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March Reads – What have you been reading?

By Helen | April 15, 2013 - 7:12 am | Book review, Parenting, Violet 2 Comments

Another busy old month here but still no sign of the reading slowing down. It seems to be catching too, one at least 2 occasions last week I found both M & V sitting reading quietly WITHOUT BEING TOLD TO! Hurray! I seem to have reverted back to reading ‘proper’ books as opposed to my Kindle but as I’m trying to reduce some of the piles of books around the place, this is no bad thing. I’m even going old school and reading library books once more. Is there anything better than leaving the library with armfuls of books – the ultimate in reading hope. The challenge for me is taking them back before the fines cost more than it would have to buy the actual books. So what has been on the reading agenda this month? One that I forgot to mention (and I’m not sure how because I was completely engrossed in this story) was The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes. I read my first Jojo Moyes, Me Before You last year in France and knew I had to read another. The Girl You Left Behind was very different than Me Before You and even better more »

Tagged A Modern Military Mother Tales from the Domestic Frontline Clare Macnaughton, After The Fall Charity Norman, Alone in Berlin Hans Fellada, book reviews, Every Man Dies Alone Hans Fellada, The Girl You Left Behind Jojo Moyes, Two Week Wait Sarah Rayner, wishing chair again enid blyton

Featherlight Cake: Clandestine Cake-a-long 3

By Helen | March 26, 2013 - 7:25 am | Baking, Cake, Cakes, Clandestine Cake-A-Long 8 Comments

Helen Jones, you are a genius! This cake is a revelation. A fat-free sponge that comes together ultra quickly and feels somehow luxurious but not guilt ridden to eat. (even with a shed load of fresh cream in the middle). Our cake for the Cake-a-long this fortnight is the magnificent Featherlight Cake on page 15 of the Clandestine Cake Cookbook. We actually made and ate this cake early last week for a late Mother’s Day treat but it has taken me forever to get to the laptop to post about it. Never fear, the Cake-a-long is back on track – I actually was away with Millie’s synchro this weekend and I didn’t want to advertise to the whole world that the house was empty. Back now – burglars, you snooze, you lose and all that! I’m sure that this recipe will be one that I will go back to over and over again. I can’t stress enough how refreshing this cake was to an ordinary sponge. I was tempted to add a splash of vanilla extract but decided not to mess with Helen’s design. It was fine without the vanilla in the end but I may try experimenting with other more »

Tagged clandestine cake-a-long, fat free cake recipe, no butter sponge cake

Toffee Shock Cake RoundUp: Cake-a-long 2

By Helen | March 18, 2013 - 10:23 pm | Aardvark Cakes, Baking, Cake, Cakes, Clandestine Cake-A-Long Leave a comment

I need to apologise – I’m a week late with the round up and the next bake for the Cake-a-long. Life once again just got in the way. We had a good turnout once more for the second in our Cake-a-long marathon – Hands up who enjoyed the Toffee Shock Cake? Me Me ME!!! There was certainly plenty of this cake to go round so if you happened to visit the Costello residence you would have received a generous slab of it. Lovely to see our bakers stuck with the 4 tiers – Rhonda even gave us a peek at the inside of her cake! Katy certainly didn’t hold back with her toffee toppings on her cake – No shortage of calories in this cake but isn’t it so neat? Cassandra’s cake is super tall – she had the opposite problem to me with the topping and had to warm hers up as it had set too hard! And last but not least, we have Victoria who had the genius idea of adding some chocolate stars to her cake. Thanks for joining in everyone. If you would like to join us in more »

Tagged clandestine cake-a-long, toffee shock cake

Cake of the Week: Parma Violet Cake

By Helen | March 15, 2013 - 7:52 am | Aardvark Cakes, Baking, Cake, Cake of the Week, Recipes, Violet Leave a comment

For one night only this cake was also known as The Violet Mary Costello Cake. (see photo!) I have a new addiction – crushing up sweets and concocting various cake recipes. This was my offering to our latest Clandestine Cake Club held in St Helens last week. Our theme was Spring and I thought spring flowers and pastel colours would suit the theme. Off I tottered to Amazon and duly ordered some Violet Syrup – I was going to go the whole hog and order crystalised violets but quite frankly, they were deeply ugly so I didn’t bother. Days went by and no sign of the violet syrup (I am in fact a week after the CCC still waiting for it to arrive and may be having a Parma Violet Cocktail night when it eventually does!) Not one to be deterred, I thought how best can I get a violet taste and so started the search for Parma Violets. Turns out that they are considered quite a delicacy in St Helens – I was under no illusion previously that we were a Mecca for unusual ingredients but blinking hek, Parma Violets!?! Many a shopkeeper looked at me like I’d lost more »

Tagged parma violet cake, using sweets in baking, violet cake recipes

Red Nose Day: Comic Relief 2013-A bag, a mug and a tale of 2 noses

By Helen | March 14, 2013 - 11:26 pm | Product Review Leave a comment

I’ve managed to avert a disaster in our house tonight – you know the sort … One daughter has a Red Nose for Comic Relief bought for her by her friend, the other daughter doesn’t have one. School were selling them yesterday but guess who only turned up with her £1 after they had sold out? Argh! Well never fear, one of the girl’s godfathers works at a local high school and happens to be in charge of selling Red Noses. Phew! He is kindly dropping one red nose into reception especially for Violet tomorrow. Doesn’t exactly make me feel like mother of the year though! I’m sure my kids must despair of me sometimes – I try not to be to hard on myself though by reminding myself that at least I’ve never sent them to school in their uniform on a non-uniform day. Yet! If Red Noses aren’t your thing for tomorrow’s festivities though, there are other Comic Relief goodies that you can buy to show support for the cause. I was sent a fabulous mug and bag which are available to buy in TK Maxx. I particularly like the mug as its a proper sized brew cup more »

Tagged charity products, comic relief 2013, Emma Bridgewater, mug design, Red Nose Day 2013

February Reads

By Helen | March 4, 2013 - 9:48 pm | Book review 2 Comments

Well that month just flew by! I know its the shortest month but I swear that someone pinched a week. Another 4 books this month – very much a month of reading exactly what I fancy. I will be starting on my book group reads later tonight (maybe after a quick game of Candy Crush – anyone else addicted?) The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared I really wanted to love this book – There were so many people commenting about it on Goodreads and Twitter. I don’t even think it was a case of the hype being bigger than the book that was my problem – I think my general historical knowledge is just terrible. A very clever book about a 100 year old man who escapes from his residential home and gets into alsorts of escapades on his travels. The book describes his life before he moved to the home and the historical characters he comes across. I enjoyed the tales of his life on the run better than the background to his life – I thought the part about the burger man getting so many qualifications was pure genius. I wonder more »

Tagged 100 year old man climbed window, Book Review, call the midwife, janet evanovich, standing tall andy reid

Clandestine Cake-a-long 2: Toffee Shock Cake

By Helen | February 28, 2013 - 7:16 am | Uncategorized 9 Comments

Toffee Shock Cake before the fudge topping set

I’m finally able to upload my picture of this magnificent cake. Our bake for the next fortnight is the Toffee Shock Cake by Julia England from Derby’s CCC. My version is once again not as picturesque as I’d like it to be but absolutely delicious. Definitely not a cake for the dieters but thoroughly enjoyable to make – I found the sponges came together really quickly, even though there were 4 different flavours. For me, though, the real star was the fudge topping – I could have eaten it with a spoon (oh alright then, I’ll admit I did!) That fudge will definitely be featuring in some ice-cream dishes this summer. Julia is one of the contributors that I have actually met. We went on a foodie conference a couple of years ago and she is one of those people that you feel like you’ve known forever. We may even have drunk a spot of wine later that night! Julia is one of the bakers that went down to appear on The One Show when the CCC were featured last year – I’m trying to get her to pay a visit to the North West very soon – If any more »

Lime & Pistachio Round-Up: Clandestine Cake-a-long 1

By Helen | February 26, 2013 - 11:30 pm | Baking, Clandestine Cake-A-Long 3 Comments

Source: picmonkey.com via Helen on Pinterest Wow! What a fabulous start to the Clandestine Cake-a-long. Our first bake seems to have been a great success with many more people saying they hope to take part. The Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook was published almost 2 weeks ago now and everywhere I go people are talking about it. I came across it in Costco last week when I was shopping with the 3 mini Costellos – we may have left it open on my recipe page for all to see ahem! Anyhow, back to the Lime and Pistachio cake – I thought it would be an idea to do a round up of all the bakes submitted to the Cake-a-long. I have added them all to the Clandestine Cake-a-long Pinterest board too. Feel free to visit the pics and leave comments. For our first recipe, we had bakes from Katy Hough, Rhonda Kirby, Cassandra Simpson and Victoria Murray. We have had a fortnight of getting to grips with Pinterest aswell as a new recipe so we’ve all learnt something. I hope to add a Clandestine Cake-a-long Facebook page in the next few days to make it easier for FB diehards to add more »

Tagged cake club, clandestine cakealong, lime and pistachio cake

20th February – Double Celebration

By Helen | February 20, 2013 - 10:58 pm | Uncategorized 3 Comments

Its a bit crazy in our house today – the 20th February is a double birthday celebration in our house. Dermot is 35 today and baby T is a big 2! Where did those 2 years go? I’m not going to do a long post as I’m going back to the celebrations (drinking wine and building a wooden kitchen – so rock ‘n’ roll) but I thought I’d share some pics of how the girls have changed in the past 2 years. They’ve flown! Happy birthday if its your birthday too today – it seems a popular day. We know 9 people who have a birthday on the 20th Feb – I’ve been writing cards for weeks!

Clandestine Cake-a-long Episode 1: Lime & Pistachio Cake

By Helen | February 12, 2013 - 7:15 am | Clandestine Cake-A-Long 15 Comments

Cor, what a cake to start with! For those of you who haven’t read last week’s post – I’m embarking on a new mission to bake my way through the fabulous new Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook. Every fortnight I will hopefully be joined by other crazy bakers as we show our attempts at the cake choice of the fortnight. I have been in contact with many of the contributors of the book (many of whom have said that they are also up for the challenge of baking along too) to find out more about them. This week, I am starting with Lynn Hill, Founder of the mighty Clandestine Cake Club. I’ve not actually met Lynn yet but I feel like I know her well following several phone calls and email exchanges over the past 2 years. (One of my sisters has been in Lynn’s house for a Secret Tea Party so that makes us nearly relatives?!) Lynn lives in Leeds, where she set up the very first Clandestine Cake Club. In order for us to get to know Lynn a little better, I posed some questions for her to answer: How did you get into baking? My mother baked and more »

Tagged baking challenge, clandestine cakealong, lime pistachio cake, who started the clandestine cake club?