Muffins
The below is more of an aide memoir for me than an actual post – I’ve been sent this recipe by text message and wanted to record it here in case I delete the message.
I’m going to be making muffins for my brother’s wedding in a couple of weeks and this is a delicious recipe that a friend used for a similar purpose last year.
We’re doing a trial-run later on today, so will let you know how it goes!
Weigh the eggs – use the same weight in caster sugar, margarine and slightly less of self raising flour.
Cream sugar and marg together, add a few drops of vanilla extract and whisk together (with electric whisk)
Add some flour and some egg and whisk again. Repeat until all the flour and egg is all combined.
Add approx 1 tsp baking powder per 8oz eggs used.
Mix all together until smooth.
It will look quite liquid, but don’t worry – the final cakes will be light & airy.
Bake in cases at 180C for 15 minutes.
Updates later for the finished product!
Viva update
I passed!
3 hours and 20 minutes worth of discussion about my work – it really flew past! We covered lots of different areas, most of which I could justify my work and my conclusions, some of them we had some good discussion about why I’d done what I had.
I got minor corrections (some typos, a bit of tightening up in places and a bit more detail in a couple of places), which was great.
The best part (other than my examiners saying ‘congratulations, you’ve passed’) was at the start both examiners said they had enjoyed reading my thesis. That was a real boost at the start! It led on to a good discussion – there weren’t too many questions I couldn’t answer.
And so now I’ve got some corrections to do, but when they’re done (hopefully in the next couple of weeks), I’m Dr Sarah!
Phew!
And so tomorrow Rob & I are off to London to celebrate with a couple of nights away together, then we’re off to church Family Camp for the bank holiday weekend. Will be SO great to relax this week, just hope the drop in adrenaline doesn’t mean I get ill.
Viva (not quite Las Vegas)
Tomorrow is my viva voce – the ‘exam’ at the end of my PhD. Essentially, it’s an interview between me and two examiners who have both (I hope!) read my thesis.
It’s the culmination of the best part of 5 years of work (though I’ve been working for the past two years while writing up).
I have absolutely no idea how I feel about this! It’s an odd combination of excitement, nerves, anticipation and outright terror, all parcelled up in a big pack of adrenaline.
This time tomorrow (well, mid afternoon hopefully!) I’ll know if they’ll let me be Dr Sarah, and if so, how many corrections I need to do for my thesis to be acceptable for final submission. It’s virtually unheard of for a thesis to pass with no corrections, and having gone through mine myself I’ve found typos and things I want to re-word. I’m expecting to be asked to add some more detail in a few places, but hopefully not too much!
Deep breaths…
ARGH!
Buttons and Bows
ElizabethD at French Village Life suggested a Buttons and Bows swap, which I thought was a fantastic idea. I’ve got lots of buttons, bits of ribbon and other trimmings that I’ve collected and been given over the past few years and it was great to be able to share some of these with someone else (as well as getting some new bits from someone else’s collection!).
I signed up a bit late, and then to find an even number for the swap managed to rope in my mother-in-law (who is a dressmaker) to take part as well. We’ve both really enjoyed the swap!
I sent my package to Mary at Neat & Tidy, all the way across the Atlantic in the US, and was very excited to receive a lovely package through my door on Saturday morning.
Here’s the exciting contents!
Uploading photos to my blog is not always reliable - it's also in my Flickr gallery: http://flic.kr/p/aber6M
I particularly like the ‘Mug Rug’ (as was on the customs declaration – I was much more vague with ‘haberdashery’ on my declaration!), and the lovely heart shaped doily (which you can’t really see in this photo). And the cute tags, and the lace and the ribbon and the buttons!
It was so exciting to take part in the swap – do go and have a look at the blogs other ladies who have taken part – the list is at ElizabethD’s blog here.
I’m off to Soul Survivor tomorrow morning for a week – do pray for us (and for sunshine), we’ve got three of our ‘Youth’ going to serve there on different teams, and are only responsible for three under-18s (compared to 15 last year!).
Romance Academy
Yesterday was the graduation of the DBC Romance Academy.
Now I haven’t been involved at all, other than to pray for the kids involved and the leaders, but a few of us were asked to help out at the graduation, and everyone from the church was invited to go along to celebrate the achievements of the group.
In case you’ve never heard of Romance Academy, they describe themselves very well…
“Romance Academy is a revolutionary relationships project that tackles teen pregnancy and underage sex head on.
We address the underlying causes of risky youth behaviour such as, poor self-esteem, low aspirations and lack of positive family/community life by promoting the value of stable relationships through our unique 14-week intervention project.
Our aim is not just to encourage young people to delay sexual activity, nor do we simply point them in the direction of contraception. Our aim is to give our young people the tools to make intelligent choices around sex and relationships.”
A group of six local young people, who don’t go to church, have been involved in the project and it was great yesterday night to celebrate their achievements. I knew a couple of them from other things R & I have been involved in and they had obviously grown in confidence and maturity hugely during the 14 week programme.
Hopefully more teenagers will be interested and a new Romance Academy will run in the Autumn – it was a lot of work for the leaders, but so good to celebrate.
Quite contrary
This is the first summer I’ve had a garden and I’m very excited about new things that are growing. Rob sometimes thinks I’m over-enthusiastic, but obliges by making the appropriate noises when I exclaim that my first home-grown courgette has made an appearance.
Here are some recent photos from the garden (phone-cam, sorry for the quality!)
Huge poppies in the back garden
Smaller poppies in the front garden.
The front of our house, complete with pale and dark pink hydrangeas.
I’ve learned so much about my garden this year (mostly thanks to my parents and in-laws) and I’m looking forward to harvesting the veg I’ve grown and thinking about future possibilities.
I really enjoyed Jordan’s post at www.ungrind.org this week, it’s something that I really identify with – both with my new garden and the pruning that’s going on with me too.
Full House
So, my brother Jonny has been living with us since the end of January. And last week, his fiancee also arrived on the scene. It has made our house feel quite full, though it is fun having them here. They’re looking for flats in the area, so only living with us temporarily. The house will certainly feel much bigger when there’s just the two of us again – I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not just yet!
Part of why we bought this house was so that people could come and drink tea and hang out in it, which happens on three nights a week at least (house group, worship band practise, youth group older teens hangout!). We’ve certainly got through as much tea in 6 months here than we did in 6 years in our previous flat.
It was J’s birthday this week so K and I made him a cake. K has only ever made tray-bake cakes (apparently they don’t do Victoria Sponge style in California?), so we made a chocolate and caramel layer cake that I saw in Good Food magazine a couple of months ago – I’d been looking for a good excuse to make it! The addition of almonds and yoghurt to the sponge mix was great, it made the cake really moist and tasty. Rob wasn’t so keen on the chocolate cream icing as it was quite dark, so if I make it again I’d probably use a butter icing. Also, apparently Americans don’t have caramel, they have carmel. Which makes me think of camels. The cake was definitely caramel, not camel.
Anyway, here’s the end result:
This cake is about 15cm high. Yummy!
The inside looked spectacular – the different sugar & cocoa used made the definition between the layers very distinct. From the bottom up, we have: vanilla, caramel, caramel chocolate, chocolate. With caramel sauce in between each layer.
Vanilla, Caramel, Caramel Chocolate and Chocolate sponges
You won’t be surprised to hear there’s not much cake left…
Happy new blog
I haven’t blogged in a long while, but maybe I’m going to be back.
I’ve deleted the old blog posts for now, some may reappear, but for now here’s a clean slate.
And some silly photos.
'What does this photobooth thing do?'
