Soft Furnishings

We have lived in our house for almost 4 years (my husband) and almost 3 years (me) and we are slowly (very slowly) sorting out each of the rooms. You know when you move in somewhere you just make do with what you have? You think, this will do until I settle in and decide what I want.....suddenly it's 4 years later and you haven't done very much at all. That's where we are at the moment.
But the lounge room is about to have a complete makeover: new curtains (went up at the weekend), new sofa (being delivered today), new dining table (being delivered on Friday) and chairs (put together over the weekend). In a very girly way I am very excited!
Just putting up the new curtains has made all the difference. They are a wonderful 50s inspired print from Sanderson, Dandelion Clocks. As you can see the material is cream with wonderful splashes of green, grey and mustard. And this is where I sought my inspiration for the soft furnishings i.e. cushion covers. We did buy 2 cushions in the same pattern but I also wanted to knit some and the bought cushions were too expensive to be buying more than two. I bought a couple of basic cream cushions for £5.99 instead, much more cost effective.
I wanted to use the Celtic knot cable pattern that I had used on the shawl I didn't wear for my wedding (sorry, it was only a matter of time!) and discovered a simple but impactful one on Ravelry, Aran Pillow. Unfortunately it doesn't come with the cat!! I had some cream wool in my stash that I thought would work. It was a lighter weight than the pattern called for so I had to add some stitches either end to get it to the requisite 40cm but nothing too onerous. I'm not the best at adjusting patterns but something as simple as a square is hard to mess up, she says.
I finished the first cushion on Saturday, sewn up and ready for positioning on the sofa. I bought some Debbie Bliss aran wool in a green/grey colour for the other cushion cover and started that one yesterday. I think this one will knit up quicker because of the aran weight. It does seem strange to be knitting in the weather but the cushions won't make them selves. Here is a picture of it in progress.

I want to add a couple of more cushions and with that in mind I bought an off-cut of the Dandelion material from ebay, quite a sizeable piece for about £12. The idea (it is nothing more than an idea at the moment!) is to use the above-mentioned shawl as the front of the cushion cover and back it with the material. What I think I will do is sew the shawl to the material and then make the cushion cover from there. Not sure if that makes sense, in my head it does. I don't have a sewing machine so I will have to do it all by hand which makes it trickier but not impossible. More on that later. Meanwhile here is the first cushion in situ on the new sofa with her shop bought siblings, aaaah.

The Cardies Part of the Wedding

This will be the last time I mention my wedding, honest....well it may come up again but promise it will only be in passing.
We have had the cakes bit of the wedding now for the cardies bit. I wanted to add a knitting element to the day and one of the things I decided was to knit a shawl to wear with my dress. I wanted to use cable and found a pattern on Ravelry for a beautiful shawl with a Celtic love knot cable running the length of the shawl. I chose a cream wool and began the 600 odd rows of cable. I finished it fairly quickly but it soon became obvious that it wasn't going to work. It was too small and didn't really go with the dress. So I have put it away for the moment but it will re-appear under another guise at some point (watch this space).
With the shawl a no-go I wanted some knitting to feature and after some internet surfing I came upon some knitted bunting, aha, this could be it. The pattern was very simple, stocking stitch with a garter stitch border. My dress was red so I used cream and red (from my wool stash) and knitted 18 flags so I could alternate red and cream. I then sewed them together and using duplicate stitch embellished them with SHARON + PAUL. I bought a bag of random vintage cream buttons from ebay and sewed them on to the flags, et voila.

All it cost was my time (not that long really, a few nights in front of the telly) and the buttons (about £5). It was hung on the top table at the wedding, I was very pleased with it I have to say.
Here endeth the Cakes and Cardies wedding.

Wedding Cake (Volume 2)

Having decided on everything for the wedding cake I then had to wait, months (well three or four) before putting any of it into action. The nature of the cake being that it is a last minute thing. But I did want to test out the cake tins and see if I could cook the cakes in advance and then freeze them thus saving myself any last minute dramas. Work were very happy with me in the months before the wedding, they all got to have chocolate Guinness cake on a regular basis. The 14in cake was the one I was worried about most but it proved very easy.
I used the Cakeometer to size up and down from the recipe, a great tool for any baker. It also turns out that the cooking time for a 14in cake is not that much different from a 9in one (the original size in the recipe), who knew? Well, lots of people really! It cooked for about 10 minutes longer in the end. I cut this into quarters, half made it's way into work, one quarter went in the freezer and then went to a friends house and the last quarter.....well I had to check that it was ok! I made the 10in one too and froze it for two weeks, my testers at work couldn't tell the difference so I knew that I could do some advance work. The 14in wouldn't fit in my freezer so that had to be made a couple of days before but I made the other two layers two weeks before.
In the month before the wedding I assembled all the extra things I would need: cake boxes, cake boards, ribbon, food colours, lily forming set etc, everything was ready. The week before the wedding I iced the cake boards and made the calla lilies for the bottom two layers.

