A delicious treat

A truly delicious and decadent treat, Red Velvet Cake. I first made this for my younger sister's birthday in January. I have made it a couple of times since and it has been a big hit. It is dead easy and I promise you will enjoy it.

Red Velvet Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 eggs
1tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
2Tsp cocoa
1 1/2 cups sugar
50g red food colouring (you can add as little or as much as you like, or not at all!)
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1tsp baking soda sprinkled over 1Tsp vinegar

Cream Cheese frosting

8oz cream cheese - softened to room temperature
3cups icing sugar
1tsp pure vanilla extract

For the cake:
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Sift flour, slat and cocoa together. Add alternately with buttermilk. Beat after each addition until combined. Stir in baking soda nnd vinegar mixture, with red colouring. Pour into 2 x 20cm well greased and lined cake tins.

Bake 30mins in a moderate oven. Cool and frost with cream cheese frosting

For the cream cheese frosting:
Beat cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy (about 2mins). Add vanilla and icing sugar. Beat, on low, to combine. If too soft chill until slightly stiff (about 10mins).

Do a crumb layer (this is an initial layer to seal in any crumbs), fridge for about 15mins until set, then continue to frost the entire cake

Getting my domestic goddess on!!

Two activities of note today:

1. I made my first ever batch of fruit buns. This is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time, but I needed to get up the courage. Which I did, and I am very pleased with the result. They are a little heavy but it is my first time so I think I can be forgiven.

2. I am relearning to crochet. Again, this is something that I have been thinking of doing but just haven't got around to. Thank you Debbie for issuing the call out for willing participants for your secret project. It gave me the motivation to get going. So tonight I watched a couple of tutorials on YouTube, and wallah! My first crocheting effort in ... oh I don't know ... 12yrs. Not too shabby.



PS I did get my new running shoes. They are so cushy. Can't wait to get back into the training sessions. My shins are feeling a lot better but are still a bit tender.

Shin splints, and all that jazz

Ok, ok. I know I haven't been on for about 10days but quite honestly I didn't know what to say!

I haven't been doing any running sessions because after my last heroic effort I ended up with shin splints. Yay. Very fun. But they are on the mend. Still, that put quite a large fly in my ointment. Doesn't exactly help the whole get fit regime I had started. Hopefully I can pick up pretty much where I left off. Of course, now I've started to lose motivation and I have felt quite down about it all. But I know that I can start again once my shins have healed.

First thing on my To Do list this week is to buy new running shoes. I think that getting proper running shoes that are right for my running style (I think calling it a 'running' style might be an insult to true athletes). I'm quite excited about it. I haven't bought new shoes since Oct 2009, and even then they were $10 from Big W! So, off to the Athlete's Foot to get the new fandangled measuring thingy done and then I should be set. Sweet!