Unexpected Baking & Crafting

One of the great things about where we live is that there's quite a lot of free (or very cheap) places to take the children in the holidays. With Orla coming down with chickenpox it means we've had to abandon our holiday 'bucket list' for a while. We've been doing a bit of crafting at home. The kids made some tissue paper pictures from some kits I bought them a while ago from Wilkinsons.

To be honest given the cheap price (I think I paid about £1 or £1.50 ish) I wasn't expecting much but they were fantastic. The kits contained some precut card shapes and the front peels off in sections to reveal a sticky side. There's then a few packs of precut tissue paper that the kids can crumple up and press on.

Erin's set contained a fish and a car:

Orla's set contained a flower and a butterfly:

As you can probably tell, despite the chickenpox she's her normal happy little self and was very happy sticking. All 4 pictures are now decorating out patio doors! I love displaying the pictures the children make but I have to admit the school go a bit overboard on sending home any bit of paper your child has so much as touched with a pen, so I tend to keep the best bits and the rest is carefully disposed of when they're in bed.

Last week we ordered our food shopping online. We used to do this regularly but now only do it if we've got a busy weekend or we've been away and it's more convenient. When ordering I added in some gooseberries since they was in a 2 for £x type promotion with something I was buying anyway and I thought I could make a gooseberry pie. Unfortunately when Alan took the delivery in they'd been substituted. Now admittedly I got more expensive gooseberries for the original price BUT it was a smaller pack size. Not enough to make my pie. A bit of a google search for gooseberry recipes and I stumbled on Nigel Slater's Gooseberry Crumble Cake. What could be better than crumble AND cake in one?!?!?!

It was fairly simple to make but did take much longer in the oven than the recipe suggested, perhaps mostly because I was using a slightly smaller tin (and therefore making the mixture a bit deeper). I often find my oven takes a little longer than suggested. Still, 1 hours and 55 minutes later, I had this:

Gooseberry Crumble Cake

I must admit that at this point the smell was amazing and I was quite tempted to just start eating!

Luckily for Alan, because I think I might have eaten it all, I managed to wait until after he got home from work.

The gooseberries were lovely

It tasted great.

It's basically made by making a spongey base with ground almonds in, flattening that in a tin, covering that layer with goosberries, then pouring crumble over the top before sticking it in the oven. When making it again I'd probably make the crumble topping by hand and do it before mixing the cake. I followed the recipe, making the cake mix first and then I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to leave it while I made the crumble by hand, so I quickly whizzed it in the processor but I don't think it made it as nice as doing by hand.