I chose calla lilies because I was having them in my bouquet, they are so simple and elegant. I followed instructions on the Wilton website for these and used the forming kit to make three different sizes. They were very easy to make and looked rather lovely, even if I do say so myself. I made the 14in cake three days before the wedding (picture above) and took the other two layers out of the freezer 24 hours before I iced them.

So all was ready, just the hard part to do now!
We got married on a Saturday and had to deliver the cakes to the venue on Friday afternoon so started the icing on the Wednesday to give me some time in case of disasters. Well, you never know and it would have to be perfect given that 90 odd people would be looking/photographing/eating it! As it turned out it was fairly easy and stress-free. My mother had arrived the night before so she was my able assistant and between us we were finished by lunchtime on Wednesday! Iced, be-ribboned and boxed ready for delivery on Friday. This meant we could go for afternoon tea on Thursday (at the British Museum) and have a fairly easy run-up to the big day.

We delivered the cakes safely and then I had to trust the hotel to assemble it all correctly, but they are used to that sort of thing....sometimes you have to relinquish the control!
The cake looked fantastic on the day and the bottom two layers were finished (people left with lots of goodie bags the next day!) and we have the top layer in the freezer. There is a tradition, apparently, of keeping the top layer of your wedding cake to have on your one year anniversary. So we shall see if it holds up to a year in the freezer! Although it was a lot of work and planning I wouldn't have had it any other way, I'm glad I could make my own wedding cake. I never thought in a million years I would ever do something like that but, as they say, never say never.

Wedding Cake (Volume 1)

As some of you may know, I recently got married. It wasn't a flashy, expensive wedding so the organisation wasn't too onerous. But there was one thing that I really wanted to do and that was make my own cake. Are you crazy? What were you thinking? Yes, I know, with all the other things to organise why would I want to put myself through this? Many of my friends thought the same thing but then they realised that I was going to do it whatever. You see for me this wasn't a huge stressful thing, it was the one thing that I knew I could do the way I wanted. Baking isn't stressful, in fact it helps me to de-stress. Once I'm in the kitchen with flour, butter, eggs and sugar I'm happy.
It would take a lot of thinking, planning and head scratching but I knew that I had to do it. I didn't know anything about this sort of cake making, the big presentation, iced, be-ribboned creation so I needed to do some learning. I chose to do a short cake decorating course, it was five weeks and gave me the basics that I needed. Then a couple of books were donated by two friends (The Cake Decorating Bible and Cake Decorating for Every Occasion) which helped with ideas and techniques. I didn't want anything too fancy, not least because this was my first foray into the celebration cake but it was good to get some ideas.
The main decision was what sort of cake it would be and for me chocolate is the best and so I went with Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness cake. I hava made this many times and it is a rich, moist and earthy cake that is easy to make because everything is melted together. I also had to decide on the size, layers etc and decided on three layers. I found a cake stand that I liked, a Wilton floating cake stand, each layer sits on a base with a back support (the picture will give you a better idea) so the cakes look like they are floating. This way there wouldn't be any need for dowels. The stand then dictated the sizes, they would be 14in, 10in and 6in.
Every decision then lead to another one, now for the cake tins. I wanted something foolproof, loose-bottomed and easy to use. I found these brilliant tins on Lakeland, endorsed by Mary Berry and after much research chose these Pushpans. They proved to be as good as advertised.
Now I had to decide on the decoration. The Guinness cake is usually topped with a creamy head of butter icing but that would be impractical for a wedding cake what with the layers. Having done the cake decorating course I chose to go with simple and elegant, white sugarpaste with red ribbons on the bottom two layers (my husband is English) and green ribbon for the top layer (I am Irish). I wanted to add a little detail, a spray of calla lilies make from sugarpaste for the bottom two layers and a perspex cake topper in red that read Mr & Mrs.
That was all the planning, research and decisions made, tune in to volume 2 for the making and decorating (and some pictures!).

