An easy and fast summer-time cake

Last week I baked this cake for a not-for-profit market stall. Although I had to rush off to work, I have it on good authority that people actually parted with their hard earned money for a slice, so it can't be too bad!

My only concerns were that I didn't have much time and I also needed it to withstand the stifling heat currently engulfing London. I didn't want it to end up a gooey mess on the tube floor.

Luckily I found this easy-peasy recipe for a Raspberry Bakewell Cake on the BBC Good Food website, which has everything I love - almonds, berries, no wilting butter-creams and it's super fast to make.

Here is the recipe in case you want to give it a go:

Ingredients

140g ground almonds

140g butter, softened

140g golden caster sugar

140g self-raising flour

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

250g raspberries

2 tbsp flaked almonds

icing sugar, to serve

Method:

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and base-line and grease a deep 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin. Blitz the ground almonds, butter, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla extract in a food processor until well combined.

Spread half the mix over the cake tin and smooth over the top. Scatter the raspberries over, then dollop the remaining cake mixture on top and roughly spread – you might find this easier to do with your fingers. Scatter with flaked almonds and bake for 50 mins until golden. Cool, remove from the tin and dust with icing sugar to serve.

Enjoy!

[photography by Katie & Percy]

Music in the park

So this Saturday I’m going to see The Stone Roses in Finsbury Park, London. My boyfriend is practically giddy with excitement. Hang-on, scrap ‘practically’, he is at the point of wetting his pants he’s so excited! 

In preparation for Saturday we saw Shane Meadows recent documentary on the band entitled Made Of Stone. It is a doozy. Even if you don’t know the band you will appreciate this film. 

And the forecast is sunshine, which for London is like filling the air with happy-gas. People go a bit crazy with delight.

Now I just need some inspiration for my outfit…

[images courtesy of Pinterest]

Cake does make everything better!

 

Yesterday was World Bake Day (May 19) and more importantly the day that the local community service which I volunteer with held a fundraiser selling cakes and cookbooks. Free Cakes for Kids Hackney is a free service for disadvantaged families in our local area. Our team of amazing volunteers make sure that kids who would otherwise not receive a cake on their birthday are provided with one. It's a great local course and we raised some much needed funds that will help us continue our work. Check out the beautiful array of cakes that our volunteers made! 

Image by Ro / wererabbit

Nelly Duff Gallery, London.

With Monday afternoon well under-way and my sugar slump gaining momentum, I've caught myself reliving my weekend.

Here are my highlights:

Watching the pUKE’s (a ukulele female-majority punk bank) perform at the Pick Me Up Graphic Arts Festival at Somerset House, London. The band consists of no less than twenty members but were sadly restricted to just a handful for this event. Nonetheless they rocked-out with style. 

There were lots of random and interesting things to look at the Pick Me Up Festival, with Nelly Duff Gallery and Print Club London being particularly memorable.

We ate incredible food in Shoreditch courtesy of Yalla Yalla Beirut Street Food (it was a pop-up eatery…obviously). 

And to top it off I bought a candy striped hair scarf and vintage leather bag at Beyond Retro in Dalston. 

And now I'm nipping off to get a cup of tea.

F is for...

I am now the proud owner of this gorgeous flamingo screenprint by the artist Patrizio Belcampo which was printed through Edinburgh Printmakers. It was purchased today at the London Print Fair, which I visited for work purposes, but somehow came away with a sizeable framed print for myself. But how could I leave without this fancy fella? 

I really love flamingos, and have done since I was little. The description in Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland of Alice and The Queen of Hearts playing a game of croquet with these gangly birds has always stuck with me. In fact, my first overseas adventure at the age of 25 was to the Atacama Desert in Chile to see flamingos graze the high salt lakes. In summary I am a flamingo fan, they’re pink and their knees bend the other way…the other way!

I'm also a great admirer of the pared-down block style Belcampo is using. This style was so effectively exploited in the wood-block illustrations of the British artist William Nicholson (1872-1949) in his publications: An Almanac of Twelve Sports and London Types. It worked in 1890 and it works today.

Plus I'm a sucker for letterpress or anything that looks like letterpress, and have a little collection of items in this ilk. 

Springing into action

Winter feels like it may finally be over. And so my mind turns to spring delights – picnics in the park, leaving home without my heavy coat (and scarf and gloves for that matter), Pimms and lemonade in a sunny beer garden catching up with friends, taking my time to walk home after work and not just rushing from one warm interior to another, actually wanting to eat a salad, oh the list goes on!

Think I might need to dust of my running shoes come to think of it. 

Norman Rockwell

The iconic New York artist Norman Rockwell is best remembered for his detailed paintings that appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post from 1916 – 1963. Let me break that down…that’s 47 years and 321 covers. After this he moved over to Look magazine for a further ten years. He also designed work for numerous advertising campaigns owing much to his broad appeal. Some art critics often used his close relationship with commercial art to dilute his standing as an artist in his own right. 

Rockwell’s knack for capturing small-town American life with humour and reflection, along with his realistic style made him popular in his own time and today. 

You can visit The Norman Rockwell Museum situated in the artist’s old stomping ground of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 2011 a major exhibition of his work titled Norman Rockwell’s America was exhibited at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Dulwich Picture Gallery Norman Rockwell Museum

Our siamese cat

Vivian Lee

Ava Gardner

Fred Astair

Elizabeth Taylor

Today’s post is in memory of a much beloved family pet – a beautiful blue-point Siamese cat called Singe.

My memories of childhood pets gone by…

I grew up with an assortment of child-friendly animals but when I look back at the various pets my sisters and I were allowed to keep I can categorically say that there is no way I would be as cool as my parents were about hosting a menagerie. Not all our pets were loved equally I must confess, and there was something of a hierarchy. At the very top were the discerning Siamese cats that were more like members of our family than mere pets. Then there were the two female mice that through something akin to immaculate conception gave birth to a total of 24 babies within six hours of leaving the pet shop. Let’s not forget the pair of albino rats that were allowed to walk around the house and attempt to torment the cats, the fish ponds with resident spawning frogs, the wonderfully docile bantam hens and their handsome rooster (much to the delight of our neighbours), the rabbits, hermit crabs (active mostly at night while everyone is fast asleep), the somewhat aggressive budgerigar Sunny, and last but not least our guinea pigs Chico and Basil.

I may have had to endure the odd flea-bite and scratch but I also got a pretty straightforward lesson in life and death from a young age. One moment comes clearly to mind. While playing with my Barbie doll and one rather fat mouse that was acting as Barbie’s chauffeur, our cat came up behind me and calmly plucked the unsuspecting mouse out of the pink convertible right before my very eyes. That was a bad day for me but mostly for the mouse.

Flair for the unusual

Unusual is the word that Mr Meyer used to describe his apartment in Piccadilly, London after I had been offered a tour of the downstairs rooms. Unusual, because it was the physical embodiment of his late wife Fleur Cowles, who was by all accounts extra-ordinary. Set in one of London’s most sought after locations, the interior of the house was well…it was very unusual. It was peculiar, unique, giddy, a fusion of grand, personal and kitsch. It was both tacky and elegant. Above all it was filled to the brim with a vibrant personality. 

Fleur was quite a woman and there is much written about her life, art, work and friendships. In fact she wrote a book about it titled She made friends and kept them. Fleur was a socialite with many deep connections. One photograph to catch my eye while I frantically tried to take in every inch of the apartment was of Fleur as a young woman sitting in a hotel room having a picnic with Cary Grant. Apparently it was raining that day so they decided to continue their picnic indoors. I suppose would too if I had Mr Grant at my disposal. 

However, it is her role as editor and creator of the influential but short-lived magazine Flair, that she is perhaps most regarded. In 1950 Fleur’s dream of producing a magazine unlike any other was realised. Flair was a sophisticated publication that encompassed art, fashion, lifestyle, design, travel and literature, which was appealing to both men and women. It was characterized with special features that while bespoke and wonderful to behold resulted in significant costs. This and a lack of advertising revenue swiftly brought about its termination only one year later.

Speaking about Flair, Fleur Cowles said:

“There was no point in creating yet another magazine frozen to the format of competitors who specialized either in literature, fashion, travel, art, decor or entertainment. Why not put all of these in one magazine? This I decided to do. We intended Flair to be the most beautiful monthly publication anywhere, a new dimension in magazine publishing for the five classic fields that concern human activity; art, literature, entertainment, travel and fashion. In doing so, we introduced to the magazine such names as Jean Cocteau, Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Christopher Sykes, Barbra Ward, Saul Steinberg, Lucian Freud and Simone de Beauvoir."

This entry is a little salute to a life lived with flair. 

Tiny showers

Even the most carefree cloud gets a little blue sometimes. I think there's some saying about rainbows after a storm, but lets just enjoy this metaphorical shower.