Happy Friday friends. Another week has quietly and rather quickly, slipped by and we're just about at the 2020 midpoint.
There hasn't been a lot of sewing around here this week, but I hope to remedy that this afternoon/evening when I join Wendy for FNSI.
I worked up a mock layout for my hexie quilt (which I blogged about here) on EQ8. I liked the look of it on the screen, but when I layout my actual scrappy hexie blocks with black and white print singles around them, I wasn't in love with this idea any longer.
It all looks a bit wishy-washy and the individual hexie flowers don't stand out enough. I packed these all away and into the UFO drawer until I'm inspired again. I think that is what's been lacking lately - motivation. I'll go back to the drawing board at some point and work out what I will do with them.
One this that hasn't been lacking this week is cake baking. Last week I made a whole orange cake and then this week, I've baked two more. On Monday it was hubby's birthday, so I made him a marble cake. It didn't turn out very 'marbly' but was quite yummy.
Last night I had the oven on when I was preparing dinner and thought I'd better make something else while I had the power on. Do you do this too? I remember when I was young, my grandmother would turn on the oven once a week to bake bread (which would last us the whole week) and she'd also bake other things while the oven was on. I guess this was one of the ways she'd keep her electricity bills down - limiting oven usage.
So anyways, I seem to have taken that on and whenever I need to use the oven, I always try to have extras ready to put in there to eat through the next couple days - things like roast vegetables or a zucchini slice.
Back to the cake - it's a lemon yoghurt cake. I'll share the recipe below in case anyone wants to try it. It's lemon season here in Australia and it seems that everyone's backyard trees are heaving with ripe fruit.
Lemon Yoghurt Cake
Ingredients:
1 large lemon (zest and juice)
150g sugar
3 eggs
80g vegetable oil (sunflower or canola will work)
200g plain yoghurt (I use Greek style yoghurt)
200g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
Optional - icing sugar
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180ºC and grease a cake tin (I love using a bundt tin).
Place the sugar, zest of the lemon and eggs into a bowl and use an electric mixer to mix until combined.
Add the remaining ingredients plus the juice of 1/2 the lemon into the bowl and mix for a few minutes until its well combined and smooth.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately 30 minutes. Check it with a skewer to make sure it's cooked through.
Allow it to cool in the cake tin for 10 minutes before transferring it to a serving plate.
Dust it with icing sugar if you like or do as I did and add the rest of that lemon juice to some icing sugar, stir it through to make a runny icing and drizzle it all over the top. YUM!
Thank you for the cake recipe, I love a good lemon cake and look forward to trying this next week. Baking is my happy place and I love to have a baking morning and fill the house with yummy things. x
ReplyDeleteI like where you're going with your EP hexie project. IN your EQ rendering, you've used mostly black spacer hexies which have good value contrast with your flowers. In your fabric version, the mostly black hexies contrast nicely, but the ones with a lot of white in them read medium rather than dark, and are also busy. You might like to try replacing them with all black or very dark B+W prints for better contrast and better definition of the flowers. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYum, cake.
ReplyDeleteI want to do some baking this week-end, or tonight. I want to make more cinnamon rolls, try to add less flour this time... ha, and a low calorie cheese cake I make with part cottage cheese. It is delish.
Anyway, I LOVED the hexie quilt idea and I see with your eq version, each of the hexie flowers were the same exact fabrics used. take that all apart and make another kingfisher quilt. I love this idea of the black. Maybe try making each flower the same fabric. I love hexie projects, so get back to it Anorina, just make new ones.
I am going to get working on a hexie project again, maybe another kingfisher quilt, or something like that. Your fabrics are so pretty.
Now I need cake like crazy, but I will wait, first cheese cake then cinnamon rolls.
Im sure you will get some wonderful inspiration for your hexies.... love the sound of your cake....
ReplyDeleteHugz
Your cake sounds wonderful, very yummy. I am sure inspiration will strike with your hexies.
ReplyDeleteThat cake looks delicious Will have to give it a try
ReplyDeleteNo fun stitching till your motivation comes back which Iam sure it will
Happens to us all
Hi Anorina i love your hexies,lots of beautiful colour and thankyou for the cake recipe i will have to make this one,looks so yummy,hope you have a lovely weekend my friend xx
ReplyDeleteI am sure you will find the right layout for all those pretty hexies. Yes definitely more than 1 item in the oven at a time person here.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand about not having motivation. Sometimes quiltmaking is a "mood" activity, and we just can't all be gung-ho for quiltmaking, all the time! It's nice that you enjoy baking. Me too, as I adore sweets. But for two reasons, I don't do it often: 1) I don't need the calories! Continuing to make myself exercise during quarantine has already been challenging, let alone being too-close to the kitchen! And, 2) My husband is the cook. He spends the most time in the kitchen, and thankfully, doesn't have too much of a sweet tooth. Though, during quarantine, due to inaccessibility to yeast and flour, he has perfected key lime pie! It's w-a-y too delicious! I hope you're giving yourself grace from working on those hexies. It takes the right time and the right knowing-what-to-do to make the doing fun. Enjoy the process! By the way... are you using the New Blogger yet? What do you think? I'm no more satisfied with this version than the old version.
ReplyDeleteI hope you found some inspiration for Friday night...and I'm sure you'll get a great idea for your hexies at some stage. Your baking sounds delicious - thank you for sharing the recipe. I do think to myself, oh I should pop something else in the oven while it's on but don't always follow through...!
ReplyDeleteInstead of trying to redo the hexie blocks, you could sew them on to background fabric, here's an example I found, something like this would be pretty. https://www.etsy.com/listing/653722165/flowers-for-emma-pdf-pattern-176?ref=shop_home_active_60
ReplyDelete