You are invited to visit

You are invited to visit.  I will prepare the guest room for you with pristinely cleaned and ironed linen, extra blankets for warmth and an electric blanket to break the winter chill of getting into bed.  In your bedroom, you will find a heater and a towel rail for your comfort.  There will be a book or two to read and a few interesting magazines.  There will also be a little jar of sweets and biscuits should you wake up hungry in the night.  There will be cupboard space to hang your clothes and place for your belongings. 

The welcome mat is laid out just for you!

In anticipation for my guests, there will be a scurry of preparation to make your stay a wonderful experience, comfortable and welcoming with an air of, “let it not be too long before we come again!”  Biscuits will be baked to fill the tins and the pantry cupboard filled.  The preferred coffee will be bought that my visitors enjoy!

It is winter at the moment in Johannesburg, so I will set the scene for you.  A warm fireplace is lit for the evening drop in temperatures, the hearty soup is cooking on the stove, and the table is being laid for supper.  A hot steamy pudding is prepared for desert; it’s a time of sharing our life with you, our special visitors. 

During your stay, we will enjoy home made scones with jam and cream; freshly baked cakes for our tea time together.  We will share meals, stories and time together, bound to our heart to hold forever!  I cannot guarantee that you won’t pick up a pound or two during your stay but hopefully you’ll have lots to take home with you when it’s time to leave, that’s not in weight of the physical kind! 

So why not get your diary out, look at the calendar and make a date, I would hate for my welcome mat to get dusty and old. 

You are welcome to visit!

Cosy in a Coffee Shop

So finally, instead of hiding our cute tea cosies in a box, they are now proudly displayed in Manna Cafe, a lovely quaint coffee shop in Fourways worth visiting.  They make the best coffee and cakes in Jozi, so why not pay them a visit, directly opposite Monte Casino where Garden World used to be.  They also have the prettiest waitress in town!

Whip this cake up in a jiffy!

I am very excited to share this recipe with you, it literally takes just 4 ingredients, 5 if you are going to make it a chocolate cake instead of just a vanilla cake, so here goes from my tried and tested kitchen.

Ingredients:

125g Margarine

125g Sugar
125g Self Raising Flour
2 Medium Eggs(room temperature better as the cake will rise better)

Preparation:
1.  Heat the oven to 180C
2  Grease/Spray and Cook two 18cm cake tins, line with wax wrap if you prefer.  I used my oven proof rubberised type cake pans(if you can even call them that as they are rather floppy and I can't seem to see how they can be pans but, they most certainly make getting the cake out very easy) that I got from Clicks.
3.  Throw all the ingredients together, seriously yes, I didn't read the instructions and when I saw I had already added the flour in with the butter and only then added the sugar.  Give it all a jolly good beating, adding a little milk to get a nice dropping consistency, the result should be equally successful and YES, it was!

4.  Divide the mixture between the two cake tins, gently spreading with a spatula.

5.  Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, mine took just 15min in my thermofan oven.
6.  Allow to cool in tins and turn out.
7.  Sandwich the cakes together either with butter icing or whipped cream.

This little cake,(as it is a small cake) is perfect for a small family or even if it is just the two of you at home(children have left the home) as you will not have a huge cake to get through.  If you want to make it bigger, just double up and the result will be just fine.  If you prefer, you can just throw all the dough into one cake tin, bake and ice the top.

For the chocolate cake:
This is all purely Ala Janine as I figured if you substituted 25g of the self raising flour for cocoa powder, you would have a nice chocolate cake and YES again, so go ahead make a chocolate cake instead if you are craving chocolate!  When you make your butter icing, you usually need to add a little milk, instead of the milk make up a strong mixture of Ricoffy(or any other instant coffee), about a heaped teaspoon of coffee with a little bit of boiling water.  Add this to your butter icing for a nice chocolaty, coffee flavour, remembering that you will have added cocoa to your icing for the chocolate cake.

Disclaimer:
If your cake has turned out an absolute flop, this disclaimer protects the duplicator of this cake recipe from your demeanour in the kitchen and suggests you make sure that you added the eggs and more importantly, used "SELF RAISING" flour and not just ordinary cake flour.  It is suggested though that if you do use normal cake flour that you add 1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder to ensure a nice riser!

BAKE AND ENJOY!

Find original recipe at below link -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/sponge_cake