Madron 2016

For Madron last Thursday I made a ginger beer cake. It was from a recipe that I'd had saved on my Pinterest Recipes To Make board for ages, lol. (Saved it a couple of years ago). Here's the link: http://thecakedcrusader.blogspot.com/2013/12/ginger-beer-cake-and-movember.html

The cake is plain but I wanted a topping so I used the cream cheese icing recipe from a James Martin cake that I made for Easter in 2013. (Just made the icing this time). You can find that recipe here: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10209/frosted-white-chocolate-easter-cake

It came out quite nice but I burnt it a bit, lol. Also it was a bit dry so I ate it with Carnation evaporated milk. The recipe uses alcoholic ginger beer but I don't drink the alcoholic type, so I just used my favourite Old Jamaica Ginger. The cream cheese icing went nicely with the ginger flavour. It was better than the gingerbread cakes I made last year and the year before. I think it was because it doesn't have treacle (molasses) in it; the treacle just makes it too heavy for me.*

 Here are a couple of pics:

Happy Madron!

I don't normally post on a Thursday but since today is Madron (also known as Mabon) aka the Autumn Equinox, I thought I'd do an extra post to share a couple of related links. :)

Here's an article with some good info about Madron/Mabon: https://www.goddesslifestyleplan.com/mabon-autumnal-equinox/

And here's another one with some suggestions for things to do at Equinox time. (There's also the Spring Equinox so if you're in the Southerrn Hemisphere, this applies to you too): http://www.stellaseaspirit.co.za/things-to-do-at-equinox/

Today is the first official day of autumn and from now on the days will get noticably shorter. It's getting dark before 8pm now. It's really been feeling like autumn the past week or so but we're supposed to be getting a heatwave next week, lol. The picture above is I one I took at Hove Park at the beginning of the month. The leaves weren't turning yet but the atmosphere and light is different than during the summer.

Happy Madron and autumn! (Or Oestara and spring if you're celebrating those). :) I've decided to bake a ginger beer type cake, so I'm going to make that later. I'll share how it turned out and some pics soon. :)



Photo: Hove Park. Copyright Moonsparkle 2016.

Beach Pics

I recently went to Worthing Beach and took some pictures, so I thought I'd share a few here. :) Now we're in September and transitioning into autumn but we've been having some nice, hotter weather lately. Signs of autumn coming are the light becoming mellower and the days getting shorter (I think it's getting darker around 8pm now) but at the same time the weather is still good. I didn't have a chance to get to the beach all summer and I wanted to go before it got colder.

Here are the pics: