Chocolaty felicitations to those amongst you of an Eastery inclination. And even if Easter isn’t your thing, I hope you have some cocoa solids handy anyway. Because, well, chocolate.
Given the ongoing grey/damp outside, I’ve been creating colour in the indoor flowerbeds. This. Project. Is. Going. To. Be. Finished. Very. Soon. Or. I. Will. Scream.
The plants/foliage are aggressively crocheted, and then I’m embroidering on the flowers.
But never mind that, it’s Easter. Despite the fact that we’re not very good at seasonal celebrations in this house, something of an arms race has developed this weekend. After the Stoic Spouse’s home-made hot cross buns on Friday, I decided to make a simnel cake (well two, actually, so that we could give one away).
Not to be outdone, the Stoic Spouse is at this very moment preparing a feast of duck à l’orange for later tonight. Early indications are that it smells good. Hmm, not sure how to better that. A home-made six-foot-high statue of the Easter bunny worked in chocolate? I’d better get carving…
Anyway, simnel cake is delicious. Recipe for the cake here, and for the marzipan here. Home-made marzipan is much more alcoholic nicer than shop-bought. Inspiration for the whole thing comes from my good friend Selma, who is much better at seasonal celebrations than I am.
Unlike Selma, I’m not good enough at adulting to plan ahead and soak the dried fruit for two days in alcohol, orange juice, and lemon juice, so I plopped it all in a pan and warmed it on the lowest possible heat, as a way of encouraging the currants and sultanas and candied peel to get thirsty and soak up a little of the delicious juice. I’m not sure how far it worked, but I swear I got drunk on the fumes.
There are lots of glacé cherries in a simnel cake. There are even more in two simnel cakes. Ditto eggs:-
But it smells gorgeous as you add the ground mixed spice and the boozy fruit, and beat the mixture until your arms ache.
Seriously, though, I recommend making your own marzipan. The only disadvantage other than cost is that it’s not as malleable as the shop-bought sort.
You glaze the top with egg, and then you dice with failure by popping the whole thing under the grill. It’s one of those times when there’s a two-second difference between RAW and IRREVOCABLY CHARRED. You have been warned.
It’s worth it, though. The layer of marzipan through the middle of the cake is just delicious and will be mandatory in all cakes when I become Ruler Of The Whole World.
So then of course, there’s all that cake to be worked off. The weather has been vile, and so the ****ing, ****ing, ************ING running has been even more of a chore than usual. (I may have graduated to lycra and fitness trackers, but I’m still a gasping, wheezing, exercise-phobe in my heart.) So here is a picture from yesterday’s run. My running partner has disappeared off to the Alps to bask in the snowy sunshine amongst the mountains. I bet she was wishing she was back home. Drowned rat number one:-
And this was at the end of today’s run. Drowned rat number two.
I’m going for a hat-trick of sodden-ness tomorrow.
No, this is not fun and it’s not my hobby.
Happy Easter, folks! 🙂
Am sat here eating dark chocolate champagne truffles (much yummier than an Easter egg in my book) whilst reading your blog so a woman after your own heart I think. The similarities stop there though as there’s no way in this lifetime you’d find me running!! Try and stay upright in the wind that’s forecast for tomorrow and good luck with the hatrick of drowned rat impersonations. Hugs from a soggy Hampshire xx
Given that you wrote his comment last night, I hope your corner of Hampshire survived the horrors of Katie last night.
Dark chocolate champagne truffles, you say? Mmmmmmmmm…
Thank you, yes, we did survive the weather although quite a disturbed sleep with all the noise from the wind. Hope you survived unscathed too
Phew! Similar here. I’m quite surprised that the house is intact after all that wild wind.
Yet again your lovely, inspiring blog has had me cackling into my (medicinal, cold kicking) whiskey. I’m a medical doctor. Who works full time, knits more than I have time to, loves baking and other home pursuits (but mostly edible ones), has 2 small ankle biters… And I have tried to go running. Many many times. Still not good at it, but I keep trying. Set back by current cold I am going to try again next week when I can breathe. I also think it is probably flatter where most live than I do (Devon).
