Christmas Cake

Here is how to bake a Christmas cake the Nigella Lawson/Pauline Grant way.

1. Soak 875g sultanas, 138g currents, 275g mixed peel in 150ml Earl Grey tea over night. Cover with clingfilm.

2. This takes 9inch/24cm spring form tin. Oven at 130C for fan assisted ovens. Line with a double thickness of brown paper and single thickness of baking parchment. I use the peg to hold it in place, quite ingenious I think. The paper must stand 10cm above the rim of the tin.

3. Soften 281g butter.
4. Cream together 244g brown sugar.

5. Grate the rind of one orange and one lemon.


6. Add one egg at a time making sure you mix well after each one.



7. Then add 2 and a half tbspn marmalade.
8. Add1 1/4 tspn mixed spice.


1/4 tspn cinnamon1/4 tspn nutmeg

1 tspn almond extract.9. Add and thoroughly mix fruit and flour alternately. Towards the end it will take a lot of mixing to make sure it's all incorporated.

10. Put into prepared tin and bake for 3 hours on 130 C (for fan ovens). Obviously take the peg off before you put it in the oven!!!


11. It is ready when the skewer comes out clean.
12. When cake is cooked immediately brush with earl grey tea and wrap it in the tin with double thickness of tin foil. This is the trick to it being really moist.


13. When cake is completely cold (which it isn't yet and it was baked last night), remove from tin and wrap in foil and baking parchment for 3 weeks ready for the marzipan.

So tempting to want to eat it right away, the smells all over the house last night and today are amazing.

Love it when it gets colder

We had a really great walk in Plessey Woods on Sunday afternoon, which is nearish us. I love this time of year when it starts to get colder and you get all hopped up (as we say in Northern Ireland) in your coat, gloves, scarf and hat. We've only been once before about 4 years ago and yesterday we were reminded how much we liked it then.




Alice really enjoyed standing on this bridge looking at the river (dauter, as calls water). We then introduced her to Pooh sticks. Stuart and I got a stick each, he was helping Alice. He gave his to Alice, stood at the edge of the bridge and started to explain the rules. When he said "you throw your stick in the river", she did. So she had a good 5 second head start on my stick. Cheating already. That's just not on and she won!!!!

She had a lot of fun crunching on the leaves, unfortunately we can't get welly boots small enough for her yet, so she had to make do with her shoes and Daddy carrying her over the muddy bits. She also has a thing about collecting stones. Not sure where that comes from, but she carried one round in her hand the whole time.

Busy couple of weeks

Alice hasn't quite got the concept of colours, we go through the colours in her rainbow book, but she can't remember the names of them. However, as you can see from the photo, she certainly knows that they are different and the same. This is how she plays with her blocks. Think that's a Daddy trait; being very ordered.

We all went to the dentist last week. We found a local dentist taking on NHS patients, so it meant we all weren't in different practices. So we all go together and Alice sits with Mummy whilst Daddy is with the dentist and vice versa. Then it was Alice's turn. She didn't really enjoy it too much, however she has 12 teeth and therefore 8 left to come through and the dentist told us they are all on their way. So that would explain the runny nose and excessive dribbling at the moment. She's coping quite well, just got her hand permanently in her mouth.

We now go to a toddler group and she really enjoys that. She loves playing with playdoh, a little too much as she also likes the taste of it. So we are now trying to encourage her not to eat it as you'll see from the video. She also really enjoys doing the sticky pictures and gets a little too enthusiastic with the glue. We've decided to keep all her pictures in a folder, until there are too many and then sift through them and choose our favourites for her in the future.

Last week we did some drawing, she can draw circles and was trying to draw triangles and squares, she did had the shapes right. Then Pauline drew a letter A and she said "gaggle" (triangle), drew a B and she said "bee", then C and she said "see", then drew a D and she said gurgle (circle) and it took us a while to figure out what she meant, but she recognised the shapes of the letters A and D. She is also starting to count and when we say 1, she says 2 and when we say 3 sometimes she'll say 4.

It was also cold enough the other day to put her new winter coat and hat and gloves on. The gloves didn't stay on very long though. Then when we actually got outside I realised it wasn't quite cold enough for the hat either.



Alice really enjoys listening to us reading. Today she wanted loads of her stuffed animals with her to listen too.

Here is the video of Alice pulling funny faces and talking about playdoh.

Birthday Weekend

Alice has this book that we got free from a group we went to in the summer. It's called "Not Now Bernard". It's a horrible story of neglect and murder by a terrifying monster. This has become Alice's favourite book. As soon as she gets up in the morning "Dadad" (Bernard) and she goes in search of the book. She then carries it around most of the day. Will want it read countless times and want the pictures explained too. When she wants to look at the pictures she will tend to have Jenny, the toy on her knee in the next pic, with her and will position Jenny's head so that she can see the book better. I'm wondering how we can destroy this book and blame her and then have to throw it out. Still plotting!!!



