Saying thank you with a chocolate cake

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This post is especially dedicated to all my blog readers. It has been four months since I started this blog with a lot of apprehension but the response that I get from you guys energizes me. Each and every comment that you leave here makes me happy though I may not have responded individually to your comments lately.  There is nothing to match the way you feel when you see that people from places that you don't even knew existed have visited your blog. So I am saying a big thank you to all those who follow me as well as those who intend to, and of course, my non-following readers. Thank you for all the sweet comments that you leave here and the interest that you show in my blog. 

This receipe is adapted from the book "Mary Berry's Favourite recipes."  I tried it for the first time and it came out very well.

What I used:

Self-raising flour/maida        4 oz / 3/4 cups
Margarine                           4 oz/ half a cup
Caster sugar                        4 oz/ half a cup
Cocoa powder                    1 tbsp
Hot water                            3 tbsp
Baking powder                    1 tsp
Eggs                                    2

The method is fairly easy. First dissolve the cocoa in hot water. Next dump everything into a bowl and beat using an electric mixer for 2 mins. If you don't have one you can always use a wooden spoon or a whisk. Pour the batter into the cake tin and shove it into the oven and after a few minutes of waiting you will have a delicious chocolate cake. The baking time and temperature mentioned in the book is 25 mins at 180 degree C but I always bake at 150 degree C because my oven tends to overheat and burn anything inside. I baked for around 40 mins. You will know when the cake is done if it starts pulling away from the sides of the tin. Also you can insert a fork or something inside and see if it comes out clean.

Of course there are certain things that you have to keep in mind while baking a cake such as the size of the cake pan that you use, consistency of the batter (the batter for this cake was a bit thick, thicker than the ones that I have made before, so I was a bit doubtful whether it was going to be okay or not), greasing the pan, etc. I am not going to go into details about that because I myself am a novice.

I used chocolate buttercream icing for the cake but I felt that it tasted better plain without the icing.

I wish you all enjoy a very happy weekend with a huge chunk of chocolate cake.

Is there anyone who hates chocolate cake?

Granny Squares for my Cushion

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My latest passion is crocheting cushion covers.  I recently purchased 7 throw pillows and am now in the process of making covers for them. I am working on two right now. I am showing you one here.

I believe everyone who knows to crochet will know how to do a granny square. So I am not giving you the pattern. For the previous cover I used black as the background color, so in this I decided to go for white. I love this combination of colors.

These squares are also coming out neatly unlike the previous ones.  I hope to finish it soon and show you the results.

Easter Chick

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I made this chick as an Easter special. Not a pretty chick though. Chiku dosen't look happy. Maybe he is not pleased with his hairstyle.

Click here for the pattern.

Happy Easter

Flower square pillow cover

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It has been a while since my last post. I was forced to take this short break from blogland because of a problem in my computer. For over 10 days now I was totally unaware of what was going on in other blogs. So there is a lot of catching up to do. Also because of this computer problem I had to be off my regular job (I work from home) which gave me plenty of time to do other things. I finished a few things I had started and also have started a few more things.

One of them is this pillow cover. As I had mentioned earlier, when I started this I was not at all pleased with the way the squares turned out. I was not pleased with the choice of colors especially, but just carried on hoping that it would look better when joined. As I hoped the pillow cover has turned out very well. I absolutely love it now.

You can see that even my teddy feels so.

You can click here to view my earlier post regarding this.

School Bus Amigurumi

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My second attempt at making amigurumi has turned out pretty well. My son is crazy about vehicles. He is especially obsessed about trucks. When I started making the teddy he was not at all happy. He wanted me to do a truck for him. So I searched the internet but didn't find any pattern for trucks. Then I found this pattern for the school bus and decided to give it a try. You can click here for the pattern.

I used styrofoam for stuffing.

I started this quite some time back but did the stuffing and final sewing only two days ago as I wanted to give this to him on his birthday. So yesterday on his birthday I gave it to him. He was quite happy. He played with it, photographed it and, of course, made it so dirty that within a single day it has turned several shades darker.

And here is the huge mess of a cake that I made yesterday for his birthday, shaped like a van.

Definitely not a masterpiece but considering that it was my first attempt to bake and ice such a huge cake, I think it is OK. 

Cutely Colorful

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Day after tomorrow is my son Harshu's birthday. Yesterday we went shopping to buy chocolates and other stuff to distribute in his class. We saw these duckies in a shop and I instantly fell in love with them. These cuties are actually pencil sharpners. I could't resist myself from clicking pictures and once I started I couldn't stop myself and went on and on. I took lots and lots of pictures. I am sharing with you just a few.

Waiting to be taken home.

These are pencils.

Have a nice weekend.