Cupcakes...

I've been making cupcakes for... oh, years, certainly with a passion since Nigella brought out Domestic Goddess. Over the past couple of years though, they have become more and more popular and so I have been searching for the ultimate cupcake recipe.

I think I may have the right combination at last. My cookery book shelf is groaning under the weight of books - a lot of which I have bought just for the cupcake recipe.

I used Nigella's recipe for many years but always hated that little bump in the middle that they always made (why? The bump, not my dislike of it!). I used to cut it off in the days when I used royal icing so as to get a nice flat top.

Earlier this year I bought the Hummingbird Bakery book and made their cupcakes several times with mixed results. Sometimes, they would spill out of their cases and no matter how carefully I tried to put the same amount in each case, they would vary enormously. Although to be fair this could easily be disguised by the frosting, using more or less to get a uniform plateful of cakes.

I raved about this book in this post and now tried out the cupcake recipe. It is a winner! It is a generous recipe and the mixture does exactly what you'd hope - rise nicely and evenly. The cakes are just the right density (I think) and come out of their cases in one piece. First I tried the lemon cupcakes with the lemon buttercream. They were delicious but the buttercream was a little thick for my liking and difficult to spread.

I love the frosting from the Hummingbird book. It is light and frothy, not too sickly, and with the addition of a little milk and 5 minutes (I set my timer) of beating, easy to spread or pipe on.

So, for my second attempt, I used the coffee cupcake recipe from the Primrose book but with a coffee frosting from the Hummingbird book. I believe I may have cracked it! They were absolutely scrummy!

As a finishing flourish, I grated on some coffee chocolate but have my eye on some chocolate coffee beans. I think they'd look great in the dark brown cases too.

I think I will make some Christmas cupcakes - how about orange and cranberry?

Building memories...

It's funny how the weeks turn in to months and I realise that I haven't really talked about much else on this blog than cake and quilts for ages. Way back in July I mentioned that I had done some training at Helen House to help support other bereaved parents. I haven't been allocated a family yet but I have helped facilitate a workshop for more newly bereaved parent with the theme of 'How grief changes over time.' In spite of being nervous about talking about my experiences to a room full of strangers, I found the whole day extremely fulfilling.

Yesterday I helped out at another workshop at the hospice, this time for parents who are using the hospice now for their children, called 'Building Memories.' My biggest fear this time was that I was a bereaved parent rather than a parent of a life-limited child and I was worried that this may seem insensitive. I hope it wasn't.

When Tom first became ill, it felt a bit like we had become public property. That sounds so ungrateful now, but I felt that I owed a lot of people something for the support we received. After the first three months in hospital, Tom was transferred to The Children's Trust in Surrey for rehabilitation on the unit for children with an acquired brain injury. He arrived there in October 1997 and that was when I started writing a diary for him. It had the most unoriginal title of The Secret Diary of Tom D******, aged 4 1/2. Pilfered straight from Adrian Mole! I wrote it in the first person, as though Tom were telling his story and each month I posted it out to all the people who had helped us get through the first few months. I designed a little logo heading and set myself boundaries of 2 sides of A4 paper in a generous pt.14 font.

Little did I know when I started it that I would continue writing it monthly for the next 8 years, sending out over 60 copies around the world. Some of the copies I sent were to people I didn't even know but had somehow got wind of it through other family and friends and showed a genuine interest. It never felt like a burden to write it and the actual writing process was surprisingly cathartic. As I became more experienced with the computer and technology allowed, I began to include photos and so nearly a lifetime was recorded in those pages.

I talked yesterday of Tom's diary and of my plans to maybe self-publish it so that it is more than 5 folders from WHSmith full of memories. I have been looking at Blurb and Lulu and it remains on My List of Things to do.

I also shared my other book with the parents who attended and I hope it will inspire them to do similar things for their children.


Then I got onto the subject of blogging! I suppose had I known about blogging, or had it been around back then, Tom's diary would have been online. How times change. I talked about the sense of community I had found as a result of being a blogger and that the world is there at your fingertips. When you have a disabled child, time is precious and isolation is a real issue and so being able to connect with people who have similar interests or experiences is sometimes difficult. In the early days of my life without Tom, the Internet became my friend: always there and something I didn't have to make an effort for, other than to switch my PC on.

It's all about sharing for me. I shared Tom's life with people through his diary and I am sharing my life and others through blogging. That is what does it for me. Sharing.

Yesterday, my day was rounded off perfectly by sharing a welcome latte with a friend I have made through my blog - Julia. Julia and I have been reading each others blogs for quite a while now and we finally met in person. A last-minute arrangement, hastily made by email on Friday evening! We talked of blogging and how I had covered it during the workshop, and also of all the pros and cons we have both experienced from our own blogs. We talked of sharing. I have a feeling we could have talked for hours.

It was so lovely to meet you Julia, and no, I didn't mind driving an extra 5 miles! I drove back to London with a smile on my face having had a Good Day.

I just noticed that this is my 200th post, and probably my first post without a single photo. Quite a milestone!

ps. have a look at the Christmas cards on the Helen House site, I thought they were really nice and bought all mine from there this year... Or why not have a look at these...

