For this Valentine’s Day, I decided to make a chocolate cake, albeit with a few unusual ingredients. Chocolate with cardamom is one of my favourite combinations. Cardamom brings a wonderful aromatic quality to dark chocolate. For me, it makes chocolate taste lighter, almost citrusy with a hint of spice. Continue Reading…
When I shipped off all my clothes and paraphernalia last week, I have to say I felt very liberated. I did a massive purge of stuff that was past it’s sell by date and bits that I rarely use. I was feeling very Zen and minimalist. This week, however, I began to feel a tad lost and bereft of my things. Continue Reading…
Madeira cake is one of my favourites. It seems wholesome and homely, even if it is full of butter and sugar! My grandad used to love a hunk of Madeira with a piping hot tea, sweetened with half a bowl of sugar. I made these little cakes for the OH, as he too likes a plain and simple cake. I came home that evening and found him spreading butter onto the Madeira cake . I had to laugh, as that’s exactly how my grandad ate his. It turns out that’s how the his Dad ate his too. I personally like mine just as they are without extra butter. Continue Reading…
It all started with a brown piece of LEGO®. To me it looked like a shiny cube of delicious milk chocolate. Wouldn’t it be great if it actually was chocolate? The cream coloured pieces could be sweet white chocolate and the glossy black pieces a rich dark chocolate. If only that were possible, I thought. Well, with the help of some magic blue stuff, I made my chocolate LEGO® dream come true. It was pretty simple to make them too. Continue Reading…
Update: On July 14th, two days after posting I received an email from Ernő Rubik himself saying that he liked my cake. I guess the world is really a very small place.
‘ Thanks for the nice birthday surprise which sweetens the bitterness of passing time.’
Hungarian Ernő Rubik invented the Rubik’s cube in 1974. He was born on the 13th of July, 1944. Myself and my other half set about making a birthday cake, worthy of the great man himself. Battenberg cakes are constructed of rectangular pieces of alternatively coloured Victoria sponge cake, sandwiched together by jam and held together with walls of marzipan. We decided that the different pieces of cake could by dyed the traditional six colours of the Rubik’s cube – white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow. Then to make the cake a little more Rubik’s like, we decided to have each slice of the cake reveal a different combination of coloured squares, just like a Rubik’s cube. To achieve this, we cut the coloured rectangles of sponge into different lengths. This was definitely a case where I needed the engineering mind of my other half to figure out the maths of this cake. It took a little planning to get it right, however I think it might just be a worthy birthday treat. I’m not sure if Ernő has a sweet tooth but hopefully he might enjoy this puzzling cake.
My dear departed granddad used to love cherry cake with lashings of real butter and a cup of hot sweet tea. For years my gran used to make these delicious cherry cakes and it’s something that always brings me back to my childhood at home on a Sunday. Lately I have been feeling very nostalgic so I decided to give this cake a go for myself. To be honest I was really proud of my efforts and the rest of the family loved it too. However, my gran had the final word – she liked the taste but deemed it unworthy of the blog! Continue Reading…
You can find some of my favorite gluten-free recipes in my eBook available from Amazon.
I'm Vicky and Stasty is my simple and tasty food recipe blog. I love to cook and I love to talk about food, so this blog is really my ramblings and thoughts about cooking and eating. Some of the recipes are my own and some are ones that I found on the net or picked up from my favorite cookbooks. I cook everything in our little kitchen in beautiful Washington. I am aided and abetted by my I.T guru/tantrum-trouble-shooter/editor and chief-taster otherwise known as the OH or Nelius.