A New Adventure: Writing101 and Thoughts on Happiness

About a week ago, a post from the WordPress staff popped up on my reader, talking about a blogging course they were running called Writing101. Intrigued, I read on and saw the course means each participant receives a prompt by email every weekday for 4 weeks, and the aim of the course is to get bloggers writing every day. My inital reaction was that there’s no way I’d have time to blog EVERY DAY, but then I thought about the time I spend on the train on the way to and from work, and the fact that I really quite enjoy writing… ‘I’ll like it, and come back to it later’ I thought, closed the tab and looked at something else. But a quote somewhere about there never being a ‘right time’ brought me back to thinking about it. ‘You know what? I’ll sign up to it right now!’ So I did.

And this brings me to today- the first day of the course! The first prompt today is to freely write about whatever enters my head for 20 minutes. So here I am, kneeling on my bed with my timer on my phone and a Keane album (‘Night train’) playing in the background.

Today has been the first lovely sunny day that I’ve spent mostly at home this year and I have tried to make the most of it- I baked an Easter cake this morning, then sat outside with the cats, reading a book on my Ipad. The book I’m reading at the moment is called ‘The Happiness Project’ by Gretchen Rubin. I haven’t been completely nose in book constantly, preferring to read maybe a chapter at a time in the bath etc, but I’m rather enjoying it. The Author decided to embark on her own ‘Happiness Project’ because she felt that although she had plenty of things in her life that she was very happy with and lots that she wanted, she didn’t feel as happy on a day to day basis as she thought she should. This is something I have previously felt about myself- that it’s important to be grateful for what we have and to be happy and in the moment more often. It can be difficult sometimes, as if there are difficulties in your every day life or simply things that are ‘fine’ it can be easy to focus on looking forward to things or remembering past events.

The chapter I’ve just finished has just mentioned about the phenomenon of looking forward to something and thinking ‘I’ll be happy when this happens’ but then when the something actually happens, a lot of the time there are other things going on that detract from the happiness, and you almost get more happiness by thinking about looking forward to it than the thing itself! That’s why living in the moment is important. Right now I am happy that my cat, Topaz, is sat next to me on my bed, and that the sun is just starting to go down so it’s still light at 18:48. I’m listening to music I want to sing along to, and my dinner (something I like) is in the oven. They are simple little things, but recognizing that these make me happy is a distraction from the big over arching things that it’s oh to easy to pin your hopes on – a dream career or job, even knowing what that job you want to do is, your relationships with friends, family or significant other, holidays etc. ‘When I get that job, I’ll be happy.’ The way I see it, things will be different, maybe you will get happiness from the actual job, maybe from the fact that you can afford certain things, maybe your lifestyle will change. And that’s great! But there will also be stresses (I can afford to move out! But where will I live?!) and soon, that lifestyle will become the norm too. So I’d like to appreciate the little things that happen every day more.

That’s actually why I’ve been trying to make more of an effort with blogging and Instagram. The little feeling of happiness I get from taking a really good picture is a boost for the day, so I want to share it with others. And the same feeling from having created something- baking or craft… and actually writing. I get a sense of achievement from writing something I am proud of- that I feel flows well. We will see how I feel about this when I’m finished! The ‘twist’ with this email prompt from WordPress today is to bite the bullet and publish what I’ve written.

Funnily enough the timer’s just stopped… I think I’ll be brave and hit publish.

Note: I did proofread and edit this a tiny bit, but less than 5 minutes worth, honest! 

Topaz- one of my gorgeous cats!

 

Adapting Cake Recipes: Do’s and Don’ts!

It’s never fun when your cakes don’t work, especially when you’re baking for a special occasion. Unfortunately this weekend I experienced a few issues with a cake I was making for Mother’s Day. It was a recipe I hadn’t used before and I cut a few corners that I shouldn’t have, ending up with a tub of cake instead of the beautifully decorated ring cake I had aimed for! This inspired me to share what I have learnt over the years about where you can change a baking recipe to suit you, and where you shouldn’t!

I would say I’m an intermediate baker, I’ve been baking for years but I am by no means an expert and I am completely self (or family) taught. The views in this post are just my opinions based on my own experience. There aren’t really any hard and fast rules for every cake, but I am giving some general guidance which seems to work for me!

I’ve split this post into two, as it was getting very long. This part is more about the method and equipment used. The next part will be about ingredients.

My turned out Caramel Mud Cake for Mother’s Day. Whoops!

Tins

ALWAYS grease the tin, and use baking parchment (baking paper, greaseproof paper) or flour the tin when a recipe tells you to! This was the main problem with my crumbled Mother’s Day cake- I used a ring tin instead of a loose bottomed circular tin, and because it was fluted I didn’t bother using baking paper. Lo and behold, it stuck to the tin! By all means use different tins to the ones a recipe suggests, but bare in mind that you must prepare it in the same way, and the cake might not turn out in quite the same way as it would have with the correct tin. A general rule is to aim for the tin to have a similar volume. For example, using a square 18cm x 18cm tin instead of a circular 20cm tin will probably be fine, but using a 23cm x 23cm square tin will result in a much thinner cake, which may cook best at a different temperature or be done in a different time. Just be sure to keep checking it!

