FOOD: Raspberry Cake

With a freezer full of raspberries, it was high time I took to doing something wit them and with the need to find a recipe for a birthday cake for myself, what better an opportunity to use some of them up. You'd think raspberry cakes recipes would be easy to find, but apparently such cakes are a modern invention. While I love using my vintage cookbooks, none had any such recipe, for once pinterest came to the rescue. 

The recipe I came across from Food Loverr which is actually adapted from one on food.com is pretty straight forward, and like most of the recipes I come to share here, there's no out of the ordinary ingredients required. I found the bake time was very underestimated and after baking with frozen raspberries, i'd suggest using fresh ones. The icing was also meant to be decorated with raspberries, but I misjudged and didn't have enough - oops. 

Raspberry Cake

Cake

1/3 cup of butter

1 cup of sugar

1 egg

3 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 cups of sifted all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 cups of fresh raspberries 

Glaze

1 1/2 cups powdered/confectionery sugar

1 teaspoon of melted butter 

6 tablespoons of heavy cream

Mix the butter and sugar together, adding in the egg and mix well. Combine all the dry ingredients. Separately add the vanilla extract to the milk and add, alternating with the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture and mix well, until smooth. Pour batter into a lined loaf pan and sprinkle raspberries over the batter. Place into a preheated oven at 375F for 45 minutes (original recipe states 30 - but the batter was far too wet). After the cake has baked, make the glaze by mixing all the ingredients - sugar, melted butter and cream and frost while still slightly warm.

Have you baked anything tasty lately?

SNAPSHOTS: A Weekend in Early October

This weekend has been all about burgers, bunch and possibly far too many photographs. Having finally got more of a modern contraption of a phone, I've finally moved to the darkside and started an instagram account (found here) - which has given me a great excuse for sharing even more photographs and will hopefully help in one of my 30 before 30 challenges (more of this to come) of trying to complete a full 365 photo tasks covering my year of being 28, starting October 1st. With Joe's mum popping up from Pittsburgh, we always love using their trips as a great chance to explore some more of Detroit and it's areas great places to eat and catch up. 

As it happens instagram is turning into my place to dump flower photographs and pictures of random places we drive pass, because that's basically summing up my life. My dahlia bulbs are in the oh look at me i'm so pretty flowering stage, they are so beautiful it would be hard not to want to take so many photographs of them on a daily basis (again, more photographs will follow). Saturday's late lunch was at the Mercury Bar down in Corktown - which we both agreed is our new favorite place for burgers - and to boot has a great collection of Michigan beers. Like Slows, the Mercury Bar is in the shadow of the Michigan Central Station which is always an obligatory thing to photograph whatever your position of the building (or even it's owner).

Heading home we drove along Michigan Avenue back from Corktown into downtown with moody grey clouds overhead but a blinding autumnal sun reflecting off all the skyscrapers. 

What's a better way to start a Sunday with a cocktail - cucumber and raspberry with some some tasty brunch served up at the Emroy in Ferndale. They also have a huge bloody mary bar which seems to be all the rage around here, and well, I certainly could get use to the brunch lark that's for sure. Our local fire station was having it's open day so I wandered down to have a nosey.

But this weekend one the whole, i'd say autumn hit like a thump. Chilly mornings and chilly days means perfect chance to get wrapped up in cardigans and scarves and admire the ever increasing golden of leaves in the trees. I always love the contrast between the golds, the reds and just how blue those autumn (however misleading they are about how "warm" they look) skies appear. But it's cold nonetheless, which doesn't help when our furnace gave up the ghost (or replace with technical words that I don't know) and we have no heat - sucks.

So if you'd love to follow more of my random every day photographs then you can always add me on instagram.

LIFE: Orchard, Apples and Pumpkin Fields

With Michigan ranking third in the apple production in the US, one of our great autumnal traditions, and a birthday treat, is taking a trip to the Erwin Orchard and Cider Mill (where we visited last year) in South Lyon. At a time when most people (me included) were just getting up out of bed on Sunday morning, we'd grabbed our 1/2 bushel bag and were taking a tractor ride around the orchards.

Autumn calls for pies, it calls for thick, deep apple pies (clicky for my go to vintage apple pie recipe) with custard, for some more of that caramel apple jam I made last year and nothing beats picking it fresh from the tree. Granted a bit of tree climbing is always involved but that's half the fun. Slotted between the miles of rows of apple trees, pumpkins are getting lovely and rip, big fat orange balls of Halloween goodness. We ended up picking about 60 or so apples in total, a mix between Northern Spry - a tart cooking apple and McIntosh a lovely sweet apple which is an ideal mixed use apple. 

While the raspberry patch is often overlooked compared to all the orchards, the cider and the doughnuts, we always like to top up on our stock, especially with apple pies on the horizon when i'll just throw a load in for good measure. That and jam, there's always a need for more raspberry jam.  

So today (Friday) you shall find me in the kitchen baking apple and raspberry pies and trying out a raspberry loaf cake no doubt many of which will be enjoyed over the weekend.

Do you have any autumn traditions and favorite things to bake?

 

GREEN FINGERS: 106 Spring Bulbs

A tiny cocoon, it's skin peeling, it's roots dancing in the light autumnal breeze. Over a hundred little promises of spring flowers, of rich daffodil yellows, pinks of tulips to blues of aliums all set to bring colour and life to the depths of shade in my ever green garden. Planting them in their little six inch or so beds, tapping their soil bedding gently above their heads, wishing them a safe winter sleep until they begin to poke their little heads through the cold, crisp spring soil.

If you yearn for spring bulbs, now is the time to be getting your fingers dirty.

Daffodil, tulips they call for memories of an English spring garden, of bright, golden and happy blooms heralding the arrival of warmer days. Astbiles for privacy in pinks and purples, for bleeding hearts - flowers as pretty as their name might suggest. Of finding that balance between color and tempting pollentators into the garden, for the wildlife needs my garden a little more then me.

While the ground might turn cold, covered in weeks, months on end of deep, crisp white snow and frost, hidden, sleeping underneath little bulbs all ready and waiting for a grand push, for a new start in my garden, the first push and step into adding some much needed colour. And as 106 bulbs find their way into my garden, a new life from my first ever flower cutting is starting to form a new life on my window still.

It's all fun as a newbie gardener.