Each day on Twitter, I try to post five things to be grateful for.  I find this a positive and often uplifting thing to do, reflecting each evening on five things that made me happy or for which I am deeply grateful.  If you are on Twitter I am @BeingMyHappy.

Stay Safe, Stay Well, My Friends!

Until next time
Deborah xo

A New World

Hello Friends!

It's a new world, a strange world, in which we now live.  It's like waking up every morning into a reality of living in a B Class science fiction movie, and a new normal for each of us emerges as we disinfect the living daylights out of everything in an effort to destroy the hidden enemy, and we fight over toilet paper {does anyone know why?} and keep away from everyone.

In the midst of all this chaos, fear, and madness, the world still turns about us, though we may not notice as much as we did.  If we are lucky, we can still chat to our neighbours over the garden wall, strictly keeping our distance.

The clocks have sprung forward, the days are lengthening, and we cling with fervent hope to the day when this living nightmare will be over, but those days are a long way off.

My garden ticks and tocks the moments away, and although there is not much to show, there have been some moments.  Here are a few things in bloom.

Camellias, big and blousy, always boldly bright, and the pink are nearly over, the red just starting to take off

The Pieris gives a bright and bold depth of red to the border as the new waxy looking leaves grow and glow in the warm Spring sunshine

My beloved Pasque flower surprised me by suddenly opening this week.  You know I will wax lyrical over this in the coming weeks

A perfect, early Spring evening, peaceful, clear and crisp, in a darkening night sky.  The westering day fades in an ombre blue sky that seeps into shades of plum on the distant horizon.  Above our heads sat the new, crescent moon, smiling sweetly at Venus, the Evening Star, as she shimmers, a tiny and distant diamond of hope in the gloaming.

Of late, we are seeing more colour in our sunsets too, and the plummy shades tinged with mango and raspberry are delicious to watch each evening

I hope you are keeping safe in isolation.  Remember, you are not stuck indoors, you are SAFE indoors and that we are all in this together, doing our bit to help the NHS cope in the days and weeks to come.

Until next time
Deborah xo

Changes

Hello Friends

In stating the obvious, I have not been here in a while.  The reason is this: despite having comment moderation in place, I am having regular issues with spammers.  Comment moderation does not deter them, and I announced on my Twitter feed that I intend to delete this blog, as it seemed the only way forward.  However, several request not to do so resulted in Ragged Robin kindly suggesting to me that instead of deleting, why don't I just make the blog "private".  I didn't know you could do this, so in a few days this blog will be made "private".  At the moment I am not entirely sure what this means, or entails, but I hope you will bear with me while I work this all out!

I may start shorter, daily posts rather than the time consuming longer ones I usually do too.

What is it they say?  See you on the flip side!  I hope you'll still be there.

Until next time
Deborah xoxo

Vintage Handkerchiefs

Hello Friends!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Happy New Year!

I am not going to write much today, I am feeling rather lazy having greedily devoured a surfeit of chocolate which now forms a large part of my blood group.  I am still not sure what day of the week it is, feeling as if it is the eighth or ninth Saturday since Christmas.  The days seem to run into one and I shall be glad when normality, whatever that is, returns on Monday.

The chocolate is eaten; the cheese is all gone.  Please send reinforcements, we're going to a dance. Or is that "send three and fourpence, we're going to advance"?  Can we survive without chocolate until Easter?  But wait, there's Valentine's Day soon, but is it soon enough?  I think the chocolate withdrawal is getting to me.

Recently, I found a box full of handkerchiefs, vintage ones, so really lovely things to look at.  Some have patterns woven in to the fabric {see the green check one, at the bottom} others have beautiful embroidery, drawn thread work, or lace adornments.   One is worked in cross stitch, and the back is almost as meticulous as the front {as good embroidery should be!}

I am laundering all I have found and thinking of what use I can make of them.  Some are far too delicate to use now, so I must find a way of preserving them.  Others, such as the green check one, are fine and sturdy so can be put to their intended purpose; there is something genteel about an embroidered, cotton handkerchief, and I do so like to use a proper handkerchief, relics of a bygone age and saving the planet one sneeze at a time.

Until next time
Deborah xo