I am a bit spooked by the similarities in our lives and interests, but I’m sure there are also many differences. But your blog always makes me laugh, I love it. Your recent picture of home brew bread nearly made me choke on my breakfast the other day. Thankyou so much for writing it, it brightens my day hugely when a post pops into my blog reader.
Lou, thank you for such a lovely and generous comment. And a little bit of ‘woah’ at the parallels in our lives! Trust me, I’m not a competent or enthusiastic runner. I’d rather amble along in the sunshine looking at the wildlife. But I do think that you win just by virtue of trying to run IN DEVON. Bet you get good views along the way, though.
Anyway, I hope that your cold gets better VERY soon (better pickle those viruses with a bit more whiskey, I say.) I love ‘meeting’ (and even meeting) people through blogging so thank you for getting in touch. I’m very glad you like the blog. 🙂
PS: The home-brew bread is looking at you.
I applaud you for continuing to run, rain or shine. Well done!
Your cakes look amazing. I’m not much use in a kitchen (I *can* cook but don’t enjoy it). I married well though, to a man who enjoys cooking so lucky me! Mmmm those look delicious.
I’m happy to see the crocheted garden continues though it sounds like you are good and ready to be done with it. You will feels so accomplished once it’s complete.
Definitely sounds as though you married a good’un.
The crochet garden part of the house project will be done. Eventually. I’m not a quitter, I’m just s-l-o-w.
Thank you for your encouraging comment. 🙂
xo
Cake looks fab and all kudos to you for doing that …… running.
Running, ugh. But thank you regarding the cake. 🙂
You make a better looking drowned rat than I do…I found an indoor track to walk off today’s goodies…I’m not ready for the wheezing and heavy breathing, but the simnel cake looks good, and near to the barmbrack I like to make sometimes…though barmbrack doesn’t have alcohol, and some days I do not have a two-seconds of difference attention span, okay most days. Happy Easter, if you’re so, inclined.
You’ve got me Googling Barmbrack, now. It looks divine.
A very happy Easter to you, too.
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017907-barmbrack-irish-sweet-bread This one is pretty close to the one I found in an Irish recipe book I snuck off the bargain shelf and still love;-)
Try toffee inside the cross buns, one up on the stoic!
Oh wow, you genius. That sounds gorgeous. Do you speak from happy experience?
I follow your blog via wordpress and can’t make any comments from there. I don’t why that is. Not that I have anything stupendous to say. In this case, I was just thinking how I didn’t have any rum for the frosting on the cookies I made and so I used Cognac. 🙂
Hmmm, that’s odd. I wonder whether it happened because I’m now with WordPress.org rather than WordPress.com. Um, being basically stupid with technology, I’m not quite sure how to put it right. But thank you for coming here and commenting. Cognac-frosted cookies, you say? Mmmmmmmmmmmmm…… 🙂
I had to do a bit of clicking to get to the twisted.com page but then it accepted my comment. Your reply to it has shown up on my wordpress dashboard along with a box to reply to it. I’m no expert either. I thought maybe you didn’t want comments anymore since as far as I could tell only “like” was enabled.
Hmm, I’m still puzzled. I’ll mention it to my techie friend when I see her. Thank you again for letting me know. I appreciate your comments and am definitely not trying to discourage them!
Simnel cake “tick”, slow creeping crochet project that may actually see you out, also “tick” (because progress is always good). The jury is out on that running malarkey. It’s just a hop-step and a jump to jumping on a bike and dreaming about competing in the Tour de France. You don’t look half bad sodden Ms T. I guess that’s something positive to take from all of that trotting around the countryside in the pouring rain madness.
Well thank you, m’dear.
But I have definitely reached my absolute limit exercise-wise, so there’ll be no hopping on a bike, and the only touring de France I plan to do is by car/boat/foot/whatever.
Give it time… 😉