Teacup Tueasday - holiday projects

This is my afternoon tea and today's teacup. Pretty isn't it? The cake is my creation a plain vanilla cake with crasins (dried cranberries) added the icing is a butter icing with rosewater flavour.

Cranberry vanilla cake with rosewater icing.

125 g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 tspn vanilla bean paste
3 eggs
3 cups SR flour
1/2 cup milk
About 2/3 cup crasins

Cream the butter and sugar beat in the eggs one at a time. sift the flour and add to the creamed butter an sugar alterating with the milk, folding in with a large metal spoon. Mix in cranberries. Spoon into prepared cake ring tin and bake for about 40 mins in a moderate oven. (aprox 180'C)

icing:
about 75g butter
about 1cup pure icing sugar
about 1 tspn of rose water

cream butter and icing sugar together add the rose water. if the icing is too thick add a tspn of milk at a time until desired consistency is achieved.
( I just had a thought that coconut milk in the icing and a sprinkling of coconut on the top would also be good. Being allergic to food colourings, I might try the juice of the preserved wild hibiscus flower that we put in champagne to give the icing a pink colour.)

I've been out of blogging action as we had used up all of our downloads and I was terrified of being charged outrageous ammounts for the excess.


This was supposed to be my holiday project!!! This is as it looked prior to the cleaning lady came. It did get tidied a bit but it is still not too good.

Some people from the council came yesterday and I think my studio is safe!! So once the letter arrives I will be able to continue with that and somewhat declutter the living areas of the house- although this is what I do and enjoy and house is where you live and do the things you love and enjoy so perhaps my whole house should be my studio! New thought I will ponder that a little more........




This is the house after the cleaning lady had been......Ahhhh, lovely!

I've actually had two of them in the last tree weeks. The first lady came and then she said she couldn't do it but she had a friend who could. I didn't mind I just wanted some help. It turned out that the 'friend' was her son's girlfriend who has come over from Thailand to be with her boyfriend who has been transfered back to Australia. Her English is not good enough for her to work as a personal assistant here yet so she is cleaning. Lucky for her I am a "Random Talker" (see previous post for definition) I can help her with her conversational English.

Over the holidays I have caught up with friends, done some baking

The ingredients...

mix them all together...

press them into the tin and bake...

Yum, Cammy's Father's Favourites!

I've crocheted some flowers that will end up on a floral fabric panel on a bag and done some sewing. I've made a skirt for a friend, like the one Chicky Babe modeled for me but purple not green and Ive made a wrap dress for me....

Have I said I love paisley before???? It's tricky taking pictures of yourself! Although I quite like the angle of it. Chicky Babe is at work and Bantam Boy is at the library studying on the holidays! I'm so proud of him!!! Proud of them both actually!!! They have grown up well - and I did it myself! (well... with some help from my friends and family)

I have another dress almost finished, another wrap dress but this time in black. I'll be off now to get back to it!