my holiday, and a half-term

so despite being on holiday haven't achieved much, apart from spending time with my family and going for walks.

so here are few pics, that's the best I can do now.

Witley Court and Gardens

After very productive 3 days, when we decorated and cleaned the kitchen and dining room, we enjoyed well deserved break using up our English Heritage membership. For those who don't know it's a lifestyle thing. Some people (like our family) are weird enough to enjoy going round various ruins and gardens. We usually pack a picnic to take with us, and it occupy us for several weekends when weather is decent enough. Some people stick religiously to either English Heritage, some to National Trust. We alternate them. This year we are still using EH. It runs out in the end of May, so we try to make the most of it. After that it will be possibly NT for next year. They are lovely sites and we can take the dog with us to most of them.
Anyway today we embarked on an hour long journey to Worcestershire and visited the Witley Court and Gardens. It was glorious day.

Spring in full swing!

And then, there was this beautiful house with such a sad story. Such a wonderful building which wasn't loved enough, and after a fire in 1937 it fell to the basic human greed. Now English Heritage is looking after it, but it's not in their policy to restore it.

Only thing that got restored is this magnificent fountain. Perseus and Andromeda in full glory.
You can see the shell of the house in the background.

And one more photo of the fountain.

There was another water feature with sculpture of Flora and Tritons, unfortunately it is very damaged.

And a little me hiding in a garden shrine. (Photo taken by my daughter).

If you are in the area visit it. It is worth it.

Birthday cake in the making :-)

So decision made, and because any recipe is just a suggestion I decided to mix and match.

My cake is going to be 2 tier thingy, bottom made of chocolate sponge and top of a poppy seed one. Where I came from poppy seed cakes are essentials for Christmas and Easter, so given my birthday is just a week from Easter - why not. Both cakes will be layered with white chocolate ganache and blackcurrant jam made by my friend. And maybe some of my raspberry curd (homemade of course).
So chocolate sponge:
6 eggs (separated)
150g caster sugar
115g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
40g melted butter (cooled)
pinch of soda bicarb
Vanilla (paste, extract or whatever you want)
All ingredients must be in a room temperature (not straight from the fridge- eggs, or boiling hot- butter).
Whip the egg whites till stiff, in separate bowl whip the yolks with sugar till creamy and light in colour, add melted butter top yolks and keep mixing. Add yolks with butter to whites and gently mix, add flour, cocoa and soda. Mix until smooth but still with lots of air. Prepare the baking tin, line it with paper or parchment. Put the mixture in a tin and bake @180C (gas mark 5) for about 30 min (or till stick comes dry). Then cut it into 3 layers. Et Voila.

Poppy seed sponge
5 eggs (separated)
150g caster sugar
2 tbs ground almonds
120g fine sponge flour
2 tbs corn or potato flour
1 tbs of baking powder (I give 1 heaped tsp of soda)
200g dry poppy seeds (blue ones)

Whip the whites till stiff, add the caster sugar, make sure its properly mixed. Add the egg yolks, keep mixing. Sieve the flours, powder and almonds, add poppy seeds, mix gently not to knock out the air from egg whites. Put in a baking tin (lined again) and bake for 45 min (or till stick comes dry) @180C (gas mark 5). When baked cut it into 3 layers again.

Then, spread jam on the chocolate cake, then put cream on it, and next layer.

And again, and again until you use all the cake layers, or cream, or it will get too high to fit in your fridge. Then spread cream on the top layer, decorate it the way you want and can. Enjoy.

ps. Poppy seed cake can be very dry,so it would do it good if you moisten it with alcohol of some sort (brandy is good) or lemon juice mixed with water and maybe some syrup.

pss. My ganache is definitely my take on recipe, as everywhere they say that you should melt chocolate in cream and the whip it when cool, with white chocolate it was always dieseaster. So I whip the cream until firm then add melted chocolate. At least it keeps its shape.

Little things that made me happy this week

Shopping!
But as Marilyn said "money won't make you happy, shopping will", so I went on a little shopping trip a got a few things.
My new foundation and makeup base.

Few scented candles.

Lovely long white shirt to wear with jeans.

Lovely new notebooks (Women can never have enough of those, right?!), and even lovelier picture frames see here http://emslifeinuk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/tkmaxx-finds.html

And Spring!!!

Apart from that what else can made me happy? Feeling that I actually accomplished something, so I tackled the ironing basket and finished it all, made a roast dinner, and chicken soup from leftovers, and all of that in one afternoon. Spend some time with my family.And got some photos done so I can post them here.
When I read what I wrote I can see that my internal chaos is taking over. Fine, so be it. I can live with it, in fact I live with it for (ime) 35 years. In fact I recognise the pattern, when my "big" birthday is coming up I get this massive urge to change something. So I am changing things, setting myself new challenges. This year is to get back to blogging. I use to wrote a blog (in 2003) in a different place, in a different language. Whole word apart.