Categories
Tutorial

Weekend baking- Honey & Walnut Cake

This cake is not as faffy as it seems and it is de-licious.

Ingredients:

  • 175g butter
  • 100g castor sugar
  • 100g clear honey
  • 100g walnuts
  • 3 large eggs
  • 225g self raising flour

The recipe calls for a 20cm square shallow tin, but I used a round one!

Firstly, preheat your oven to 180ºC. While it’s heating up, line your tin with baking paper and measure out your ingredients.

Next, toast walnuts in the oven for 5-6 mins; cool a bit, then roughly chop and set to one side.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan over a low-ish heat. And the sugar and honey and stir until dissolved. Once it’s nice and smooth, bring it to the boil, then pour into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool to about room temperature.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs lightly. Add to the cooled honey mixture and whisk until evenly blended.

Finally, gently mix in the flour and chopped walnuts. You should now have something that resembles a cake mix! Pour it into the tin, level out, then bake in the oven for 30-40 mins. I was using a fan oven and it was pretty much done after about 25 mins; just keep an eye on it, once it’s a lovely deep golden brown and springy on top, it’s ready!

Allow to cool on a wire rack, then slice it up and eat it- makes a great accompaniment to coffee or Bailey’s. Or indeed coffee and Bailey’s.

Categories
Inspiration

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Guide To Wedding Music

This. Book. Is. Awesome. Ok, yes, I’m slightly biased as it’s my book, but still- you have to admit, it’s pretty damn awesome.

When preparing for my (I mean ‘our’, of course) wedding last year freezer_girl got me hooked on the Rock ‘n Roll Bride site. I found it endlessly inspiring and thoroughly refreshing, in a “Oh! Of course, it’s our day, we can do what we want” kind of a way.

Working as I do for a sheet music publisher, I got to thinking how yawn-worthy all the wedding music books we print are- in fact, all wedding music books. They’re full of stiff, traditional music, hymn suggestions and a few token utterly puke-some pop songs.

Ho hum, thought I. What the world needs is a wedding music book that ROCKS. What the world needs is a wedding music book version of the Rock ‘n Roll Bride site; something that people can look through and feel inspired and go “Oh!” at and then go off and plan their own wedding, their own way.

And here it is!

I emailed the lovely Kat, AKA The Rock ‘N Roll Bride, who wrote me a kick-ass intro and was generally great with input and advice. I filled the book with as wide a variety of musical styles as I could- Missy Higgins, The Buzzcocks, Portishead, The Beach Boys, Muse, Alice Cooper… It also contains some fab photos (oh, is that me?! How did that get in there…) and some casual but informative… um… information.

Go check it out: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Guide To Wedding Music– a big chunk of alternative wedding-ness for anyone who isn’t enthused by the idea of walking down the ideal to The Wedding March!

Categories
Craft Notebooks Paper Stationery

A proper little hardback- first attempt

It’s taken me a while to get round to doing one of these, but I finally found the time to have a go at doing a traditionally bound hard back notebook with a proper spine.

Really enjoyed sewing up the signatures, very satisfying:

They’re actually a little loose I think, but as a first attempt I think it worked quite well.

Very pleased with the finished result: