So, there it is then (as they say around here).
We have bought a house here in West Wales.
A wonderful house. A house that I have carried around in my heart since I stepped over the threshold in January, through the stress and embuggerance that is buying houses in England and Wales (it may be the same else where - I don't know - I understand that in other places it is a lot easier), through the initial silence between our offer being accepted and anything actually happening, through the last minute boundary issue and the changing of completion dates (which also coincided with me doing my back in and Blue sustaining a minor head injury, all while the Husband was back in England for a series of meetings. Never a dull moment, I tell you),,the mysterious missing document (not ours) on completion day a couple of days ago, to moving day.
The bottom line is that my home will always be where the Husband and the children are, but to be able to live in a house like this and call it ours, for it to coincide with where the Husband and children are, so making it home, well, it makes me very happy.
There is work to be done, and I'm sure there will be much cursing and swearing as we go, but for now, it's all good. Busy, but good. And you know me well enough by now to know that in amongst the hectic pace of life, there is always time for cake, especially a lemon cake.
Loosely based (isn't it always) in this case on yet another of Mr Dan Lepard's fine creations, this came about more as the result of having another purge through the cupboards in advance of moving day than anything else. I seem to have a selection of opened packets of poppy seeds in my cupboards yet no recollection of using them in anything, I didn't have enough lemons, my oatmeal was medium and not fine, and yet, this is a divine cake. More texture than your classic lemon drizzle, good flavour, and a good keeper (it actually makes quite a lot of cake). It also tastes fantastic with a cup of tea - great for keeping removal men incentivised...
Lemon & Poppy Seed Cake
250g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
75g medium oatmeal
30g poppy seeds
225g golden caster sugar
125g unsalted butter at room temperature
100ml vegetable oil
zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp lemon extract
4 large eggs
50 ml hot water
150g caster sugar (doesn't have to be golden), plus extra
juice of 2 lemons
Line a 20cm square, high sided tin with greaseproof paper, and pre-heat the oven to 180 C (160C fan).
Sift together the flour baking powder then add the oatmeal and poppy seeds, stir to combine, and set aside.
Beat together the sugar, butter, oil, lemon zest and extract until the whole thing is pale and light, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Once the eggs are all combined, beat in the hot water until everything is smooth.
Beat the flour, oatmeal and poppy seeds into the batter, then transfer into the prepared tin and bake for around 45-50 minutes.
Make the lemon syrup by combining 150g caster sugar with the juice of 2 lemons in a small saucepan and gently heating till the sugar is dissolved. While the cake is still warm, poke holes all over it with a skewer and pour the syrup all over it.
Leave the cake to cool, then sprinkle over a couple of extra spoons of caster sugar. Yes, I know it's a lot, but sometimes, it's necessary. Cut into generous pieces and put the kettle on.
Enjoy!
I love food. That's why I have a food blog. There's not much that I won't try, not much I don't like. But there are a few flavours that I keep going back to. Smoked paprika. Almonds. Lemon.
I'd be hard pressed to choose between lemon and almond, particularly when talking about cake (I haven't yet added smoked paprika to a cake) and I'll often seek to combine the 2 rather than choose, but today, it's all about lemon cake. Yet another one, I know, to join Felicity Cloake's perfect lemon drizzle cake (which does include almonds), the lemon cake with feathered icing, a lemon and blackcurrant cake...
This is another bake based on a Dan Lepard classic from Short & Sweet where it appears as Lemon Butter Cake. There's a version of this loaf cake online on the Guardian Life & Style pages from 2006 - slightly different to that which appears in print, but the constant ingredient is condensed milk, one of my other culinary loves. You might think the combination of lemon and condensed milk would be one that I'd find hard to resist, but in fact I've pondered the possibility for some time and never been quite sure. One of the joys of lemon is its sharpness - would the addition of condensed milk take that away?
Well, the fact is that I've had some tinned caramel in the fridge for far too long, left over from making my favourite flapjacks, so in the end, I didn't use condensed milk at all, and here's the result. No cloying sweetness, just a deliciously sharp, moist loaf cake, with massive mouth-appeal. .
Dan may bake with integrity - me, I just use up what I've got in the fridge. Either way, this is a mighty fine cake.
Lemon Caramel Cake
100g unsalted butter
2 large eggs
150g caster sugar
125g tinned caramel
grated zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1.5 large lemons (save the other half for the icing)
275g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
100g icing sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Line a large loaf tin with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Melt the butter and set aside.
Separate the eggs and measure out 25g of the caster sugar. Whisk the whites till frothy then tip in the sugar with the whisk still running until the mix forms soft peaks. Set the bowl aside.
Beat together the melted butter, the egg yolks, the remaining 125g caster sugar, the caramel, lemon zest and lemon juice until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is smooth and caramel coloured.
Sift the flour and baking powder into the egg yolk mixture and beat together till smooth, then fold in the egg whites till combined and scrape the mixture into the prepared loaf tin.
Bang the tin a couple of times to evenly distribute the mixture, then bake for 40-50 minutes till a skewer comes out almost clean.
Leave the cake to cool, then make up the icing by combining the icing sugar with the juice of half a lemon to make quite a runny icing. Drizzle this over the loaf.
So despite my ever so slightly smug assertions that I would be signing up to Welsh lessons pretty much as soon as we moved, it took me nearly a year.
A year in which it quickly became clear that where we are living, a huge proportion of people choose to speak Welsh. All the time. Call me hopelessly naive (be kind - ignorant would probably be a better word), but I had no idea quite how extensively the language was used. Sure, the fact that most primary schools in the area were 'Welsh Medium' caused me to raise my eyebrows, and run to Mumsnet where I found stories of children being punished for speaking English in the playground (not at the specific school where Blue & Pink are now happily ensconsed, you understand, but generally) and began to panic, but I just assumed that most people - certainly of my generation and younger - spoke English outside educational establishments. I knew that road signs were bilingual, and was aware of a Welsh soap opera, Pobl y Cwm, the butt of many jokes, but I just assumed that was the end of it.
Well, the fact is that I hear Welsh spoken all the time - not just in school, but in the shops, in the street. The children have friends who come from Welsh speaking homes. The commercial radio station runs adverts in Welsh. There are Welsh speaking radio stations, TV. Welsh is the language of choice of a significant proportion of the community - not just the older generations.
So I signed up on an intensive beginners course. I'll let you know how it's going another time soon
Of course, I don't HAVE to learn Welsh, but the kids have absorbed it so thoroughly that it's becoming a problem (they can talk to each other in front of me and I have no idea what they are saying - you see what I mean?). Most of the business of the school is conducted in Welsh - letters come home in Welsh & English, and the teachers speak to English speaking parents in English, but the main language of the PTA for example, is Welsh.
My own view (still under construction) about learning myself is that having expected the children to learn the language of our adopted country, I should also make the effort. If I was in Germany, Greece, Azerbaijan (for example) I would try to learn at least some of the language. For me, it's a matter of courtesy. And yes, I know everyone speaks English, but this is an area where there is a lot of pride in the language, and if I'm living here, I'd like to try and get to grips with it. Plus I'd like to know if I'm really being talked about, either specifically, me, or generally as an English person - when I go into a shop and the conversation stops, then starts up again...
There is Welsh everywhere, and the opportunities for embarrassment are considerable. I haven't yet asked directions to a place I am already standing in - like the couple who mused that they hadn't been able to find 'Aberteifi' while standing in Cardigan - the 2 are the same place...
I did, however come a cropper a couple of weeks ago following some directions to pick up Pink from a playdate. I was directed to somewhere (as I thought) called 'Dadcu' (pronounced 'Dadkey'), and from there to follow the path to the right.
I arrived in the dark, no sign of a path and no house name in evidence, so I knocked on a door and asked an elderly gentleman if he knew where Dadcu was and if I was there. He looked at me confused, asked if I was looking for Alex, and directed me accordingly. It was while Alex (playdate's mother) was explaining that the girls had been decorating cakes with Dadcu that I realised the old man was Dadcu - it's Welsh for Grandad...
Anyway, embarrassment aside, it turns out that Dadcu is a bit of a whizz with cake decorating, and Pink was keen to show me a skill she'd picked up - feathered icing. We made a lemon sponge tray bake - made as lemony as possible with the addition of lemon extract as well as lemon zest, and used the lemon juice to make 2 bowls of water icing, one white, one coloured yellow, and Pink set to. thick stripes of icing, then a skewer tip dragged through. Of course, I expect practice would make perfect, but given that cake decorating isn't something I'm naturally gifted at, I think she did a pretty good job.
Lemon Cake with Lemon feathered icing
225g unsalted butter
225g caster sugar
275g self-raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 lemons
4 large eggs
4 tablespoons milk
1/2 tsp lemon extract
300g icing sugar
yellow gel paste colouring
Get the butter out of the fridge
Grease & line a traybake tray approx 30cm by 23 cm and 4-5 cm deep, and pre-heat the oven to 160C (conventional).
If the butter hasn't been out of the fridge long and isn't soft, boil a kettle and heat the bowl of your food mixer (if you have one) by pouring the water into the bowl then emptying it out and drying the bowl. Cut up the butter and add to the warm bowl.
Add the sugar, flour and baking powder to the bowl of the mixer with the butter, then finely grate the zest of the lemons and add that. Save the zested lemons to juice for the icing.
Whisk together the eggs, milk and lemon extract then tip into the dry ingredients and beat with the mixer for 2-3 minutes until everything is well combined.
Scrape the batter into the lined tin and bake for 30-40 minutes till the sponge is golden and springs back when gently pressed.
Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.
Once the cake is completely cold, make up the icing. Squeeze the lemons and divide the icing sugar into 2 bowls. Mix up each bowl of icing adding the lemon juice slowly. You'll need around 2 tablespoons for each bowl of 150g icing sugar, but take it steady - you don't want it to be too runny. Add the gel paste to one of the bowls to achieve the yellow colour you're after, Pink added about 1/4 tsp which may have been a bit much - it certainly gave us a very vivid yellow. Apply this in stripes.
We used normal spoons. For more precision, you might want to use a piping bag. Once the cake is covered in stripes, get a cocktails stick or skewer etc, and drag it through the icing.
Voila.
UA-44695690-1
