A Cake to help you Celebrate

First of all Happy valentine's day to you all!

Whenever someone has a birthday, wedding, friends and family round for coffee or Valentine's day or any kind of celebration one of the most important things to think of is the cake.
A special cake is always a symbol of joy and happiness, better still if home made.
Here today is a lovely cake that is very attractive and also delicious, the strawberry flavour icing gives the promise of Spring.

Celebration sponge Cake

For the cake

175g butter, cut in cubes and at room temperature
175g self raising flour or plain flour plus baking powder
175g sugar
3 eggs
2 tbsps. milk
100g coloured confetti, sprinkles or as they used to be called - hundreds and thousands

for the icing
75g strawberries, washed, pureed and sieved
225g butter, at room temperature
375g icing sugar

Make the sponge cake by putting all the ingredients except the sprinkles into a large mixing bowl and whisking together until light and creamy.
Stir in the confetti.
Pour the cake mixture into two 18 cms sandwich cake tins that have been lined with oven paper.
Bake in the oven at 180 for about 25 minutes. Test in the usual way by inserting a knife or toothpick.
Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the icing by beating together the butter and half of the icing sugar until creamy. Add the strawberry juice and the rest of the icing sugar and beat again .
Use half of the icing to sandwich together the two sponges and then decorate the top and sides of the cake with the rest.
Cover the top with coloured sprinkles.

Everything ready

Stir in the sprinkles

Two sandwich tins

Get ready to make the icing

Strawberry juice gives a wonderful flavour

Ready to celebrate

Funny Ways to remember things

The fine weather means that the lake near my home is no longer frozen and the swans and ducks look delighted to be able to splash around again. the wind is making the water ripple and life is returning to the countryside. Walking round the lake with a friend I saw a black and white duck, she knows the names of all the wildlife and confidently replied that it was a coot. then she told me a way to remember which is a moor hen and which is a coot.

A coot has a white stripe and 'coot 'and 'white' have a 't'.
A moor hen has a red stripe and 'moor hen' and 'red' have an 'r'.

Funny isn't it the tricks we use to remember bits of information?

The great lakes, Some Men Have Even Jumped Over
Superior, Michigan, Heron, Eerie, J for the Niagara Falls and Ontario.

Henry VIII wives, divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

The word 'independent' in English and 'indipendente' in Italian, e in the English word, I in the Italian one.
The other way round here:_
confirm - English
confermare - Italian

Putting the clocks back/ Forward
Spring forward, fall back

The Little Prince and his Rose

Aphrodite Rose

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On my balcony there is a beautiful rose. It was a present two years ago. It is called Aphrodite. It bloomed happily all last Summer and then faded away. Now in the middle of Winter a solitary rose has bloomed, quite magnificently. It makes me think of the Little prince and also Beauty and the Beast come to that, and all sorts of things like 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.' You know what it's like.

Anyway I spent my childhood in a literary world of Winnie-the-Pooh, Beatrix Potter, Enid Blyton and Wind in the Willows. They were the friends that shaped my philosophy on life.

 I didn't come across ' The Little Prince' by Antoine Saint Exupèry until I was a teenager.
We had to read another book by Saint-Exupery for A level. It was called 'Vol de Nuit', and was about the pilot of a mail plane and to this day the images and emotions described so vividly in that book accompany me whenever I am on an aeroplane. Powerful writing indeed.

So that's when I got to read about 'the Little Prince' and his rose, the fox, the drawing of the hat which is an elephant, the snake and the whole of life's lesson therein

I went to see the film version of 'the Little prince' last week. It was quite beautiful, and could not have been easy to transfer to the big screen, but it works. The parts of the book are in paper and the other parts of a little girl, her mum and an old man who lives next door are in modern day cartoon style.

Afterwards over hot chocolate and spritz we discussed the life lessons from the story.
There is a lot about solitude and growing up and becoming an adult, but for me the main lessons come from his relationship with the Rose and the Fox.

The Little Prince looks after the Rose so then the Rose needs him and he tames the fox, so then he is responsible for the fox.  The Little Prince thinks the rose is unique but then he sees lots of roses and it takes the fox to make him realize that his rose is still unique , because it's his. If we give our heart to someone, our love and affection then we start to need them. There are people in our lives that need us and we are responsible for them.

What do you think?