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

[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!