Seriously good cake...

If you've got a couple of sad looking apples in the fruit bowl that nobody wants to eat, here's just the cake.

It is Seriously Good Cake.

From this book. My copy is now well used, particularly in the loaf chapter.

The recipe suggests making it the night before you want to bake it, just leaving it in the fridge, but I'm not really sure why this is! Any suggestions? It is delicious eaten when still warm with a big mug of tea or coffee and stays nice and moist for a good week. I used a mixture of flaked almonds and chopped hazelnuts - it's great to use up any bits and pieces in the baking cupboard and the last bits of jam that seem to always seem to be lurking in the back of the fridge in spite of new jars being opened.

I didn't really need any more baking books, but I was powerless to resist this:

Check out the malted cupcakes for Fathers Day - YUM!

FMF surprise...

My FMF obsession is gathering pace and I have had a lovely, lovely surprise through the post all the way from Australia.

I am now the proud owner of this:

I'm not sure if I will ever be able to use it, which seems a waste really, but at the moment I am just enjoying seeing it neatly folded! It was wrapped up in purple tissue with a little thank you card enclosed which read:

Well, I just ripped that paper apart! And look what was inside!

An extra piece of fabric from the collection! Thank you so much Kelly! I absolutely love the grey colourways because I am building a quilt for my loft bedroom in greys and greens and so these are fabrics that I will definitely cut in to!

My collection is steadily growing and these also arrived from here.

I am a happy bunny today!

A quick update on my neck for you: I went to see my surgeon yesterday and as it was still quite swollen, he aspirated it for me - yep, needle in the neck again! Thank goodness it's still numb! Anyway, I have managed to massage all of the glue off now and can concentrate on making the scarring fade. It looks much better now, not gory at all, but I suspect I may need it aspirating again... We'll see...

Through the keyhole...

My living room has always been a calm Kelly Hoppen inspired room. A room where taupe is the predominant colour that gives a neutral background to the carefully chosen things in there. It has always been an 'adult' room, laid out for talking and reading as well as watching tv: an oasis of peace and good taste (at least, I like to think).

It houses my most favourite books in a bookcase that I had in my bedroom as a child.

There are two wooden elephants that I fell in love with in a shop in Warwick and had to buy.

There are shelves of old magazines that I don't seem to be able to get rid of. They were my bibles when I was working.

When I first left home and bought my first house, my Dad gave me a stuffed little owl as a house-warming present. An unusual choice you may think, but he was a great collector of taxidermy and it seemed the most natural thing in the world. I now have 3 owls in my living room but this one remains my favourite and is always a good talking point.

There are carefully chosen soft accessories - with all-important textural details.

And the family piano, sadly no longer played.

In this post, I mentioned that my parents were in the process of moving house. They are down-sizing and so there are things that need to be got rid of or found new homes for. One such item has been made a space for in my oasis.

It will give the room another dimension. A sort of party atmosphere...

I have been sorting through boxes, reminiscing, waiting for a new arrival, coming via Hampshire where it's been for a bit of refurbishment and restoring.

Can you guess what it is?

Obsession...

When I made my first quilt last year, I had been on a little journey around the 'net looking and finding inspiration from blogs and other recommended books and websites. I noticed that virtually every quilt that caught my eye had a common feature and that was Denyse Schmidt's seedling fabric from her now-out-of-print Flea Market Fancy collection. I don't know what it is about this fabric that I find so alluring - it is simple but the colours are rich in their own quirky little way.

I even had a lovely email conversation with one of the sales people in Purl in New York as the fabric featured in Last Minute Patchwork Gifts, and that was who broke the news to me that it was discontinued. While we're on the subject of Purl, I have been to New York twice and walked past this wonderful little shop having admired it BUT NEVER WENT IN! What a fool I am. It was before I started quilting, so that's my excuse, but I kick myself every time I think of those two wasted opportunities! Still, I do order from them now and then and I can recommend both their fabric selection and service.

While I have been on my new-found journey of fabric-love, I have been searching for anything that is Flea Market Fancy. I have a satisfying little stash but for some reason, I can't quite bear to cut into it and use it! You see the lime green posy and the red and pink dotty fabric? I got that a couple of weeks ago when I visited The Quilt Room in Dorking... just saying...

Then a while back when I was lost in another blog-led thread I came across this site and so of course, joined the petition to get FMF reprinted. I've just added the button to my sidebar, if you want to click and see what all the fuss is about.

Now it seems that every new quilting blog I look at is a Flea Market Fancy Freak too! They are doing a giveaway at the moment so this post is dedicated to that. Just click on the picture to see if you'd like to join in too:

It is the biggest carrot-being-dangled in front of me! In fact, I am waiting for some of the pink seedling fabric to come from an Etsy shop in Australia right now and some others that I managed to track down on Friday coming from the US. I am obsessed! All I need to do now is find the courage to cut into it and use it...

Go on, treat yourself...

That's what the barista said to me in my local Costa coffee shop.

So I did.

It was de-licious! Just ask for a crème brûlée latte...

...you know you want to!