We had a very busy weekend. On Friday it was Pauline's birthday. Stuart went into work a bit late and we had a nice breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolats. At least we did because Pauline remembered to get them out of the freezer the night before to defrost and prove over night. Alice was very good at helping Pauline open her presents.


Must explain the giraffe. When we were dating, Stuart bought me an animal for my birthday, I didn't really understand why. Then for Christmas he bought me another one. Still I didn't really get it. Then we got engaged and for my next birthday I got another one. Then every birthday and Christmas ever since I have received an animal as a present. I still don't really get it, but it keeps him happy. A friend said that he should always buy me one and when we're married 40 years I will have this massive menagery of animals. I said "yeah, do you want to be the one to store them all?". Anyway, here are the animals.

Stuart then went to work, Alice and I went to Sainsbury's to do our weekly shop. Then after she woke up we had to go to Mothercare to get the security label from a wee top I'd bought her the day before removed. How I got out of the shop without the alarm ringing is beyond me. What a waste of time; thankfully I had the receipt.

Stuart and I got some friends to babysit and we went round to the pub for some dessert (pretty bog standard). We ate that and then after an hour we got the call to say she'd woken up and they couldn't get her back to sleep. So we came home and it then took us two hours to get her back to sleep. Isn't teething great!!? At least we got out for a short time.

Saturday we went to a family fun morning at church. Which was fun and especially as it was cold and wet. Saturday night we got take-away and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Jonny Depp version). Highly recommend it, if you haven't seen it, brilliant. Sunday, church as normal, Alice first Sunday in toddler creche during the service. She really enjoyed it. Then home, lunch, I went back out to church for a pastoral talk about bereavement. Cheery!! It was really good actually, the speaker was brilliant, really practical. Went to the evening service and the pub with some friends. A very busy birthday weekend. But a good one.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Can you guess what Alice is trying to do and successfully achieving in these photographs?








Yep, a few days ago she started taking off her babygrows after breakfast. Last night she took it off when she went to bed, then woke at 8.30pm completely out of her babygrow. Given we're going into the winter that's not really something we want her to get used to. So today we went out and bought some (non-pink, or at least as non-pink as I could find in her size) pyjamas. So from now on she won't ever wear babygrows again. We were hoping to get to 2 wearing them at night, but she's obviously decided she doesn't want to wear them any more.

So here she is in her first pair of pyjamas, or "mamas" as she calls them. Unfortunately the battery on the camera went, so this was all we could catch before bed time. They are wee bit big on her, but we are hoping to get the whole winter out of these. This was part of a set of two pairs from Boots. So we'll have to try and find her another pair of non-pink pjs too.

A visiting weekend.

Mummy and Alice had a busy weekend of visiting and visitors. It started on Friday afternoon when one of Alice's Godmothers popped in, as she was in the area (Laura the English can pop from time to time). Alice had fun showing Louise her books and toys and singing her favourite song, "row, row, row your boat". I didn't realise until I started going to toddler groups that there are about 20 verses to the song!!! Anyway, it was a very busy weekend for Stuart at work and thankfully Louise did call in, because she stayed for dinner and then kept me entertained while he spent most of the evening on the phone to work.

Saturday. Stuart was at work, we had a couple of offers to go visiting with friends. We did a lot of deliberating, but Druridge Bay didn't work out with Mr and Mrs D, doglet and the boys. So went round to the McKelveys in the afternoon. Alice seemed very taken with their new bunny rabbit and enjoyed drawing a lot.

Sunday. Stuart managed to get out of working. However, was on the phone quite a lot to work throughout the day. We did have some very special visitors on Sunday. Alice's great aunt Betty and great uncle Brian. They were on holiday in Scotland for the week and did a few days at the end in our area, so they could meet Alice and then travel back home to Essex. It was great to see them and Alice really enjoyed showing them her toys too. Brian said he really wanted to see Alice and sit her on his knee and that's what he did. Thank you for calling in and for Jess, she is Alice's new favourite toy.

Jumping, Gardening and Slippers

Alice and mummy go to a Bible study group once a fortnight on a Thursday. Last week was the first one back after the summer, so they had a social instead of a study. Alice stays in a creche whilst the mothers go up stairs to study the Bible. As it was finishing one of the children who is a bit older than Alice was jumping all over the place and Alice was trying to copy her. Then on Sunday after church she was trying to do some more jumping, the first bit of the video is Alice trying to jump. She can't get both feet off the ground at once, so ends up more like stamping. We think it's hilarious.

On Saturday we went to a garden centre and bought a pile of bulbs for the garden. So whilst Alice was asleep on Sunday afternoon we planted most of them, bar one section. When Alice woke up we got her changed and went into the garden to introduce her to gardening. She threw in all the bulbs (only trying to eat one of them) and then we covered it with soil. She then didn't want to come back in so stayed outside with daddy to "garden" some more. She seemed to really enjoy herself and so hopefully in years to come we can get her doing all the gardening, for a small fee, no doubt.




She also found a new game; jumping on daddy to be a lot of fun. She did this for ages. Then got bored with that and started walking in Daddy's slippers instead.

We just can't believe how much she is taking in on a daily basis. She can count to 2, well we say one and she says 2. She can recognise the letters A and B on her wee alphabet frame. In fact daddy stepped up the counting training when he saw that she could recognise the letters A and B. Daddy is determined she will be a mathematician and Mummy is determined she will be really literary, hence reads Shakespeare to her every day (that's a joke I don't really).

Also really glad that the baking demonstration inspired a few of you to bake again. Glad also that they have worked for you and you are enjoying your creations.

It's as easy as wee buns

This is really for Laura, go on try it, it's soooo easy.

A few of us have been having baking discussions on other blogs and a couple have had minor disasters with baking sponges.

So I thought I would demonstrate how to bake one.

Remember, you will need 2 X 8 inch lose bottom tins (the bottom comes out) and your oven will need to be at 180C, 350F, Gas 4 or 160 for fan assisted and bake for 25 mins.

Ingredients:
8oz butter
80z caster sugar
4 eggs
80z self raising flour (or plain and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder)
grated rind of 1 lemon

lemon curd
200ml whipping cream
teaspoon icing sugar

7oz icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon (and a little water if needed).

You can't really hear Sharlene from Home Group, but she's saying it's the best thing she's eaten that I've baked. I didn't even have to pay her.

Let me know how you get on.

The mouse, the bath and home

The first bit of the video is us trying to capture the way Alice says home, it is so funny. When we're out anywhere and going home, and we say "are we going home" etc, she purses her lips this. After dinner every night she has a bath as part of her bedtime routine. This is what we get most nights when she's finished dinner. This is her saying bath.

Then we had a wee visitor yesterday. I think it's building a nest below our back step. Not sure that's good news, but Stuart was very excited when he got home from work and wanted to see it. Alas, it didn't comply. So he had to make do with this video. Alice thought it was hilarious and every now and again she would squeal with delight as it scurried past. Come to think of it haven't seen the rabbit this week.

We also started a mothers and toddlers' group at our church yesterday. It was great fun, although Alice didn't enjoy it too much initially, as every time we go to church I leave her in a creche of some sort. I think she realised I was staying with her this time and settled and played on the slide (her favourite). The group is so well organised. We had general play things, a story time, juice and biscuits time (although we don't give Alice either), sticky time and then general play doughing and painting etc. We missed the singing at the end, as we had to go and catch the metro to be home for Alice's nap. It was really busy and everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves.


You can't really see, but this is Jenny, Alice's lovey thingy. It's a giraffe and we called it Jenny. She calls it "deddy". When she's not walking around with Ellie the Elephant (the white one in the pretty face post) she's walking around with Jenny. Jenny also goes to bed with her and every now and again with lie on the floor with her and give her a snuggly cuddle.

See she's not tantruming all the time.

Wibbly Wobble Alice

This is Alice last November, just before turning 8 months old. She did this for about a couple of weeks and then stopped doing it. So caught it on video just in time, before she stopped doing it. Now she loves to watch herself doing this. She laughs and laughs. It is so funny to watch her watching herself.

What a pretty face

This is Alice playing with her toy elephant, Ellie. She cuddles all her stuffed toys and walks around with them having a snuggly cuddle and making very beautiful soft "ahhhh" noises.

Then, she turns into this!!!!! With no warning at all, she becomes Mr Hyde.


My technique is to try to distract her into something else, which does tend to work, but today I wanted to take some photos to share with the world. I know, no thanks is necessary!!!

I think when you're raising (or is that trying to ignore) toddlers, you really have to keep a sense of humour or I think you would just lose the plot!!! As you can see from previous posts she is a sweet heart most of the time, but we do have to deal with this side of her too.

When do the tantrums start to subside?

Animals and Climbing

Put this wee video together as an amalgamation of what she's been doing over the past few days. Dog is "fff" and Rabbit is her pushing her tongue against her teeth. We didn't get it on video but elephant is her thrusting her arm in the air like the trunk!!!

She started climbing up on to the chair a couple of weeks ago and is making it look so easy these days. She did, at one point, try to get down forwards and fell off, since then has been getting down backwards again. Very sensible!!!