Category Archives: comfort

Chocolate Blueberry Cake : a vegan recipe

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I’m not sure I’ve previously mentioned in this space that our youngest daughter has some severe food allergies. She is allergic to eggs and dairy. As a keen baker, I have had to find ways and means around using these ingredients in cakes, biscuits and slices.

Choc Blueberry Olive Oil Cake

I have developed a few recipes of my own (which I will share next time I make them and remember to take a picture!). Sometimes though, it is nice to stumble upon a recipe where all the hard work has already been done for me. This chocolate cake is AMAZING!

I make some changes (because I can’t help myself) by making it with just cocoa, not ground chocolate as that contains milk and I don’t use cream cheese icing. My solution to the icing factor is to sprinkle the cake with about 120gms of fresh or frozen blueberries prior to baking and then dust with a little icing sugar when serving. Yum!

And if the cake is not going to school, or another nut-allergy avoidance zone, I replace half of the flour with ground almonds which adds to the moistness and makes it a little more on the healthy side.

You’re welcome!

Feeling poorly

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PoppiesSince I wrote yesterday’s post, a most revolting bug has hit the house. All of the smalls have been feeling poorly. I will spare you the disgusting details, save to say that what can come out of a small persons mouth seems like far more than can ever have possibly gone in. And the result has been mountains of washing. It seems to me that there was not a single sheet, pillow, towel, facecloth or cloth nappy left in our house that remained untouched. That’s not true of course, it just felt that way to me, drama queen that I am. SO gross. Thankfully, the weather is good for drying!

WashingWhen they feel poorly, I do get lots of snuggles. It makes me feel helpless to watch them ill and not be able to do anything to stop it but oh how I do love the stillness of these sleepy, sick snuggles. One thing this Mumma can do well is give comforting snuggles.

Feeling Poorly

Weaving a basket…

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…I imagine, must take a whole lot of time. And patience. Neither of which I have in great abundance. However, I recently had cause and inspiration to weave a basket of the quilty kind.

With the middle small by my side snipping the threads between the chain piecing, and by roping in anyone who happened to call by the house, this quilt came together in a flurry of activity and with very little thought or effort in a relatively short amount of time. I did modify the pattern from the book and in my typical fashion, I messed up the measurements for my version. With a little help from a maths minded friend, I was able to improvise my way out of what could have been an enormous waste of fabric!

As the quilt was destined to be a family picnic rug, I used repurposed fabrics including scraps leftover from previous projects and some pieces from my growing stash of second hand fabrics found on trips to op shops {thrift stores}. This project contains an assortment of remnants of seersucker tablecloths, silk taffeta, linen from a skirt, a bag and my maternity pants (won’t be needing those ever again!), cotton drill kitchen curtains and a wild 1970′s paisley poly/cotton blend which was used as the backing. It was great fun to throw together an odd bunch of texture, quality and colour and come out with something fun and practical.

My favourite part of making a quilt, always, is seeing it put to use. I am not precious about the quilts I make for home. We have picnicked, slept and snuggled on and under this and I love that my family can wrap themselves in Mumma love and comfort on a chilly afternoon.

NOTE: This quilt came to be as occasionally I am privileged to be able to review books for Whip up. My most recent review was of Denyse Schmidt: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration. When I opened the pages and saw the Basketweave quilt, I quietly desired immediately HAD to have a version of it.