It's TT - time for the carrot cake...

[curiouswombat]

We are currently in the midst of the TT motorcycle festival which, for me, means I am making what feels like industrial quantities of carrot cake - not to mention chocolate cake, chocolate brownies, flapjack, gingerbread... We sell filled baps, hot pasty, and lots and lots of home-made cakes at church to the spectators, as our church grounds are an excellent spot to watch the racing.

So this was yesterday's baking in my house -



That was the third 18 piece carrot cake I've made, and I will make at least one more. The chocolate cakes behind, together, come to the same size but somehow, on that angle, they look a lot smaller. I know now that these are 'sheet cakes' - thank you bojojoti - in this case dark chocolate with chocolate frosting and fudge chunks.

I've also done 3 trays of chocolate brownie, 2 trays of oat flapjack, and one of gingerbread the same size as the carrot cake. And D-d has also been turning out her specialities - cherry frangipan, fruit flapjack, rocky road and tiffin. I reckon, just between the two of us, our personal cake sales will raise about £170 - and our input is about 10% of the whole!

For something completely different, there are a few pictures I took a week or more ago, just of the sea, and a stairway to nowhere...

A nice sunny day with a bit of a breeze to put the white horses on the sea - a good day for dog walking. And a rather lonely staircase to nowhere...








Oh - and a picture I took for photo_scavenger of a rather nice post box which serves a hamlet of about 6 or 7 houses in the west of the island;

Comments

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Swear to God, you have to stop posting these pictures, or you will wind up with a Cronopio on your doorstep :)

Oh such baking! That's more baking that I can abide. I like cooking way more than baking, so I applaud your efforts most heartily.

The Red Velvet Cake for the Boyz came out well, I guess. I never had any, but it was scarfed up.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

To be honest, by the end of TT I can't face making another carrot cake for months! But generally I really like baking, so it is good to have a reason to do it.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Also, just to taunt you?

Pecan tree in Papacito's back yard. We have gallon bags of them in the freezer, and it always amazes me what they cost if you have to buy them.

Of course, I'm not speaking to Papacito these days, so that's moot...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Yep - I have pecan envy... Each of those tins of carrot cake has at least a couple of dollars worth of pecans on and in it!

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

Oof, that looks like hard work. And we've had so much cake lately in the office that I'm not even wishing I could patronise that stall! (Too many birthdays, holidays, babies and returns to work in much too short a time. Drowning in flapjacks.)

But very impressive!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I do get fed up making carrot cake - but it sells and sells!

Flapjack is popular right now, too, isn't it?

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

My mind is boggled at that amount of baking - but they all look delicious!

Great pics, as always . Love the mailbox; haven't commented on PS lately, but I'm checking them out. :)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I do enjoy baking - but there can be such a thing as getting fed up with carrot cake!

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's true... As much as I love carrot cake, I think i'd be hard-put to decide between it and the chocolate ones....

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Very impressive!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It is amazing how much carrot cake bikers can get through!

[shirebound]

Your house must smell soooooo good. *drools and wants*

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, it does smell of spice and chocolate!

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

Beautiful pictures, but the cakes are most definitely making my mouth water. They look soooooooooooooooooo delicious. Remind me never to read your emails so close to supper time. *lol*

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The carrot-cake fest is an annual event - and I admit to a sense of relief every year when I've made the last one. I left a few squares of chocolate cake at home for S2C - he doesn't actually like carrot cake!

[estelcontar1.livejournal.com]

Lucky S2C, though I can't imagine why he doesn't like carrot cake.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It's that word 'carrot'... he doesn't like carrots anyway, and believes vegetables and cake don't go together; he's odd like that!

[dalmeny]

Both of you must be exhausted by now after all that baking. And thanks for the sea photos, very pleasant to look at as I take the bus into work.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Both of us enjoy baking - but there is a point where I feel that I don't want to see any more carrots for a while. I am going to do the last carrot cake today for tomorrow's race day - and if there is none left for Friday then they will just have to cope!

I've been down some days helping to sell stuff, and that is when I get tired - last week a couple of days went 'work, church to serve, home to bake, eat something, go to bed' but I am off work this week - and despite the tiredness I do actually enjoy it all.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I want to bake something this week. We are going to have three cool days.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Our weather is lovely at the moment - about 16C (60F) and clear and sunny. I am off work this week, and so I am going to go out shopping soon, then will... bake carrot cake(!), and sit out in the back yard whilst it cooks, to read - bliss!

[(Anonymous)]

Ooo! Scratch carrot cake! I am afraid I take the lazy way out and just add some grated carrot and raisins to a spice cake mix, seems to work; I do make my own butter cream frosting for it though!

As close as I am to the sea, figuratively speaking, if I stand on a ladder to peer over the fence the inconsiderate people behind us built, I can see it from the house, I have not been to the beach in years! Your pictures are lovely, not sure Miss Kitty would like to be walked there though, sand in her paws etc.!

Keep on baking, have finished squares for blanket and am now working on a little hoodie, though it seems to be doing a Topsy on me and growing!

Huggs,
Lynda

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The most hard work is zesting the oranges and cleaning the food processor after grating the carrots - the actual cake bit is easy enough! I don't put dried fruit in mine, but chopped pecans instead. I do cream cheese frosting - and give it an orangey flavour, and the odd small orange flecks to reflect the carrot in the cake, by adding a large spoonful of St Dalfour marmalade which is a very soft set as it is low sugar.

Here the sea simply is - most roads to most places will take you beside it, or go high enough up that it is the biggest part of the view. And the beaches are the most popular dog-walking places - I even take Mum's long-haired chihuahua on the beach for a run sometimes.

