Retro Fruit

Hello!

I'm fighting for time these days. It seems I have too many things to do and definitely not enough time to do them! Finding time to stamp is seeming almost impossible!  Today I spent most of the day at the garden shop, the hardware shop, and then in my garden repotting roses and lemons and then making new pots for my girls to plant sunflowers. Today was a perfect "spring" day (in the middle of winter) - shorts and t-shirt weather, beautiful!

Anyway, I really AM here to show you a card. Here it is.

I used PTI Strawberry Patch stamps. Ink is SU! Poppy Parade, Garden Green, Green Galore. The patterned paper is (I think) Cosmo Cricket In the Garden. Card is PTI basic white.

This card is in response to two challenges. The layout is from Retro Sketches #22.

A really nice sketch, and I think I'll keep it to use another day. :-)

And the other challenge is CASology #3 with the theme FRUIT this week.

Just before I go, I have to share a recipe. I found this over at Laurie Willison's blog yesterday and promptly repinned the recipe on Pinterest and made the recipe for dessert last night.

Perfect Lemon Bars

The picture and recipe are from Baking Bites blog. I didn't photograph mine, but I can tell you, they looked exactly the same. This recipe is EASY and DELICIOUS (if you like lemon).
I altered the recipe slightly (reducing the sugar a bit).

This is the Baking Bites recipe (with my notes where I changed it):

Perfect Lemon Bars

Crust

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp lemon zest (I used the zest of one lemon)

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

Filling

4 large eggs

1 1/3 cups sugar (I used 1 cup of sugar)

1 cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed and strained (I used the juice of two lemons, which was about 190ml, because that was all I had)

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 9×9-inch baking pan with aluminum foil.

Make the crust. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Cut butter into chunks and add to flour mixture. Blend in with an electric mixer at low speed until mixture forms coarse, sandy crumbs. Pour into pan and press mixture down (with your fingers or the back of a spoon) into an even layer.

Bake for 16-19 minutes, until just lightly browned around the edges.

While crust is baking, make filling. Whisk together all filling ingredients in a large bowl.

When the crust comes out of the oven and is still hot, pour in filling mixture.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until filling is set and does not jiggle when the pan is gently shaken.

Cool completely before slicing.

Top slices with confectioners’ sugar to serve.

Makes about 24 bars.

Thanks for coming by today.

Michelle
xxx

Christmas Cake

Hello!

No cards this time. This time I'm showing you my Christmas cake.  If I hadn't had the marauding hoards snapping at my heels begging me for a piece of the cake, I would have presented it more nicely for your viewing pleasure. As it was, I was lucky to snap a few shots before the first cut, LOL!

Every year I make a Christmas cake. This cake is a BIG cake and it takes a few hours to make. Some years it is fantastic, and some years I don't make it as perfectly as I'd like. This year's cake is PERFECT! Moist, delicious, mouth-wateringly fragrant...hang on, I might need to grab a piece before I go on...

I usually try to keep it whole until Christmas Day so that everyone gets to appreciate its beauty before cutting, but, as I said, it is perfect, and we couldn't wait until Christmas to try it out.

Yum! It's a boiled fruit cake. I put in some extra treacle this year, so it has gone very dark. It isn't burned, it's just dark brown. The nuts are macadamias, brazils, walnuts, and almonds.

So what do you think, do you feel like popping over for a cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake?

Michelle
xxx

Edited to add: P.S. Ooh! I just noticed this is my 100th post. That would be a reason to celebrate... I might go and have a piece of cake...

Happy 9th Birthday!

Hello!

No cards this week-end. It was another busy birthday week for us this past week.  I'm about to pop off to bed to try to catch up on some sleep before I launch into the working week once again. But before I go, I thought I'd share my little bit of creativity for the week.

Well, actually, I copied someone else's creativity... but I did do the work myself, once I'd found the idea, LOL.

My eldest daughter turned 9 years old this week. 9 years! How does time pass so quickly?  She had a Hawaiian pool party planned with a few of her school friends. Saturday morning dawned. . .well, it actually didn't dawn... it began with a MONSTER storm that had the morning as dark as night - wild wind, lightning, thunder, torrential rain, everything a storm can be. It was amazing. And a little worrying, considering we were planning a pool party, eek.  Anyway, as the day progressed, the clouds slowly, ever so slowly, cleared. By the time party time arrived, we had some blue skies and some sunshine. A miracle. The fact that the pool was freezing cold was not a problem for this group of kids. They had fun in there anyway. Crazy.

