And a very merry Vernal Equinox to you too ...

Today is a very special day. Yes, yes,  I know it's Friday ...
... but it's also the Vernal Equinox!

Now these things normally pass me by in the whirlwind of activity that is my daily routine, but the other day I found myself searching around for a reason to bake a cake. As regular visitors will know we don't need much of an excuse to have a party over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers. But I don't bake cakes very often, and, as a result, I still subscribe to the view that a cake is a bit of a celebration. So I found myself casting around for something to celebrate when my recipe finally came together too late for either Mother's Day or St. Pat's. And as only the Vernal Equinox was on the near horizon I decided to run with that.

So what is this Vernal Equinox? Well our dear little planet travels around the sun on an orbit called the ecliptic. It's a journey that takes a year to complete. During the course of that year it tilts on its own axis. When the North Pole tilts towards the sun we have spring and summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and when it tilts the other way we go on our seasonal journey into winter. And because of this tilting behaviour the sun is rarely directly overhead the equator. That only happens twice in the year, as the tilt reverses, and the hemispheres change seasons on the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes.   On those two days of the year, at the tilting points of the seasons, day and night are of equal length. And thereafter the change of the season soon becomes manifest, or it ought to if old Mother Nature is following her script.

It's all text book science today, but way back in the days before anyone went to school, the ancient people of the world saw a special kind of magic in these two days.

I'm always amazed that they noticed, but I suppose if we didn't have television and I had to either grow or catch our dinner every evening before we ate it out in the back garden I might also notice a slew of things that escape me at the moment. Anyway our wily ancestors recognised the Vernal Equinox as the day that marked the shift from the season of cold, dark barrenness to spring, the season of light, growth and the rebirth of the natural world after the long dreary months of winter.

For totally logical reasons many ancient people regarded the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring, as the first day of the year. It was, after all, the day on which the cycle of the seasons kicked off.

The ancient Chinese are said to have seized upon the egg as the emblem of all this happy sunny stuff; a perfect symbol of fertility and the rebirth of nature. Given what they observed to be the perfect balance of the hours of daylight and darkness they imagined that special forces were afoot in the world. Someone, somewhere, on this day, found a perfect egg with a slightly blunt end that they were able to stand on its end: a feat not normally achievable with a regular egg. It was hailed as a miracle! And the sages of the day reasoned that the perfect balance of the day and the night, and the tipping point of the seasons must mean that the celestial bodies were aligned in such a way that the Equinox was blessed with certain gravitational anomalies not present on other normal days.

It was all a load of old hooey, of course. You need to practise a lot, but on just about any day of the year you can balance a blunt-ended egg on its blunt end if you take the pains to do so. Why you'd want to is of course another matter entirely.

Actually, because I like you all so much,  I'll let you into a little secret as to how you can impress all the egg-fanciers out there. If you place a plain wedding ring under the tablecloth in the exact spot where you'd like to balance your egg, and then take pains to remember where you've left it, you can make just about any old egg stand upright on its end, using the ring as a hidden cradle to support it. Here's one I did earlier (photo below) Impressive, heh?

The ancient Chinese art of egg balancing on the Vernal Equinox

Anyway have a very merry Vernal Equinox. As for me: I'm off to peer through the clouds at the solar eclipse and honour this auspicious day with a very large slab of marmalade cake, and I'll worry about bringing order and balance to my waistline in the season of light and rebirth.

All the best for now,


Bonny x

The very best Marmalade Cake in town ...

Yesterday I made a cake.  And, as a cake is a bit of a celebration over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers, I thought I'd better search around for something to celebrate. So having missed St. Pat's and Mother's Day it's a Vernal Equinox and Total Solar Eclipse Cake. How's that for something to celebrate?

Happy Vernal Equinox (on Friday) everyone!

The truth is this cake and I started out together about a week ago. We have history. Sad muppet that I am, I decided to make myself a Mother's Day Cake. The story gets even sadder as I put my experimental mixture into a cake tin that was way too small, which resulted in a cake explosion over the sides of the tin and all over the base of the oven. Then, not satisfied with the mess I'd made, I opened the oven door before the cake had finished rising, and the whole thing flopped. And then, when I finally extracted it I discovered that it was welded to the fancy cake mould, which, contrary to what it said on the label, really wasn't non-stick and ought to have been buttered like an oil-slick pre-launch.

It was cake-carnage, my friends. A great big tripple-whammy of a disaster.

Undaunted, and with a terrier-like determination that would put the Wonder Dog to shame, I tried it again the next day in a humble loaf tin. It was carefully greased and left in the oven for the requisite period of time without any curious door-opening to have a close-up on how the whole thing was getting along. And the result was pretty finger-licking good, even if I do say so myself.

Now the stealth ingredient here, which makes my cake just a little bit epic is the marmalade. It really is good. In fact, to state it plainly, if you like fragrant cardamon notes in your clementine orange marmalade, it's the marmalade of your dreams.  You can check it out here: Cardamon and Clementine Marmalade. It carries those wonderful top notes of cardamon into the cake, and it really is worth getting fat for. If you don't want to faff around making my special super-duper taste-it-in-your-dreams marmalade you can just substitute a tasty alternative of your own. I won't be too prescriptive but do bear in mind that your choice is important: the bottom line is that this cake will only ever be as good as the marmalade you make it from.

Anyway if you'd like to get your chops round some special marmalade cake, here's my recipe:

Ingredients

150 g butter
150 g caster sugar
1 large clementine (You could use any other small orange that you can lay your hands on. Blood oranges are good but their season is so short. My favourite citrus fruit is the clementine so I tend to use those whenever I can.)
2 large eggs
75 g of truly superb marmalade
150 g self-raising flour

And some icing sugar to dust on top of the cake once you're done.

1. Heat the oven to 180ºC  and line/ butter a smallish cake tin. For this recipe I have used a 1 1/2 pint Bundt pan. Alternatively you could use a 20cm x 11cm x 7cm loaf tin. If you're planning on using a Bundt pan make sure to grease it really well and sprinkle a dusting of flour on too for good measure.

2. Beat the butter and the sugar in the mixer until they are light and fluffy.

3. Whisk the eggs, and add them slowly to the mixture, a little at a time. Beat until they are uniformly mixed with the butter and the sugar.

4. Finely grate the skin of the clementine and add it to the mixture along with the marmalade. Mix until everything is uniform.

5. Fold in the flour. It's best to do this by hand with a big metal spoon. Keep going until all the flour has been absorbed without trace. It doesn't take very long so it's not too onerous to mix.

6. Spoon the mixture into the greased/ lined cake tin. Do not fill the cake tin to more than 3/4 of its depth, otherwise you risk a cake explosion over the sides, which is not pretty.

7. Bake for about 40 minutes in the oven, resisting all temptation to open the door and take a peek for the first 20 minutes or so. Check it after 35 minutes to see whether it's ready.

8. When it's done (a skewer, pushed in and then pulled back, should come out clean) take it out of the oven and leave it to cool.

9. When the cake has cooled dust the top with a sprinkling of icing sugar.

Enjoy in the sunshine after the excitement of the solar eclipse (fingers crossed) with a nice pot of tea.

All the best,

Bonny x

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The very top of the morning to you!

And a very Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

May the Good Saint  turn the sunny side up for you.

Slán,

Bonny x

Free ebooks from Bookbub ...

The other day a friend told me about Bookbub.

Have you heard of it? It's an internet site that directs you to book promotions. The publishing houses discount books from time to time to promote new or even well-established authors, and increasingly they're pushing lost leaders with up to 100% discounting. That means, in normal parlance, my friends that in many instances they're giving away ebooks for nothing.

As an insomniac who's always looking for something to read in the dead of night on her iPad the site works quite well for me. Every so often someone, somewhere, seems to be pushing a book that I do rather fancy reading. Admittedly I don't find something compelling on every visit, but you can set up an e-mail alert notifying them of your preferences as to genre and author.  Then, when there's something they think you might be interested in, they send you an email to let you know about it, and you're able to download the ebook from Amazon, Kobe or whoever is offering the deal.

