Getting ready for Movember 2013!

2 WEEKS TO GO EVERYONE!

2 weeks until the little spikes of hair start to peek through.

2 weeks until a dark shadow starts to appear on our friends', husbands', brothers' upper lip.

2 weeks until men start to compare how much facial hair they can grow.

2 weeks until the funny wax, the mini combs and the darker hair dye comes out to play.

2 weeks until MOVEMBER everybody!

This is one of my favourite times of the year... When everything MO comes to life!  Mo cookies, mo cakes, mo t-shirts, mo accessories and oh yeah - the real thing as well, all those men walking along the street with their little moustaches.  I love seeing and knowing those people participating in Movember!

And why wouldn't you?  It is SUCH a worthwhile cause and has become really popular in recent years!  This year will be the 3rd year my husband has grown a moustache for Movember and the 2nd year I have officially been a Mo-Sista also collecting donations and doing my bit to support him in his growing!

Movember is a moustache growing charity held annually each November to raise awareness and funds for many aspects of men's health, in particular about prostate cancer.

Last year I started my Etsy store selling Moustaches for Movember... I wanted to be able to wear a moustache as well as just watching my husband's grow :)  And so, my hair clip and jacket pin moustaches were born!  Here's the mini post I wrote about last year's collection of MOs!

This year I have got to work again, making new moustaches in a variety of new and exciting colours.  On Thursday I sat down FINALLY to do some sewing.  I haven't used my sewing machine all Summer and I could hear it crying for me.... I have missed it but I'm really glad I got it out and got sewing this week - all is well now!

This isn't a tutorial as such, but rather just a run down on my sewing day earlier this week - making a couple of moustaches for an Etsy order ... anddd a couple just for me and Jonathan :-)

All my supplies out, and ready to start moustaching!

Two different grey colours for my order, and a special teal just for me :)  It is my favourite after all, and I thought it would look great against my grey jacket I've been wearing a lot so far this Autumn.

Templates from last year in small, medium and large all ready to go!  This week I made 2 medium for the order, and 2 small for us.  I definitely have to make these more sturdy if I am going to keep using them!  Right now they're just paper, but I'm thinking of transferring them to something thicker soon.

Marked out with tailor's chalk and ready to be cut out...

All done and ready to be sewn up :)

Now to find some coordinating thread... I just about had the perfect ones.  It did mean for a lot of changing over of the spools on the machine... but oh well, it was only 4!

4 moustaches sewn up, stuffed with Poly-Fil and here they are ~ cute little chubby moustaches ready for their clips to be attached.

The smaller ones are definitely harder than the medium and large - just a bit more fiddly, and harder to stuff than the bigger ones... but I do like the way they look!

A bit of posing for my 4 moustaches while they were waiting for the glue gun to heat up!

All finished :)  1 hair clip barrette... and 3 bar pins to attach to a jacket, on your purse, your backpack... to wear as a bow tie, or maybe even a tie clip!?

So there I was a little while later, 4 moustaches richer!  2 to send out to my first Etsy customer of the Movember season (yey!) and the others for our house!  I chose a Toronto Maple Leafs blue for Jonathan and my favourite teal colour for me, but perhaps depending on the outfit I'll be borrowing his as well :-P

Here are the other colours on offer this year!  Lots to choose from ...

And with this new set of moustaches in all new colours I thought a new business card was needed too.

A few weeks ago I worked REALLY hard on the new blog header (look up!), and also my Facebook cover photo and Etsy profile picture so I thought it was time to put some of these to use on paper as well!  So I worked EVEN HARDER in Picmonkey and designed a few social media icons first (wow you graphic designers do fiddly work!) and then put it all together into a business card... 

For now they are just printed at home on cardstock, and the back side of it printed a little off colour so I definitely need to get these printed in better quality BUT for now, they'll do!  I'm pretty pleased with how they look :)  What do you all think?!  Did I miss anything?  Design feedback very welcome!

And so, with my thank you tag attached these MOs are ready to be delivered, in time to be worn right from November 1st.

In addition to being a really fun little project for my Etsy store (which yes, isn't that big!) I'm also donating $2 per MO to Movember for every moustache sold from now until October 31st!

Here's to a really successful Movember 2013 and please do go check out my Etsy store to see my listings =D

And remember, whether it's a real hairy one, or a hair/jacket clip...

* Wear your moustache with pride this Movember *

Preserved Peaches one day, Peach Bundt Cake the next!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  To all the Canadians celebrating today, I hope you have a fun filled day with lots of turkey, family and friends.

We had an amazing weekend away, I was spoilt by my husband to a surprise weekend in the beautiful Haliburton, Ontario surrounded by amazing Fall colours, wild turkey, deer and lots of lakes!  And then yesterday we got to spend the day with Jonathan's family and cousins at their cottage with a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.  What a great weekend :)

So now, it's a bonus day off work and it's catch up day!

... Starting with... my Peaches and Cream Cake that I promised you a couple of weeks ago.  I made this peach bundt cake for our annual choir day out and meeting which of course took place along with a pot luck!  You already saw the DIY cute and easy cake bunting I made to music it up but the cake hasn't been blogged yet.  So today here it is!  

We were so lucky to be given a delicious jar of preserved peaches from Jonathan's grandmother a few weeks ago, so when I was thinking of something to make for the choir (thinking about what would feed everyone, but also be kind of new and fun to try) these jumped into my brain.  Peaches!  I've never baked with peaches before so this was perfect... off to the internet to find a recipe.

I found this great Week of Menus recipe that I slightly altered, but it served a perfect starting point for this bundt cake :)  

For the cake...

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 vanilla pod, split (the original recipe called for 1 pod, but I actually only had 1/2 of one!  The flavour still came through just fine luckily!)

1 cup sour cream

1 cup diced peaches (as you know, I used preserved peaches, but you can go with fresh if they're in season!)

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 350°F/ 180°C and grease and lightly flour the inside of a 10 inch bundt pan.

2.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl and set aside for later.

3.  Using a mixer, beat the butter until creamy (around 2 minutes) and gradually add the sugar and beat at medium-high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy.

4.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Beat mixture after each addition.  Scrape the sides of the bowl down as necessary.  

5.  Scrape out the vanilla seeds from the pod and beat into the egg mixture. Keep the empty vanilla pod - don't throw it out yet, you'll need it for the syrup!

6.  At a low speed, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream but beginning and ending with the flour.

7.  Scoop half of the batter into the bundt pan and spread with a spatula.

8.  Add diced peaches to the first half of the batter.  I chose to keep the peaches in the centre, so that the batter would completely surround the peaches keeping them right in the middle of the cake, with none escaping out of the sides!

9.  Scoop the remaining half of the batter on top of the peaches.  Spread with a spatula to smooth down the top surface.

10.  Bake in the centre of the oven for 50 - 60 minutes (mine actually took 65 minutes to be precise!  Keep an eye on it and test with a cake tester/skewer to check it is cooked through).  Cool the cake in the bundt pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes then flip out onto another cooling rack placed on top of a baking sheet or tray to continue cooling.  

And for the syrup - make while the cake is baking...

Ingredients:

1/3 cup fresh peach puree

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon peach syrup from the jar of preserved peaches OR 1 tablespoon orange juice

1 empty vanilla pod (kept from earlier in the cake baking!)

Method:

1.  Take 4 slices of peach (leftover from the jar of preserved peaches), and puree it until smooth.  Depending on your size of slices it may or may not make exactly 1/3 cup of puree but that's what you're aiming for - try it until you get that much puree!

2.  Combine peach puree, sugar, empty vanilla pod and syrup (or juice) in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves - around 3 or 4 minutes.

3.  Remove the pan from teh heat, and using a pastry brush, dab the syrup generously all over the surface of the warm cake, allowing it to soak into the cake before giving it another coat.  Then let the cake cool completely.

Then when you're done making and baking, it's photo time of course!

For this cake, as it was for a choir event I was excited to try making some cake bunting... Hehe BUNTING for the BUNDT cake (joke credit to my husband as he proof reads this!)...

I thought this would be the perfect cake for some bunting... with the poles on either side of the cake, music flags strung out over the hole of the cake.  If you missed the tutorial on this, click here!  It was really quick and easy to make, and I thought it was a really cute little way to glam up the cake :)

And of course, a little notecard to tell everybody what the cake was!  I like to know what I'm about to eat, especially if, on first glance you can't exactly see what would be inside, or what the flavours are.

I chose to call this a 'Peaches and Cream' cake... I know traditionally, peaches and cream would be sliced peaches and whipped cream - but the peaches are there for sure, and the addition of the vanilla pod gives it the vanilla cream flavour :)

It tasted really delicious, the preserved peaches were even better than fresh peaches in my opinion - because they have been soaking in a delicious peach sugar syrup for a while before even going into this cake!  The cake was moist, and had such a thick peach glaze on the outside which gave it a sugary crunch before the mouthful of cake!

Fresh peaches, peach syrup, along with vanilla cake = yum!  

Any more jars of preserved peaches out there, I'd be happy to receive them!!!

A Taste of Britain: Cherry Bakewells for a British Bride-to-Be ♥

What a fun day!  I had the pleasure of being invited to a friend's bridal shower out in Hamilton today - somewhere I had never been although I have lived in Toronto for over 4 years now!  So off I went on a little mini adventure of my own, taking the bus and the train (with some quality book reading time to myself!!) and getting to spend the day with an old friend from England who also now lives in Canada - yey!

I'm super excited that I will get to share in their wedding day in November, and was so happy to be able to join her today at her English tea party themed shower!  What great friends she has :)  Everything was decorated with red, white and blue, with streamers, bunting and Union Jack patterned plates her sister even shipped from England for the party!  There were afternoon tea style sandwiches, scones and teacup cupcakes as well as lots of amazing tea cups and saucers for the tea of course.  Everything was delicious - I'm stuffed!!

For the party I asked if I could take something along, perhaps something English inspired.  And they said yes!  Yey!  An excuse to bake wahoo :-D

I knew the perfect item for the day - something I had baked just once before and included on my blog when I first started to write up posts before I made the blog live, and to be honest...it's a terrible post with terrible photos... so here goes take 2!  Hope you don't mind the repeat - but honestly, check it out and make the comparison - I hope you think this one is better hehe!

This Cherry Bakewell traybake definitely was the front runner while thinking about the best thing to bake.  I knew my friend had mentioned Bakewell Tarts whilst once talking about English treats we miss!  And I thought a traybake style would be a good one to cook, and then slice up each to eat in little pieces for party food.  I also love how these little squares look, the pure white icing flooded over the top, and then of course a cherry on top - literally!!

I got some really nice feedback from everyone - it was great to hear that they all liked the cakes - especially as they were something they hadn't tried before :)  I know I also got a big thumbs up from Jonathan too - he got a few of the extras before I left for the shower ~ Breakfast Bakewells!!  ... But it was nice to get the positive comments too from not my biased husband!!!

So, if you're also unfamiliar with Cherry Bakewells here's the breakdown of what makes it SO SUPER delicious!

First off, the bottom layer is a deliciously unhealthy sweet shortcrust pastry.  The original recipe stated to use the ready-made ready-to-roll kind... However not only is this sweet shortcrust not really available like that anywhere I have seen in Toronto, but also, where's the fun in that?!  I rarely get the chance to do much pastry cooking so it's fine by me to have the opportunity to do this.  But if you're in a country - like England where you can buy this ready-made pastry easily, it certainly would cut the cooking time down.