I broke the cake up some more and put it in an airtight container to decide what to do next. Maybe some cake pops, or a trifle…?

 General Making:

Sieving: pretty much all baking recipes which use flour will tell you to sieve it. I usually don’t. The trouble with not sieving your flour is that sometimes your recipe will turn out fine and sometimes it will have lots of little pockets of flour in once baked, which don’t taste or look good! It shouldn’t affect the rise or form of your cake and sometimes lots of mixing will get rid of the pockets but sometimes it won’t! If you’re just baking for yourself or your family then fine, but if you’re baking to impress be sure to give the flour a sieve, and the same goes for icing sugar if you’re using it.

Microwaving Butter:It’s so easy to forget to leave the butter out of the fridge to soften before you need it, or to be doing some spontaneous cake making and therefore not to have known you’d need to leave it out. Microwaving the butter can be a quick fix, but make sure you’re careful not to over microwave it. Creaming together butter and sugar can be difficult if your butter is now a liquid! I’d advise just microwaving it for 10 seconds then checking it with a spoon in several parts- the butter on the outside of the bowl might be firm but the inside might be soft enough. You can always heat it for longer. Give it all a good beat to make sure its all the same consistency before you add any more ingredients.

Marbled coffee cake with white chocolate ganache. An example of when using baking paper worked!

Basic Cake Method:

If you have a recipe that you hastily copied down and perhaps has parts missing, or one that tells you to put everything in your Kitchen Aid and hit ‘go’, but you don’t have a mixer or want to do it by hand this is a basic method that works for most cakes.

Cream together your butter and sugar, then beat in your eggs. (A handheld electric mixer is very useful at this point). Beat the mixture until you think it’s evenly combined, then a little longer. Sift in your flour in thirds and fold it in slowly along with any baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, flavouring or colouring ingredients (e.g. cocoa powder, dried fruit, chocolate chunks, food colouring, vanilla essence etc). Pour it all into a tin and pop it in the oven. Gas mark 4-5 or 180-190 degrees is usually a good bet for a fairly standard sponge cake. Then keep checking it; the smaller your tin/cake case, and the higher in the oven it is (if its not a fan oven) the quicker your cake will bake. To check it, pop a skewer or small sharp knife into the cake in the centre or a few thickest points and see if it comes out clean. If it does, the cake is cooked. If not, it needs a few minutes longer.

Opening/Closing the Oven Door:

This may seem like a strange one but it can affect your cake! Always try to open and close your oven door slowly and gradually rather than yanking it open or slamming it shut. Doing this quickly can cause air to rush in or out of your oven and this can make your cake sink or collapse in the middle. This really sucks, especially if you’re making a non-iced cake like a lemon drizzle or general pound cake- sometimes you can save a mildly sunken cake using a little extra icing.

Heating/Melting:

If your recipe calls for you to melt some ingredients together (e.g. butter, sugar, chocolate) and then add eggs, always make sure your mixture has cooled for at least 20 mins first, unless of course you fancy scrambled eggs in your cake…!

If worst comes to worst though, you can sometimes save a cake…

How I ended up ‘styling out’ my crumbled cake. Topped with icing, chopped pistachios and sliced figs.

Check back soon for part 2 of this feature, where I will be talking about ingredient substitutions. I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog about cake baking methods, do let me know if you liked it, have any thoughts or would like me to do more of these kind of posts! It’s quite fun sharing what I’ve learnt from my experiences of baking and I’m always interested in other peoples’ ideas!

This blog post was fuelled by YouTube playlists featuring Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, and encouraged by the purring of my cat, Ludo.

Strawberry Cupcakes!

This rather girlie looking cupcake is one of a batch I made this week for my close friend Lauren for her birthday. Last October I was given a copy of the Great British Bake Off ‘Showstoppers’ book, so these were made using the recipe for English Summer Cupcakes – tasty strawberry chunks in a vanilla sponge cake mixture.

…Except I never really follow a recipe completely… so the cupcake bit is right (except for a lack of vanilla essence, which I forgot to buy) but I made my own frosting by adding strawberry flavouring and pink food colouring to a buttercream mixture. One of the reasons I love making cupcakes is purely selfish – I really enjoy baking and love trying to be creative with icing. It’s always fun baking for a special occasion though and I try to cater my cupcakes to the person they are for – while I wouldn’t automatically think of pink for Lauren I know she likes strawberry cakes and the stars are a bit of fun, which is definitely more ‘her’!

For some strange reason I can’t seem to get this last picture to turn around… but here are a few more examples of the cakes. They are super yummy too – I’m eating one with a cup of coffee as I write this!