If you're interested in giving them a whirl their website is here: Bookbub. It doesn't cost anything to join. And they've even got some children's titles on offer.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

TGI Friday ... 5 Random things from the week that was ...

Gosh this has been a busy week over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers, but here's my random 5 for Friday:

1. Salt and Silver Photography

One of the highlights of my week was a trip down to the Tate Gallery to see their Salt and Silver photography exhibition. For anyone with an interest in social history or the history of early photography this one is a must-see. Many of the subjects from over a century and a half ago struck me as surprisingly modern. There was much in their body language and in the attitude of their poses that could have belonged to the Facebook generation.

If you'd like to know more you can read about the exhibition here: Salt and Silver Exhibition.

2. Guerilla Gardening

Last Saturday was the most glorious day. The sun shone, the sky was blue and the mercury pushed its way up to a dizzy high of 16º C. Mr B had, several weeks' earlier, promised to help me with a post-winter tidy-up outside. He'd entered the date in his calendar as the day he would devote to the garden. And boy did I get lucky with the weather!

Normally Mr B agrees totally with James Dent: A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. 

But last Saturday I convinced him that we really, really, really had to get rid of the ivy that was growing all round our garden walls. We've got a sweet little walled garden, but that bothersome ivy had grown into a thick forest and was throwing much of it into shadow. Mr B got the proverbial bit between his teeth, and here's what the place looked like the following morning:

Impressive, huh? Well, then of course we had to spend a day and a night clearing up, but that's another story.

3. Slinky Paws returns ...

Just when I thought he'd snuffed it the Slinkster re-appeared for an early-morning raid on the peanuts. I will admit to a certain grudging affection for Slinky, and I'm fine with him eating SOME of the bird food. I only get hot under the collar when he scampers with the whole caboodle.

Old habits die hard!

4. The Wonder Dog's new game

The Wonder Dog and I have spent much of the past week hard at work in the garden. And we've been gloriously happy digging around in the dirt together, and anticipating the full glory of the spring and summer that are to come.

What's she doing leaving all these things buried out here? She'll be really happy when I bring them all safely inside again.

I've been busy planting bedding plants and summer bulbs, which has given rise to a wonderful new game of fetch. The Wonder Dog seemed to be of the opinion that I was getting terribly absent-minded in my dotage, and, no doubt intent on being helpful spent his energy digging up all those things that I'd forgotten about and left buried in the flowerbeds. Needless to say I was less than totally delighted with this assistance, but it's hard to stay cross for long with someone who's as cute as the Wonder Dog.

Well if these bulb things are so special why d'ya bury them in the dirt, huh?

5. Heritage Violets 

A few years' ago I bought some heritage violets. The sale's pitch promised that they were of the self-same strain that Victorian flower sellers used to peddle in Covent Garden. It promised me the smell of sweet nostalgia and oodles of Olde Worlde charm. I wasn't totally convinced, but the lure of a good story, and the fragrant dream of what a bank of sweet-smelling violets would be like in my garden induced me to throw my scepticism to the wind.

And I'm so glad that I did. I really have no idea if they are in any way related to the flowers of yesteryear, but they look like they could be, which is plenty good enough for me. They have wonderful long stems, which makes it easy to gather them into a posy, and they have the sweetest smell. You have to bury your nose in them to capture it properly, but they smell like those parma violet sweets that we used to have when I was a girl. The flowers are so very delicate-looking, but the plants are really robust. I've successfully divided my original plant three or four times, and got them to root in other locations around the garden. They don't seem to mind being in the shade, and they add a lovely interest to difficult shady corners where I've struggled to get anything else to grow.

And that's my random 5 for this week.

All the best for the weekend and fingers crossed the sun will carry on shining,

Bonny x

As shared on Random 5 Friday and Friday Finds