So bottom layer pastry, with a juicy layer of strawberry jam on top.  Next up is the almond spongey cake - a frangipane topped with a thick layer of icing, and sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds and of course, that cherry on top!

So it's a little of a Bakewell Tart (pastry, jam and frangipane topped with sliced almonds) and a little more of a Cherry Bakewell (my favourite is the Mr. Kipling brand!) which are baked in small tart shells and topped with the thick icing layer and a cherry on top.  These are some we ate recently brought back from my July trip to England :)

Mix those two delicious treats together and bake in a traybake and you have this Cherry Bakewell traybake that makes for a perfect sweet addition to any English tea party!

Recipe time!  I'll include the recipe for the pastry too if you want to try this out as well, let me know if you have any questions about any part of it :)  Would be happy to spread the cherry bakewell love ♥

For the pastry... This made 565g of pastry dough which covered the traybake pan (33x23cm) and had some left over.

Ingredients:

300g plain flour
150g unsalted butter, chilled and chopped.
90g caster sugar (for the first time I actually tried using the Lantic dissolving sugar as I often cannot find caster sugar here... it worked!  I'll use it again for sure)
1 egg yolk
1.5 tablespoon chilled water

Method:

1.  Combine flour, butter and sugar in a bowl (or food processor) and rub between fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.  I use my fingertips for the majority of this process, until the butter is soft and combined with the flour in the breadcrumbs, but then also use the pastry cutter just to make sure no lumps are left!

2.  Add the yolk and chilled water and combine until the dough just comes together.

3.  Turn the pastry onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth.  Shape into a disc and wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

So 30 minutes to kill?!... Nope!  Time to get to work on the cake part of the traybake....(and also to kindly ask your VERY KIND husband to run to the shop to get some seedless strawberry jam, because the one in your fridge you thought was correct ACTUALLY was raspberry ... booo!!)

For the frangipane:

Ingredients:

500g sweet shortcrust pastry
6 tbsp strawberry jam (I chose seedless as a personal preference for a smoother taste!)
200g unsalted butter
200g granulated sugar (I didn't want to risk the dissolving extra fine sugar here for this but if you have the real deal caster sugar go with that!)
4 eggs
100g ground almonds
100g self-raising flour
1 tsp pure almond extract
300g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
3 tbsp water
24 glacé cherries
25g toasted flaked almonds (2 minutes carefully watched in the toaster oven did it for me)

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 200°C/390°F.
2.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to fit the base of the traybake pan.  (Mine is a Wilton 33 x 23cm)

3.  Spread the jam over the pastry base.

4.  Place the butter and caster sugar in a large bowl and beat in mixer (or with a hand whisk) until smooth and creamy.

5.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding 1 tbsp ground almonds after each addition.

6.  Add the flour, remaining ground almonds and almond extract and stir well.

7.  Spoon the mixture over the jam, spreading to make an even layer.

8.  Bake for 35 - 40 minutes until well risen, firm and golden.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.

At this point, once the cake was cooled, I actually very carefully (and maybe too riskily) turned out the cake/pastry onto a chopping board as I didn't really want to be slicing the cake in the non-stick pan.  If you're not as weird about that as I am do just leave it in there and pour the icing over and cut into it no problem!

9.  When the cake is cooled make a start on the icing.  Sieve the icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and add 3 tbsp water to make a fairly thick icing.

10.  Spoon the icing on top, spreading evenly.

11.  Decorate with glacé cherries and flaked almonds and leave to set.

12.  Cut the tart into squares or rectangles, serve and enjoy :)

Like seriously enjoy... the crunchy flaky bite through the pastry, the juicy fruity jam layer and the spongey almond flavour with the added sweetness on top.  I'm about to enjoy one of the extras right now actually... YUM!

Happy Bakewell-ing!  

And HUGE congratulations to the bride-to-be ♥ 

I'm a big fan of British girl marrying Canadian boy and can't wait to share your special day :)