Four Years

I don't do it for the page views or the free stuff.  I don't worry about meaningless scores or web pages that rank blogs on an computer algorithm rather than quality and beauty.  I'm not rude to people for the sake of being rude to people. I don't stamp my feet when a photo doesn't get accepted to TasteGawker or whatever.  I've never cried myself to sleep over Twitter followers or Facebook likes.

It isn't nonchalance.  Not at all.

For me, it's about ice cream tacos.  

It's looking back at your first post and laughing at the horrid photo and use of too many exclamation marks.  It's about asking twitter what to do with gluts of courgettes* or too many clementines.  It's about drippy icing and seeing whether you can cram one more cake tin into an already full dishwasher.

It's about big life things.

It's cake.  It's the pickles you make for your dad and the honey ice cream that you make for your mum.  It's about self saucing puddings that are truly shocking.  It's about love for your stomach. It's about you. 

Thank You 
for the past four years of witty comments, sage advice and generally being totally sweet

Blog birthday high five! 

(Exclamation marks!!! More exclamation marks!!! More!!!!!!)

*The answer to a courgette glut is brownies.  Always brownies.  

{Closed} Giveaway: Corner Cottage Bakery is 3!

Happy birthday, tiny blog.

And as you can't have a birthday without presents, one lucky person can win all of these:-

A china cup, bowl and plate set.

A set of measuring spoons.

A set of bright paper straws.

A bag of roasted cocoa beans. I use these in my Thyme, Honey and Cocoa Bean Scones but they are hugely versatile.

A copy of one of my favourite recipe books.

To enter, all you have to do is simply leave a comment.

I've also launched the brand new Pinterest board for Corner Cottage Bakery's posts which you can see here. You can earn an extra entry by following me on Pinterest. If you already do or have done so, please leave a separate comment.



Small Print
This giveaway will close on the 14th May 2013 at 11.59pm GMT.
Any entries after that will be considered void.
Valid entries will be numbered and then picked through a random number generator.
Any accidental duplicated entries will be deleted and not entered.
A maximum of two entries per person is permitted.
Due to having edibles included and postage costs, this giveaway is only open to UK residents. You must be able to provide me with a valid UK postal address if you are the winner.
The decision on the winner is final and no further correspondence on the matter will be entered into.
The winner will be published on this blog on the 15th May 2013 - I will endeavour to contact the winner but the onus remains on the winner to get in touch.
If the winner fails to claim their prize after two weeks from publication on the 15th May 2013, the prize will be redrawn in the same fashion.
There is no cash alternative for the prize.
My email address is on the About Me section of this blog if you have any further queries.

*GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED*

The winner is...

Milkpetal

(I've sent you a quick email, but if you haven't received it, please send me your postal address on cornercottage(at)hotmail(dot)com )

Rainbow Cake

I made this cake for my blogs first birthday and as promised, here is the recipe!  I’ve been itching to make one of these cakes for ages!  They look so unassuming from the outside until they are cut into and people gasp and say “wow!”

I baked my cakes in three batches of two.  I didn’t want to put more than two in my oven at a time due to space and I wanted them cooking evenly. 

Altogether you will need:-

570gr unsalted butter

570gr caster sugar

9 eggs

3tsp vanilla extract

570gr self raising flour

3tsp baking powder

Food colouring (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)

Buttercream Icing

300gr butter

700gr icing sugar

1, For each batch (two cakes) you want to cream together 190gr of butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

2, Beat in three of the eggs along with 1tsp of vanilla extract

3, Sift in 190gr of the flour along with 1tsp of the baking powder

4, Fold this until just combined.  Don’t mix too much at this stage.  

5, Divide the batter into two bowls and add food colouring to each.  Bear in mind that the colour of the cake will be brighter than the batter but make them as bright as possible without overbeating.

6, Pour each batter into a greased or lined 7inch sandwich tin and bake in a preheated oven at 170o/c for 25 minutes

7, Cool the cakes and make the next two batches in the same way.

8, When you have all six cakes cooled and ready to be iced , trim all the cakes to a six inch diameter and make sure they are level using a cake leveller or a knife and a steady hand. 

9, Make one batch of butter cream icing by beating 150gr of butter until really pale and light then fold in 350gr icing sugar with a couple of teaspoons of milk and a couple of drops of vanilla extract.  If you want a really white butter cream add the tinest bit of blue food colouring and beat well.  I used a skewer to add the food colouring.  It’ll offset some of the yellow tinge. 

10, Use this batch to spread a small layer of icing between each cake

11, Whip up the next batch and give the cake a thin crumb coating.  Pop it in the fridge for a couple of hours so the crumb coat sets so your final ice will be all lovely and crumb free.

12, Remove the cake from the fridge and apply the rest of the icing to the cake using an offset spatula.  I swirled the top and then used a dessert spoon to lightly drag up the surface of the butter cream to create the stripes. 

13, Leave for a couple of hours in a cool place so the butter cream sets a little before cutting

14, This is a seriously large cake.  You have been warned.  Eight of us had a go at it and it beat us.  It beat us bad.  There was over half of it left.  And we all really love cake… 

Happy Belated Blogrthday

I was quite happily sitting in the bath last night, debit card in my mouth, flicking about on the internet, whilst repeating the mantra “Do. Not. Drop. iPhone. In. Bath”, and booking my best friend’s birthday surprise. 

Birthdays are cool.  Well, other peoples are.  I always book for me and the best friend to go and do something rather than buying her a present.  Memories are better, sometimes, than gifts.  We’ve been on the London Eye, been to the Ice Bar and this year, I have just found the perfect thing for us to do.  But it’s a secret. 

That’s when the word birthday stuck in my head.  I knew my blog’s birthday was in May and a couple of swift clicks confirmed that it was a May birth for my blog.  But May 1^st?!?  Whoops…

So here is my big 1^st birthday blog cake.  It looks pretty plain but looks can be deceiving…  Hold back the hair.  Make a wish.  Totally wish I could share this with all the awesome people I’ve met through food blogging. 

We took it to a BBQ and eight of us barely managed half of it.  Recipe to follow.