Amelie's House

Thursday, 16 May 2013

An Awfully Big Adventure

Yes this is me at the real No 10 Downing Street!

If you are not sure what this is it is where the UK Prime Minister lives and works, a bit like the White House, but smaller!

Why was I there, you ask...well...to bring cake to the corridors of power of course!

Myself and Miss Cakehead were creating a special gruesome afternoon tea for The Ministry of Stories, a charity which uses story-telling to inspire young people, teaching them confidence, self-respect and communication. The Ministry took over the state rooms to host a special cabinet meeting to celebrate their second year of providing volunteer led programmes aimed at boosting creativity and literacy.

To compliment the meeting, we laid out a deliciously monstrous tea party, which the children and the adults tucked into with relish!

There were golden dragon''s teeth (they really do make your hair curly!)

A variety of severed ears, pixie, human child and goblin.

Trolls toes.

Pots of mud and worms.

Witches toes.

And arm pit hair..delicious!

I have to say I was a bit nervous (well, alot nervous!), I didn't see any politicians but it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life! And I'm not sure where I could go from there, maybe my caking career has peaked and now it's all down hill! But at least I got a picture.

xxx

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Pin It Forward UK

May you live in Pinteresting times! (Ancient Chinese proverb)

(Click on the badge above to learn about Pin It Forward UK)

If you have been following my blog for some time you will have noticed my obsession with Pinterest as I often post blogs about my inspiration boards, I just love being able to have all my inspiration in one place and with the link back to the original image, great for recipes and craft projects. Whenever I start a new project or party to plan the first thing I do is create a new Pinterest board. I even have boards for dream projects that I hope someday, someone will commission. Joint projects are a breeze now too as you can invite friends or colleagues to pin to a board. And if you have a surprise party to plan you can even make a secret board. Obviously, many of my boards revolve around cakes and decoration, but I also have a board to inspire me while designing my front room's new look, a board for random coolness I come across and even (please forgive me) one to help with weight loss and fitness, (I eat a lot of cake!).

Anyway Pinterest is now having an official launch in the UK, it will make it easier to find local suppliers if you are looking for, say, a wedding dress or even a cake! They invited me to be part of Pin It Forward UK.

So if you haven't registered yet then you can here, (and what's stopping you? Even my Mum's at it!), or if you are already an addict, like myself, follow me here.

You can follow my Nevie-Pie Cakes board (above), and see all my latest work and any tutorials or recipes.

A big thanks to the lovely Laura from Keeping Healthy, Getting Stylish, (a fantastic blog with some really deicious looking recipes) for her post. You can check out her board here.

And now it is my pleasure to pass on the baton and introduce Nisha from My Kitchen Antics, a fabulous blog with a mixture of Indian and western recipes, with some lovely food styling. you can check out her boards here.

Happy Pinning!

xxx

Friday, 10 May 2013

Melting moments recipe

When I was growing up we never had shop bought cake or biscuits in the house. My Mum always made sure there was a tin of homemade goodies waiting for my brother and myself when we got home from school. The holy trinity invariably on offer was Syd special, flapjack and melting moments.

On a recent trip back to the homestead, my Mum (who is trying to de-clutter) gave me my old school cook book. It was a fund raising project, with recipes from the parents and teachers. There are the traditional favourites, chocolate crisp and gingerbread, a number of recipes using variations of jelly and tinned fruit and a few curve balls, Irish stew and French pineapple cream which uses a packet of Yarmouth biscuits...I have no idea what they are!

But there on a stained and tatty page was Mrs Snape's Melting Moments! While she still regularly whips up a batch of Syd special or flapjack, I can't remember when we last feasted on melting moments. (Although by writing this post I have pretty much guaranteed it is the first thing I will be presented with on my next visit).
I thought I would make some and share the recipe with you. I have changed it slightly to replace the lard and margarine with butter (it was the 70's and no one used butter then!).

Cream the butter and sugar, add the oats, flour and syrup and form into a stiff dough.

Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and place on a baking tray. Put into a pre-heated oven 160C 325F and cook for about 15 mins.

When cooled ,mix up the icing sugar (I used royal icing but you can just use water icing) with the juice of a lemon, drop onto the biscuit and top off with half a cherry.

You can download the recipe here.

Let me know if you make them, they are really easy and fun (also let me know if your husband, like mine, holds one to his chest and shouts booby biscuits!)

xxx

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

Book Club cake of the Month...March

Last month we read Grass by Sheri S. Tepper. Tepper was a science fiction writer, particularly known for her feminist and eco slants to the genre.

The novel is set in the future when the Earth has become over populated and so humans have spread themselves out amongst the planets. One such planet is Grass, named because of the abundance of grass, which comes in a myriad of colours.

Our heroine is Majorie Westriding Yrarier whose husband is sent to discover why the population of Grass have not succumbed to the plague wiping out mankind. There are creatures native to Grass, hounds, hippae and foxen, who in strange dreamlike (or even nightmarish) ways interact with the humans. There is also a very unusual sex scene involving Majorie and a foxen.

As with any good sci-fi novel, the story and themes are much deeper than just exploring a strange future world. Tepper is fascinated with religion, especially that practiced by men, relationships between men and women and philosophical discussions about original sin.

Unfortunately, our group was halved for this meeting, so while we did have an enjoyable discussion about the book, we quickly moved on to other topics. At April's meeting I managed to get everybody's marks, we gave it an average of 7.5. I am a bit of a sci-fi buff but even those who wouldn't normally read this type of book, did enjoy it.

I made some cupcakes for the meeting and whipped out my grass tip, but I wanted to make the grass more Grass-like so I coloured it in purples and pinks.