cake wreck

Originally uploaded by Peter J Matthews

You must have heard about the blog cakewrecks. Well, here’s my very own contribution to that staple. We had a Christmas “bake-off” at work and this was my very own contribution. Underneath those layers of badly applied icing and silver sugar balls lurks a rather unpleasantly dry victoria sponge covered with apricot jam. What’s more – I won. For the “festive theme” of my cake.

I’ve not been up to much lately except being very busy at work, but check out my flickr photostream for some nice pictures of sunrises.

A couple of weeks later we went back and picked a load and I made blackberry jam. I found the recipe by good ol’ google and followed the low sugar recipe from parkgateshrimp on this Good Housekeeping forum. The jam was lovely, but a bit runny as there wasn’t enough pectin in the sugar and fruit.

This year I thought I’d have another go. I picked 9lbs of brambles on Saturday (ended up covered in nettle stings and pricked everywhere). And on Sunday I invested in a jam thermometer, jam funnel and some preserving sugar set to work. I made 4 and-a-half kilos of jam and this time added cooking apples – including keeping the core and skins and chopping them up and putting them in a muslin which I left in the cooking jam to add yet more pectin. I was even hanging over the saucepans to make sure the jam reached 105 degrees Celsius. And it’s still runny!

Looks like I’ll be back on them paths next August to see if I can get the flippin’ jam to set…

They also asked me to do a reading at the wedding, with 48 hours notice; they had to be vetted by the Registry Office beforehand, just in case I insulted any evangelical Christians who happened to be skulking about waiting to be deeply offended by any reference to “wedding” or “marriage”. Luckily, one of the corners came up trumps with a beautiful poem. On the day I almost blubbed my little eyes out reading in front of the assembled families. The respective mothers liked it so much they asked for copies of it. Et voila:

Basically two £1.99 picture frames from Poundstretcher, some card, printed copies of said poems and some of the leftover tartan ribbon. One Scottish version and one über Scottish version and a whole hour’s work. And hopefully the poet won’t mind me posting it here as well:

This poem was written by one of the other Corners here. It must not be quoted elsewhere without their express permission.

I thought I’d start off with some information about why and how I got into craft. I’m nowhere near as serious about it as some of the other corners, but I will readily turn my hand and make things if I’m in the mood. I’ve made homemade Christmas cards for the past two years for a start.

I was thinking about this at the weekend, and realised that for the years when I was about 11-17 I had a model railway (not at all as good as the one pictured). As I moved to my later teens and got a part time job, my wee Hornby set grew to be a model town, 8′ by 8′, which I christened “Havinge”.

I took it very seriously – I didn’t just buy the stuff ready-made from Hornby. Oh no, I was all about making stuff from scratch from card and plastic kits. My bedroom was a world of polystyrene cement and PVA glue.

I recall I once bought a pack of 100 little (about 2cm tall) plastic people you had to paint yourself. I set too with my paintbrush with one bristle left on it. After a few women and men in civilian clothes, carefully painting individual blouses and jackets, I got very bored and realised there were a lot of uniformed men in the set. Dunking their bodies in khaki paint, dunking their heads in flesh paint and then dunking them in khaki for their caps was a lot easiery. It was then that Havinge started preparing for war! I got so confident in building things that I’d adapt shop-bought kits. I got a buffet and restaurant car set, and since the LNER used to run articulated rakes of coaches, I articulated these two carriages on one bogey (train speak, don’t worry) all by little ol’ self (although they struggled to take corners at speed). I was most proud when I made my own railway station building and signal box based on the clean lines of 1930s modernism, like the De La Warr Pavillion or Midland Hotel in Morecambe. As I was at school at the time, a woodwork teacher gave me some scraps of wood veneer which I used to line the inside of the station building, constructing little ticket windows and chairs and tables with it.

I think doing all this, although it was a bit odd for a teenage man to be sat in his bedroom playing with tiny trains, has given me the confidence these days just to dive into to crafty things and do them – the chances are they’ll look alright. And it’s the process of making, more than anything, that’s enjoyable about craft. Oh, and I’m brilliant at papier mache. So long as you want a tiny hill or a railway cutting…