Recipe for Banana, Blueberry and Walnut Cake

This recipe is the result of not being able to concentrate on my work and deciding I may as well do something else; like bake a cake.  Maybe I was inspired by watching the Bake Off last night (their cheesecakes were amazing!). I didn’t want to bake anything too complicated but remembered they made Madeira cakes a couple of weeks ago, so this is my adaption of a basic Madeira cake recipe.  We had a ripe banana and some blueberries that needed using, so I added these to the mix as well as some walnuts (I only added a few walnuts, you can add more or less depending on how much you like them!).

To make the cake you will need:
5oz / 125g butter
5oz / 125g caster sugar
3 eggs
8oz / 200g self-raising flour
1 ripe banana
handful of blueberries
handful of chopped walnuts

Method:
Heat the oven to 170C / 325 F / Gas Mark 3

Cream the butter and sugar.  Beat in the eggs with some of the flour, then fold in the remaining flour.

Mash the banana and stir into the mixture.  Then add the blueberries and chopped walnuts.

Place into a greased 22x11cm tin (approx. 8.5 x 4.25 inch), or a 18 – 20cm round tin (approx. 7 inch).

Bake for 55 mins – 1 hour, or until golden brown and when a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.  Leave to cool for 10 – 15 mins before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Spoonflower Contest - Butterfly Coordinates

It’s hard to believe that the last Spoonflower contest I entered (Mermaids) was way back in May!  I’m pleased that I have a little more time available at the moment so I can enter some of the contests again.  This week’s theme was ‘Butterfly Coordinates’ and involved designing 4 coordinating prints on 1 yard of fabric.  I decided to use my existing butterflies design (top left) and create 3 more designs to coordinate with this.

You can see all the other entries and vote for your favourites here:
http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=316

July Review

July started off well for me but ended with an unplanned (and very much unwanted) break when I came down with the flu.  After a couple of weeks of doing nothing at all, things are slowly starting to return to normal this week.  It’s taking me a while to get my brain back into gear so this month’s review will be particularly helpful in reminding myself of all the things I was working on before I got sick and I hope you find it interesting too!

New designs…

I worked on several new designs in July which unfortunately I can’t share with you yet, although I did design a new set of Lavender flower themed scrapbooking papers (which you can see in my shop here).  If you follow me on facebook you will have already seen a picture from my sketchbook when I started designing these papers.

I also created some new surface pattern designs for Spoonflower, to coordinate with my existing fabric designs.  I  received the sample swatches last week and am in the process of making the new designs available to buy from my Spoonflower shop as fabric, gift wrap and wallpaper.

I added a new colour way of the ditsy sheep design with a lemon yellow background and 2 coordinating flower and spotty patterns…

These designs are part of my Rabbits collection…

I also designed a star pattern to coordinate with my Rocket in Space design, a snowflake design (which would be great for Christmas projects!) and a new blue flower pattern…

These cloud designs were created to go with my hot air balloon collection. I also decided to add a new fish pattern as my existing fishing flies design has been quite popular…

Blog…

In July I shared some ideas for teacher gifts, I was able to reveal the secret project I had been working on for 3 Picnic DIY Ideas and I posted a colour palette inspired by a photograph of a beetle I found in my garden.  Hopefully August will run a little smoother than July and I will be able to share more of the craft projects and tutorials I have been planning to do.

Other Work...

July was a time for catching up on admin and taxes, not very exciting but it had to be done!  I also decided to make a few changes to the design of my pages online - I changed the background to my blog from a basic chevron pattern to a hand drawn floral pattern (hope you like it!) - I thought it reflected my work a bit more, being hand drawn, and was more interesting than the old pattern.  I also tweaked things like my cover photo and profile image on facebook and the banner in my Etsy shop.  I'll probably continue making a few more changes to things in August.

Other things…

At the start of July we had 2 gorgeous new additions to our house – these cute guinea pigs! :)  The one on the left is called Lily and the one on the right is Rosie.  We soon noticed they have different characters – Rosie is the shy one while Lily is bolder and more curious.  Lily is also a lot more lively and wriggly, whereas Rosie is quite happy to sit still while you hold her.  They haven’t squeaked much yet, although they do get very excited especially when they get new hay – it’s funny watching them popcorn and dashing about!