So onto what this blog is actually about. The cake.  I like wandering through Pinterest. I collect ideas there. I also collect ideas on the internet and pin them back to Pinterest for safekeeping.  One of these ideas was an owl cake. My daughter liked this cake and requested it for her birthday.

This is my take on the cake (not a great photo, but you get the idea):

This was the idea, found HERE:

Close ups of my little owls:

And a Hula Skirt fruit platter that Super-Dad put together:

The kids loved it. The cake got lots and lots of positive attention. The party got many comments of "This is the BEST party ever!", which is very satisfying, considering I chose to NOT entertain the children, but left them to their own devices (under our supervision). They played in the pool, they played basketball, they played on the swingset (yes, 9 year olds will still do this, apparently), and they made their own disco party. They were well-behaved, polite, and had a wonderful time. My daughter has some very cool friends. My daughter is very cool, too.

Do you like my cake? It was red velvet cupcakes under all that decoration. They went down a treat.

Hopefully I'll be back to some more card making this week. Fingers crossed...

Michelle

xxx

Kourabiethes

Mmmm, yum!  Kourabiethes (Greek shortbread) are one of my absolute favourite biscuits to bake.  I love all sorts of shortbread, but these little darlings are perfectly to my taste. After making a batch this evening, I thought I'd share the recipe so that you can share in this melt-in-your-mouth delight!

Kourabiethes
(I make between 40 and 50 biscuits with this recipe)

Ingredients
250g butter
2 x cups pure icing sugar - 1 for the mixture and 1 for dusting afterwards - you need to sift it
2 tsp vanilla essence
Orange zest (grated rind) from one orange
1 x egg
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup almond meal

Before I tell you how to put these together, let me just say one thing: Working with pure icing sugar can be frustrating because it is hard to sift.  Sifting the sugar is the one thing that stops me making these all the time. LOL.  You CAN'T not sift it though, it's a bit like chunks of sweet rock before sifting sometimes.

Method

• Beat butter, 1 cup sifted sugar, vanilla, and orange zest together until light.
• Beat egg into butter mixture.
• Sift flour and baking powder and add to mixture with almond meal.
• Mix everything together until the mixture is combined (it might still look crumbly, but the mixture will stick together when you roll it into balls).
• Take spoonfuls of mixture and make logs/snakes about 7cm long.  I find that making the logs from a ball of dough is easiest.
• Curve the log into a crescent and place on baking tray.
• Bake at about 160 degrees for about 15 - 20 minutes (until starting to turn slightly golden).
• Place the other cup of sifted icing sugar in a bowl and coat the biscuits while they are still warm.  I always find I have some sugar left over in this bowl, so I just throw it over the biscuits in their container - it makes them pretty when you take them out later for serving (you might need to shake off some excess sugar!)

If you give this recipe a go, I hope you like it. :-)

Michelle

Babushka Dolls!

The big girl and I recently had a trip to Melbourne as a part of her birthday celebration. While we were there we found the most beautiful shop called Babushkas, which sold . . . you guessed it, Babushka Dolls, otherwise known as Matryoshka Dolls.  It was like russian doll heaven.  Here is a quick snapshot.

And that is only a small selection of what was available.  We did take one set home as a birthday present, because they were irresistible!

As a result of this discovery, when discussing what birthday cake she would like this year, the big girl put in an order for a babushka doll cake.  My first reaction was, "Oh no! How am I going to do that?", but when she said to me (very generously) that I could just make a round cake and draw a picture on top, I decided that I ought to make a little effort.  So, after some thought, I came up with the basic design, and then I spent an evening colouring different quantities of icing to create the masterpiece.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good photo of it once it was finally finished, but this was close enough.  The big girl was very happy and I had exceeded her expectations, so I was happy.  :-)  And Babushka was very yummy - white chocolate mud cake was hiding under all that icing.

I spent the week baking and also prepared a few treats to send to school.  I hear the tea cups were a hit.

The biscuits on the base were Tick Tock biscuits.  I usually use Marie biscuits and spread with melted white chocolate, but the Tick Tocks saved some time and tasted just as good. 

I have a little more baking to do tonight and tomorrow, and then I have a couple of weeks off until the next birthday. . .