Recipe: Apple Crepe Cake

This is an easy yet festive cake to make. It's budget-friendly because it uses few ingredients and you don't have to heat up the oven, but you can make it look as fancy as you like. You can change the fillings between the crepes and have a different cake for every occasion.

Apple Crepe Cake

Crepe ingredients:
1 cup plain flour
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup water
pinch salt
2 tbsp melted butter

Filling:
300ml cream, whipped
1 can apples (or fresh stewed apples), pureed or whizzed with a stick blender
Chocolate sauce

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Lightly beat together egg, milk and water and add to dry ingredients.
Heat a pan on moderate-low and pour a little batter in, swirl pan or use the back of a spoon to coat base of pan. Cook 1-2 minutes each side till lightly brown. Remove from pan and put aside to cool, repeat until you have used all the batter (approx 7 - 8 crepes).
To assemble the cake, put the first crepe on your cake plate and spread with a light layer of apples and then a light layer of cream. Lay down the next crepe, and spread with a light layer of chocolate sauce and a light layer of cream. Repeat until all crepes are used. Spread the top crepe with a thicker layer of cream. Decorate as desired... I used fresh flowers and herbs from the garden.

Other filling ideas: sliced bananas, toffee sauce and cream... fresh berries and yoghurt... apples, cinnamon and demerara sugar... What would you do?

Spring

It's here. It's been spring in my heart for a while, but at last nature has agreed and so, here we are. The weather on the weekend was perfect - warm, sunny, beautiful. I threw open the doors and windows and spent as much time outside as I could. I weeded the potager, which took most of the time, spread some compost and prepped a couple of beds. One will be for potatoes and one for brassicas. I weeded the leeks - you'd realise what an achievement this is if I showed you a before picture, but I was too frightened to take one. I tried not to look around the edges of everything and think about how much more there is to do - I would rather be in the moment enjoying the sun on my skin and the fragrance in the air and the birdsong - but there is more, always much more.

Later I baked brownies and made a layered crepe cake. Fresh flowers and herbs to decorate the top. The first blossoms on the almond tree and sweet kittywhiskers. It feels like things can only get better.

August flowers

Tiny gems and jewels in the garden this month. You need to look closely, under leaves and close to the ground. But they are there, shining in the gloom, awakening as the season changes. Hellebores have been going since last month, as well as the indoor and outdoor winter cyclamen. They've been joined by the fleeting crocus and the first of the season's geraniums and blue star flowers. Camellia Fairy Blush is still giving a good show, and Cinnamon Cindy put out a delicate blossom in her first year. And the first miniature daffodils are unfurling... spring is truly not far away.

I'm linking up to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. How does your garden grow this August?

Peeking

The weather might be cold but things are stirring and waking. A little peek of the gorgeous days to come.

July colours

We are into August now, but these pictures were taken (and this post planned) in the dreary days of late July. As winter has progressed I've felt the need to have colours surrounding me. The spring bulbs on the hall table helped immensely - they were so pretty and frilly and scented - and it was a shame when they finally wilted and I had to put them out. I noticed that the crochet block I was working on matched a cushion and a cyclamen and a magazine cover, and the flowers on my new thrifted teacups match the fairy blush camellia blossoms. Life is good when you are surrounded by pretty colours.

The days are lengthening now - it's no longer dark when I walk to my car after work. And the season's first daffodils have popped open in my garden. We're on the upward swing now... spring days are ahead.

Stopping to smell the hyacinths

Walking through the front hallway is bliss at the moment. The hyacinths are in full scent and flower and the perfume fills several rooms. The bulbs in the round white bowl turned out to be yellow... I had forgotten which colour I got. I'm loving the pastel confection and the frothy spring cheerfulness of it all. Oh, let it be spring now... 

The flower heads are heavy and I've used organza ribbon to tie them to mini chopstick stakes. A few days after these photos were taken I had to cut the heads off because they got so heavy they bent at the neck. I pushed bamboo skewers through the stems so they would stand upright in a vase.

This display will probably last another week, then hopefully the outdoor daffs and other bulbs will start to earn their keep.

Keeping busy

I have several small craft projects on the go for long winter nights. The nights seem unending and sometimes so do the projects, in particular the hexie blanket! (Mr Lui felt that he was more deserving of my attention with the camera on that afternoon, in fact he felt I should put down the camera and go feed him. Now.)

Small crochet rocks are a quick and cute project, the only thing is that as soon as I finish one I have a better idea for the next. Luckily they look good in a group.

Tiny glass flowers in a vintage spool, a stand in while most real flowers are out of season. And a small embroidery of simple things which make me happy. More to show on that in another post.

July flowers

Just a couple of snapshots today. The garden is looking so flattened and soggy that it's best just to turn the other way, and my indoor flower displays mainly consist of big bunches of wintersweet (which I've shown you several times already) and the tantalising spring bulbs in my previous post.

Flowering outside we do have Bellarina primroses, in lacy pink and indigo blue, and the delicate appleblossom flowers of Fairy Blush camellia. The wintersweet is in its final flush and I'll be sad to say goodbye to that lovely for another year. The paper daisy is in full bud however and some of the little flowers are even starting to open up, which bodes well for the next few months! Promises for late winter include buds on the daphne and hellebores, and hopefully the earlicheers and crocuses won't be too far away. Today is the halfway point after all... spring is only six weeks away!

Forcing it

In an attempt to make spring come early, I am forcing nature to bend to my will. I want spring flowers and I want them now! These hyacinth and crocus bulbs were chilled in the fridge and then potted up about six weeks ago. Now they are slowly unfurling.

I am very much enjoying this arrangement on the hall table. It may be too early to be thinking spring, but it lifts my heart whenever I walk in and see it. I can't wait till I have the sweet hyacinth scent to lift me even further.

It's cold

Winter mornings are biting. Frost, ice, frozen mud, breath like smoke. It makes getting out of bed so much harder! I am in hibernation mode at the moment... basically just gritting my teeth and waiting out winter. I have a few little projects I'm working on inside and some larger garden ones that I do a bit at a time, weather permitting. Feeding the birds and watering the houseplants. Cooking endless batches of soup. Waiting, waiting, waiting.