rhubarb!

We picked our first lot yesterday, two lovely sticks which shall be cooked down for a rhubarb fool.



Stop by tomorrow for the recipe and yummy pictures (without the cat).

xx

summer sale + a cupcake recipe

Lemon Balm Necklace - was $36.50, now $30

I'm multitasking today!

First of all, I am having a little summer sale in my Etsy shop, stop by for some lovely bargains!

Magpie Earrings, were $19 now $15

And now to cupcakes....
Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes



As you may have realised I have something of a fondness for cupcakes lately, mainly due to the fact that my oven is awful at cooking big cakes but perfect for little cupcakes.

My favourite cake is a lemon drizzle cake, sweet and sharp and always very moist. I make it regularly.

This is adapted from a standard victoria sponge recipe and makes about 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients

for the cakes:
100g self raising flour
100g caster sugar
100g butter
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
dash vanilla extract
zest of one lemon

for the icing:

juice of one lemon
approximately 3 tablespoons icing sugar

To make:

Cream together butter and sugar til light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and the lemon zest. Slowly fold in the flour til combined. If your mixture feels a little dry add a bit more lemon juice or milk.

Spoon into cupcake cakes on a cupcake tray and bake for 10-15 minutes at gas mark 6 / 200c.

Whilst they bake make the icing by slowly whisking in sifted icing sugar til you get an icing with the consistency of single cream. I think i used about 3 tablespoons, but feel free to use less or more depending on how it turns out.

Wait for the cakes too cool, not so they are stone cold but just a bit warm. Poke each cake once witha fork so you have some 'channels' for the icing. Drizzle icing sugar on to each cake until it is nicely coated, I found a pastry brush was good at the end to coat the cakes on top.



Eat immediately!

xx

cat progress

I think its been maybe um a couple of weeks since I blogged about cats?

apologies for the fuzzy picture, Mr snapped this one quickly! You can see me making salsa at mega speed in the background!

Anyway, we are making a bit more progress with these two. Jess (black and white one) thinks Tilly (tabby one) is the best thing ever, but Tilly is very much not convinced, or at least is pretending not to.

I am pleasantly suprised, its been about 6months and they are getting on much better than I thought. We've not had any proper fighting yet, in fact both of them have had more scuffles with next doors cat than each other. Which is nice.

I'll stop being a cat lady now and get onto being a serious grown up ;)

slate

This is actually a drinks coaster..
I love how well it photographs next to my jewellery, it works with almost any piece and it gives great depth and interest to them.

I think I may have to use this for all of my pictures in future!

They also look great around the house too, you may have spotted them in various food related bloggings.

xx

weekend eating

I made a big caesar salad. Tip - follow the recipe when it says 'mild olive oil' and don't use the extra flavourful italian olive oil crushed by a friend of a relative in his very own olive grove. Its wonderful olive oil but far too strong for caesar dressing!

x

just two

I had a mildly productive weekend, I had lots of orders to pack up (yay!) so my attention turned to them. I made these new pair of earrings afterwards, I've been hoarding the beads for a little while, and finally found a good design for them.

I did have some similar smaller beads which I used for these earrings but the larger beads had me unstuck for a while. I hope you like these, they are rare and were given to me by a relative, there will be just 2 pairs for my etsy shop.


xx

200!

Happily I am approaching 200 sales in my Etsy shop! Amazing!

Thank you to all my customers for stopping by my shop over the last couple of years, the time has actually whizzed by quite fast and I've had lots of fun developing my designs.

I am at 197 sales right now, for my 200th customer I am offering a very special gift - a free pair of my Simple Rose earrings (best sellers, y'know ;)) with their order.

I am also offering free shipping in my shop until Saturday morning :)


Thank you for looking!

xxx