Celeb Chefs

What is it with Celeb recipes? I flick through their books (yeah, you know who you are, Tana Ramsay, Nigella Lawson et al) and then, bouyed up with confidence head off to the supermarket to buy copious quantities of eggs, flour and 3 different types of sugar in order to create such lovlies as ginger cake and shortbread only to find that once ready for the oven, the meagre quantities look as if they will not rise (pardon the pun) to the occasion at all. Tana Ramsay's ginger cake recipe led me to believe that the mixture would make two cakes, so I lovingly prepared two tins. Once half the mixture was in one tin it became quite clear that I would end up with nothing thicker than a biscuit in depth, so I threw all caution to the wind and poured it all into one tin. Sure enough, one reasonable cake was the end result. I have checked back again, and whilst her recipe does state 'makes 10 slices', step 7 implores you to 'divide the mixture between two non-stick 2lb bread tins'! Bitch. No wonder people get pissed off with baking. And another thing - I made her shortbread last night, and she says to use a 20cm tin. Well, I measured my tin, as past mistakes are ever in my mind, and it was about a cm short. Now, I struggled to spread the dough out thin enough to cover the base of my too-small tin, and the resultant shortbread was like this:

Thin enough, I am sure you will agree. A 20cm tin would have resulted in even thinner shortbread! I am definitely going to take her recipes with a pinch of salt from now on lol. And I will never forget this cake...

Now, for more civilised activities: The Exeter Crop was a welcome break in the old routine - I love spending the day with like-minded individuals, shoving bits of paper around and snipping and sticking. Oh joy. I did this layout for the weekly UKS challenge:

The challenge was to scrap 1. Something you love, 2. Use something recycled and 3. Use 'pearls'. I have scrapped one of my favourite Disney photos - a lovely wintry, atmospheric morning in Paris which I recall with such pleasure, and I made a be-ribboned tag from an old clothes label and stitched on some pearly buttons. I am pleased with the end result. I finished this one before lunch and then spent the next 3-hours cutting out bits of paper.... no change there then.