[ayinhara.livejournal.com]

I like your ideas about carrot cake. I have to do a dessert for a potluck. Carrot cake is easy and popular.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I actually do like carrot cake - which is why I began making it - but by the time I've made it 4 or 5 times in 10 days I get fed up with it!

I really like it with some chopped pecans in it, and although I do make vanilla frosting sometimes, I think the orange version works well because of the orange in the cake.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

That is a lot of baking! I have carrot cake envy; it's my favorite! And now I'm wondering what you guys call sheet cakes?

I'm curious about the staircase to nowhere. It must have gone somewhere once upon a time, right?

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

We don't have a name for sheet cakes - usually I would just have said I'd made chocolate cake. If I'd made cake with a layer of cream or buttercream in the middle I'd have said I'd made a chocolate sandwich cake - but then I learnt that you call a one layer cake with no filling, only a topping, a sheet cake. Aha - I remember - the traditional name for a large cake without a fancy filling is a cut-and-come-again cake. Although these days that is more often used for fruit cake.

As for the stairs to nowhere - yes, they certainly did go somewhere - they were the way from a large hotel down to the sea-wall where I stood to take the three pictures.



But sadly the hotel is no more - there are plans to build houses/apartments on the site, but at present there is nothing but the outdoor staircase left.

Sad in many ways, although it had reached the stage of very faded grandeur - it held a lot of memories; the windows far right are the room where both my sister and her husband and S2C and I held our wedding receptions many years ago, and the ones on the far left are where we had the afternoon tea to celebrate my mum's 80th birthday.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

I was watching an interview of Dame Maggie Smith, and she said that getting older was like having breakfast roll around every 30 minutes! I'm astounded it's been a year already since the last TT. It seems you were just baking all your cakes just a bit ago!

I love the spiciness of carrot cake, and there's nothing better than homemade.

Such a grand staircase to nothing! zanthinegirl asked the two questions I wondered, so I'll look for your response to her.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It hardly feel like any time to me, either!


I've just replied to Zanthinegirl - with a picture of the where the staircase used to go.

[bojojoti.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry that such a large, beautiful building was demolished. It would seem as though it could have been converted to apartments. I suppose the funds to manage that would have been dreadful. When our local junior high (which was actually two older schools) was deemed unacceptable for students, it was sold to be made into apartments for the elderly. I was grateful the buildings were spared.

http://www.treanorarchitects.com/treanor-preservation/pioneer-presidents-place/
I was so proud of our community for coming together to save the school buildings and give them a vital purpose.

Upon reflection, I realize that I could qualify to live in the old schools! And here I thought "elderly" was a longer way to go for me.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That face of the hotel looks good in the picture - but the building was actually a bit of a hotch-potch of bits added on here and there to an original seven bedroomed house - there is a history here (http://grandislandhotel.blogspot.com/) - and it was not in good physical shape when it was finally closed.

I would like to think that any new blocks of flats will at least retain the air of the old building.

Your school conversion has worked very well - and as for the realisation that you could qualify to live there - I realised the same thing when visiting a 'sheltered housing' complex the other week - scary!

[ukamikanasi.livejournal.com]

All nice photos as usual. Love the stairway!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It looks so odd there going to and from nowhere that it calls out to be photographed.

[x19narya90x.livejournal.com]

Wowzers! I just ate two helpings of baked potato with sloppy joe sauce, and I thought I was stuffed...then I saw this...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

two helpings of baked potato with sloppy joe sauce

Ooh - that sounds good...

[x19narya90x.livejournal.com]

It was :D Sam's recipe, I can ask him for it if you're interested.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Oh - yes please!

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

Oh you're making me hungry - and I've just eaten!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I must say that my house does smell almost permanently of spice and chocolate at the moment!

[wormwood-7.livejournal.com]

I like the staircase. It looks like it is waiting for a stately home to find it.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It does rather - there used to be a large hotel at the top of it, but should a stately home wander this way in need of a stairway...

[myrhiann.livejournal.com]

Your cakes look nice, but it made me feel tired looking at them. They would have been a lot of work. I hope you made lots of money from the cake stall.

I was intrigued by the hotel, it looks impressive in the pics. It was a shame that it had to go. The stairway to nowhere is enclosed on either side by cycads, which are a plant endemic to Tasmania. A British botanist brought back a lot of Tasmanian plants in the 1980's or thereabouts, and they now grace the gardens of many stately homes in Britain. I only know this from viewing a British TV show called 'Lost Gardens'.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

We reckon to make about £2,000 on cake sales over the two weeks, apart from what we make on tea, coffee, the sandwiches, hot pasties, and hot-dogs! But you are right - my shoulder is sore from all the baking by now.

The hotel was rather past its prime by the time it eventually shut - and the company who bought it, and own the site, have built a smaller one a little closer into town, but still with nice sea views, so I guess it is what it is... The 'Manx palm trees' are Cordyline australis - which were brought here from New Zealand a long time ago, and thrive, weirdly.

[(Anonymous)]

Those trees also thrive on the Blackpool promenade. They are very hardy, and after all Tasmania can be a chilly place too. I actually meant to say about 1880. I saw one Cornwall garden which was a botanist's dream, many Tasmanian plants thriving there.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Yes - I realised that you meant the 1880s.

The cordylines do well in the parts of the UK washed by the gulf stream - you very rarely see them inland. They are known as 'Torquay palms' in the south of England.

Every Easter time we have to explain to the children at church that the palm trees in Jerusalem had different shaped leaves!