Cake Day.

It's been a day of sunshine and showers which began with white horses blowing across the bay.

The builder has been here today and I've been picking his brains to try and solve the porch issue. Basically neither of the companies want to do a pitched roof because the angle will be smaller than usual. It's to do with water running off the slope, not enough angle leads to capillary action sucking water back up and under the tiles. Our builder suggested using a plastic tile which has better tolerances, much joy on my part at this news. Then he got on the phone to the small local company as he knows them and apparently it's also because of the wind blowing in from the sea so they wouldn't want to guarantee the roof even with the plastic tiles. And they've got so much work on their books they wouldn't be able to do it until next April so really they don't want the job. My suggestion is to have either a glass roof or a fibreglass roof both of which would solve the wind and the angle problems. Building work is never simple. 

Sunshine and showers gave us a spectacular rainbow. It was so big with both ends landing in the sea I couldn't fit it all in one photo. There was a section of a double rainbow but it was too faint to show up in the photo.

Today's tasks were to finish decorating the Christmas cakes and pack the truffles. I'd been pretty pleased to find both the green and red food colourings I needed in Lidl's the other day. Not so pleased when I discovered the 'red' was in fact orange or at the most generous interpretation terracotta. But definitely not red. With no time to go back into town to look for red colouring elsewhere I made do and the marzipan apples ended up being oranges. I shall be complaining to Lidl's (hence the photo). Imagine if I'd been in the middle of baking the red velvet wedding cakes I did for Vytas and Sally.

The gold cases I'd bought on-line were a touch too large for the truffles so I was glad I'd grabbed the multi-coloured ones in Morrisons the other day.

Before I added the marzipan pears, oranges and leaves I glazed the tops of the fruit cakes. Making the glaze took longer than it should as I was worried about burning the mixture of dark muscovado sugar, water and whiskey (should have been rum but I wasn't going to use Appleton's for cooking). The recipe simply said 'stir over a low heat until dissolved and simmer for 10-15 minutes until syrupy'. Plenty of leeway for disaster there so I took it slowly, stirred and stirred until it looked 'syrupy' and brushed it over the tops of the cakes.  Now all that's left to do is put ribbons round and pack up securely. Got a couple of felting projects almost finished while Peter made a chicken stew with barley, parsnips, carrots and potatoes. For a change I had the stew as well and very tasty it was too.

PS. I shaped the marzipan first and then put it on plates before dabbing on the food dyes with my finger. Because it was marzipan it was taking a long time to dry so while I stirred the cake glaze with my right hand with my left hand I dried the marzipan with my hairdryer. Lateral thinking eh?