Red Velvet Day.

Another cold day with plenty of sunshine in view if not actually in the garden. But apart from a quick wander around the garden my day has been spent in the kitchen baking Red Velvet cakes. It took me most of the day as my baking is not my specialty.  Not only had I scaled up my original Nigella recipe but I had to make 3 batches. Knowing my tendency to muddle things up I had everything written out and I tried my best to be methodical. The 2 thieving cats, Speedy and Patch were securely banished from the house though I left Squeaky as she rarely attempts to steal stuff.

All was going well to an accompaniment of wedding dress tv when I had a slight disaster! I had overfilled the first batch of cup cakes and they rose over and out of the cases. No good for the wedding as I need them below the top of the cases so I can add jam, buttercream and fondant icing. Never mind, I'll make up the numbers with the lemon and the chocolate cup-cakes. I baked each layer of the big cakes separately and the final cake is still cooling in the tin. It's a good thing I didn't go for a 14" cake as the tin wouldn't have fitted in the rayburn oven which is smaller than a standard oven. Getting the Red Velvet cakes done is a good chunk of the job and the messiest as the red cake mixture was pretty vivid.

I only heard a little bit of scampering around in the loft last night. I checked the trap but there was nothing in it yet. Judging by the number of droppings around in the loft there is a whole colony of mice up there. I still wonder how they get up there. The old part of the house has solid stone walls and the new part has cavity filling between the blocks which had a setting liquid pumped in to make it set into a solid mass.