Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Today, a dull, bitterly cold, grey day in February, I'm all about brightening up the outlook with some yummy cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting and the very brightest sprinkles I could find.

Carrot cake is a really easy cake to make. It's pretty much guaranteed to turn out deliciously moist due to the water content of the carrots. You could make this recipe as a sandwich cake with the cream cheese frosting serving as a sandwich layer in between, and on top. Alternatively you could make it in squares. 

Emi's school is having a cake sale this afternoon, so I'm going down the cupcake route to max-up the number of units for the punters.  

Selfridges rocks the Granny Square ...

I'm not sure what's going on down at Selfridges on London's Oxford Street, but it looks like they're doing a homage to the Granny Square!

This gloriously colourful window caught my eye this morning as I was scampering past (late) for a meeting.

Ode to January ...

We've made it! We've survived January ... and in the end it really wasn't too bad. Cold and chilly, but with lots of blue skies and sunshine; it was a lot better than the murky, grey month I'd been expecting.

So - onwards and upwards - let's move bravely on to February.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

January blues banished ...

I've been known to bleat on about how much I hate January. But you know it hasn't been so bad this year. I've been embracing January, enjoying its cold frosty days that have opened out into blue skies and sunshine. I've enjoyed getting the big coats out of the closet, muffling up in multiple layers of woolliness, snuggling indoors in front of the fire and tucking into winter comfort food - stews and soups and curries and cakes - with gusto.

Walpole Park, Ealing, West London

Moebius infinity scarf

Have you ever tried moebius knitting? It's a bit of a maths challenge. As it knits out from the centre it's hard not to marvel at how it works.

Once you've mastered the moebius cast-on the rest of this scarf is pretty straightforward. It's worked in seed stitch so that it's the same on both sides. I think a moebius works best when the twist reveals a consistent pattern on both sides.

It's been knit using Costa Brava Knitting's Double Knitting Pure Merino in Buttered Caramel with a contrasting trim knit in their Heather Mist using 4 mm circular needles with a 100 cm cord. It's taken about 75 to 80g (150 to 160 metres) of the main colour and about 15g or 25 to 30 metres of the contrasting colour. The finished scarf has a diameter of about 40 cm.