Retro Fruit

Hello!

I'm fighting for time these days. It seems I have too many things to do and definitely not enough time to do them! Finding time to stamp is seeming almost impossible!  Today I spent most of the day at the garden shop, the hardware shop, and then in my garden repotting roses and lemons and then making new pots for my girls to plant sunflowers. Today was a perfect "spring" day (in the middle of winter) - shorts and t-shirt weather, beautiful!

Anyway, I really AM here to show you a card. Here it is.

I used PTI Strawberry Patch stamps. Ink is SU! Poppy Parade, Garden Green, Green Galore. The patterned paper is (I think) Cosmo Cricket In the Garden. Card is PTI basic white.

This card is in response to two challenges. The layout is from Retro Sketches #22.

A really nice sketch, and I think I'll keep it to use another day. :-)

And the other challenge is CASology #3 with the theme FRUIT this week.

Just before I go, I have to share a recipe. I found this over at Laurie Willison's blog yesterday and promptly repinned the recipe on Pinterest and made the recipe for dessert last night.

Perfect Lemon Bars

The picture and recipe are from Baking Bites blog. I didn't photograph mine, but I can tell you, they looked exactly the same. This recipe is EASY and DELICIOUS (if you like lemon).
I altered the recipe slightly (reducing the sugar a bit).

This is the Baking Bites recipe (with my notes where I changed it):

Perfect Lemon Bars

Crust

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp lemon zest (I used the zest of one lemon)

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

Filling

4 large eggs

1 1/3 cups sugar (I used 1 cup of sugar)

1 cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed and strained (I used the juice of two lemons, which was about 190ml, because that was all I had)

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 9×9-inch baking pan with aluminum foil.

Make the crust. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Cut butter into chunks and add to flour mixture. Blend in with an electric mixer at low speed until mixture forms coarse, sandy crumbs. Pour into pan and press mixture down (with your fingers or the back of a spoon) into an even layer.

Bake for 16-19 minutes, until just lightly browned around the edges.

While crust is baking, make filling. Whisk together all filling ingredients in a large bowl.

When the crust comes out of the oven and is still hot, pour in filling mixture.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until filling is set and does not jiggle when the pan is gently shaken.

Cool completely before slicing.

Top slices with confectioners’ sugar to serve.

Makes about 24 bars.

Thanks for coming by today.

Michelle
xxx

Happy Easter! Buona Pasqua!

Hello!

Happy Easter everyone!

Not a card post, just a photo of my lunch and a link to my other blog where I have put the recipe (if you are tempted). :-)  For Easter lunch we had Torta Pasqualina (Easter Pie).

And because it was Easter, I added some bunnies.

If you would like the recipe (I'm not the best recipe writer, but you can use it as a guide), then you can pop over to my photo blog (Happy Snap Michelle).

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you had a marvellous day.

Michelle
xxx

Dora Rainbow Cake

Hello!

Every year I make each of my girls their birthday cakes. Sometimes I have to call on my hubby for the execution of the design (because he is awesome at presentation), but this year I did it ALL BY MYSELF.  This year's challenge for me was to find a recipe for the actual cake part of the cake that was yummy to eat. Every time I make butter cake, it ends up crumbly and dry and definitely not fine and soft. But this year I was determined to make something yummy to eat to go inside the awesome outside decoration of the cake, LOL.

I went first to Bakerella, because she is just the BEST baking blog in the whole wide world. I didn't need to go any further, because she told me how to get moist butter cake, AND she gave me a recipe to follow.  The recipe is in imperial measurements, but I managed to convert to metric okay.  Bakerella calls this a Moist Yellow Cake. 

For the icing I made a butter icing using 250g of butter and about 6 cups of icing sugar, eek!  I only put a little bit between the layers and saved the smothering for the outside of the cake.

The final product is not the best Dora in the world, but my little girl was thrilled, the cake tasted delicious, and everyone was happy.

When I made the layers, I couldn't tell what their colour was going to end up, because the outside was a bit brown from cooking. So cutting into this cake today was a beautiful rainbow surprise for me as well as all the little kids.

For this cake, I followed the tip from Bakerella which said to wrap the cake in plastic wrap 5 minutes after it came out of the oven. I wrapped each layer separately. I also put all the layers in the freezer after they had totally cooled, because I made the cake last week-end.  I defrosted them overnight last night. When I took them out of their plastic wrap today, they were so easy to handle, and they were moist as can be. Perfect outcome for me. I actually iced a cool cake this year, which means the icing stayed in place much more easily, LOL.

Would you like a slice?

Michelle
xxx

Kourabiethes

Mmmm, yum!  Kourabiethes (Greek shortbread) are one of my absolute favourite biscuits to bake.  I love all sorts of shortbread, but these little darlings are perfectly to my taste. After making a batch this evening, I thought I'd share the recipe so that you can share in this melt-in-your-mouth delight!

Kourabiethes
(I make between 40 and 50 biscuits with this recipe)

Ingredients
250g butter
2 x cups pure icing sugar - 1 for the mixture and 1 for dusting afterwards - you need to sift it
2 tsp vanilla essence
Orange zest (grated rind) from one orange
1 x egg
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup almond meal

Before I tell you how to put these together, let me just say one thing: Working with pure icing sugar can be frustrating because it is hard to sift.  Sifting the sugar is the one thing that stops me making these all the time. LOL.  You CAN'T not sift it though, it's a bit like chunks of sweet rock before sifting sometimes.

Method

• Beat butter, 1 cup sifted sugar, vanilla, and orange zest together until light.
• Beat egg into butter mixture.
• Sift flour and baking powder and add to mixture with almond meal.
• Mix everything together until the mixture is combined (it might still look crumbly, but the mixture will stick together when you roll it into balls).
• Take spoonfuls of mixture and make logs/snakes about 7cm long.  I find that making the logs from a ball of dough is easiest.
• Curve the log into a crescent and place on baking tray.
• Bake at about 160 degrees for about 15 - 20 minutes (until starting to turn slightly golden).
• Place the other cup of sifted icing sugar in a bowl and coat the biscuits while they are still warm.  I always find I have some sugar left over in this bowl, so I just throw it over the biscuits in their container - it makes them pretty when you take them out later for serving (you might need to shake off some excess sugar!)

If you give this recipe a go, I hope you like it. :-)

Michelle

Babushka Dolls!

The big girl and I recently had a trip to Melbourne as a part of her birthday celebration. While we were there we found the most beautiful shop called Babushkas, which sold . . . you guessed it, Babushka Dolls, otherwise known as Matryoshka Dolls.  It was like russian doll heaven.  Here is a quick snapshot.

And that is only a small selection of what was available.  We did take one set home as a birthday present, because they were irresistible!

As a result of this discovery, when discussing what birthday cake she would like this year, the big girl put in an order for a babushka doll cake.  My first reaction was, "Oh no! How am I going to do that?", but when she said to me (very generously) that I could just make a round cake and draw a picture on top, I decided that I ought to make a little effort.  So, after some thought, I came up with the basic design, and then I spent an evening colouring different quantities of icing to create the masterpiece.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good photo of it once it was finally finished, but this was close enough.  The big girl was very happy and I had exceeded her expectations, so I was happy.  :-)  And Babushka was very yummy - white chocolate mud cake was hiding under all that icing.

I spent the week baking and also prepared a few treats to send to school.  I hear the tea cups were a hit.

The biscuits on the base were Tick Tock biscuits.  I usually use Marie biscuits and spread with melted white chocolate, but the Tick Tocks saved some time and tasted just as good. 

I have a little more baking to do tonight and tomorrow, and then I have a couple of weeks off until the next birthday. . .