GBBO

Prior to my recent silence I was in the midst of baking all the technical bakes from last years Great British Bake Off. I had made three of these before radio silence, lemon tart, iced buns and the pork pies. I do intend to do the others but in the meantime there has been another GBBO! And this time it was even better, if that is possible. I just loved it and was happy with the result, although my favourite was Jamie. So that means another lot of technical challenges to add to last years unfinished list. Looking at the list from this series there are is one that I don't think I will even try and that is the hand raised pies, might leave that one!
However, I find that I have done two of them already! The eight plait loaf, I've not only made it once, I've made it twice! I posted a picture in my comeback blog roundup. You do have to have the instructions in front of you when you are doing it or else it will be a disaster, even with them it's pretty brain achey. But I managed and it looked amazing.
The second one is the treacle tart. I had friends over for lunch a couple of weeks ago and Mary Berry happened to be doing her Bake Off Masterclass on the treacle tart so I thought I would have a go. I never realised that treacle tart doesn't contain any treacle and it's pretty much made out of breadcrumbs!
The tricky thing about this one is the pastry, well that's just one of the tricky things. Unlike many other tarts, the pastry isn't baked blind. This means that avoiding the first deadly sin of pastry making, the soggy bottom, is very difficult. Mary's tip for this is to preheat a baking sheet in the oven and place the tart on it,this way the pastry bottom has a good chance of cooking through.



Of course, the most tricky thing is the lattice. Mary's tip for this was to place the five vertical pastry strips on the tart and then weave the other five under and over. This seems easy, right? Well, not if the filling is still warm when you do it. My middle strip melted a bit and broke when I tried to move it, but I managed to mend it and then the other stips were easier to do as you can lift them up at the side to help with the weaving.
The result wouldn't have passed muster in the Bake Off tent, I think I would have been mid-table. But it didn't have a soggy bottom (YAY), the lattice was pretty much ok and it tasted lovely. Served with a pomegranite ice cream, dreamy.

Halloween Barmbrack

In the new world regime of Cakes and Cardies, the world of actual blogging, the world of writing about, well, cakes and cardies I give you the Halloween Barmbrack.
Have you noticed that Halloween has become a "thing" in the last few years? Every shop has a Halloween display, selling Halloween merchandise and generally making it a "thing". Add to that the Americanisation of Halloween with trick or treating and we have a whole holiday around this one day.
When I was growing up in Dublin Halloween was just on the day. There was dressing up, Halloween games (apple bobbing, taking bites out of an apple suspended from something with your hands behind your back etc) and all on 31st October, one day. In our house there was also Barmbrack. This is a fruit bread/cake that has certain items concealed in the bake that are supposed to tell your fortune. The pea (you will not marry within the year), the stick (you will have bad luck), the coin (you will get rich) and the ring (you will get married within the year. These are all wrapped in greasproof paper and added in to the dough before the last rise. My mother made one every Halloween and we loved searching for the items, no-one wanted to get the pea or the stick everyone wanted the money or the ring, of course. My mother's Barmbrack was more of a Tea Brack rather than the yeasted Barmbrack of tradition but in a way it wasn't about the cake, it was about what you found!
Given all this nostalgia I decided to tackle the Barmbrack for the first time and I chose a recipe from a Darina Allen cookbook that I have (a veritable bible of all things Irish cookery). The recipe is very similar to the Pannetone and Colomba (the Italian Christmas and Easter cakes). It is a yeasted sweet dough with a small amount of butter, an egg and milk is used as the liquid instead of water. There are sultanas, currants and candied peel added at the end of the kneading.
When I was making it yesterday I thought I had buggered it up as it didn't rise hugely on the first prove but when I baked it it rose beautifully. When it comes out of the oven you brush it with a bun wash (a sugar syrup) which gives a a lovely shiny glaze.
I brought it into work today but I couldn't resist trying a slice (or two) last night and we managed to find most of the money in the quarter that we had! Oh well all the bad luck left the house!! This morning one of my friends at work described it as a giant hot cross bun, which isn't far off.

Inspired

I realise that all my (12) followers will pretty much have given up on me as I have been a bad blogger over the last year, well my last blog was inb April so only six months silence. No excuses to be given, lets just start again.
I have been baking and knitting, lots of new things like bagels and and eight plait loaf on the baking side. On the knitting front I have completed a duffle coat for a baby and started a shawl, a baby dress and continuing my cap sleeve top from a fifties pattern. So what precedes is a gallery of some of my projects over the last months.