I am an individual!

Stage one and it started with a hungover in Cambridge. First of al I overslept by an hour. Then I realised I forgot my bank cards once I was already 12km out on Cambridge. So that was 2 hours lost at the start of the day. The wind was very favourable and I was doing whole sections at over 35kmph. Then just after Wisbech everything started going wrong. First I started going the wrong way. Then the sun set and the rain started. I got a puncture in the pitch dark. Managed to change the inner tube with the rainpouring only to get another puncture a few minutes later. Inthe middle of nowhere lI spotted a house and made it there to ask if I could patch up my inner tubes in the dry. The patches don’t work in the rain. Both tubeshad more than three holes. Probably because I didnt realise I had a flat straight away. Qt that point I Ijust had to get a taxi for thelast 30km.

Thanks to quitequirky for a great image that I used for a t-shirt design. The easiest way to copy a design onto a t-shirt was to trace it with a felt marker when the shirt covers a screen (I used the laptop).

I used three colours for the three recurring civilizations with then wrapping around.

The marker will wash off, so you have to fill it in with some kind of fabric paint. I used “UHU Textil Colors” gloss tubes.

The tubes are not the easiest to control and it is difficult to get the right thickness of paint, but the colours are nice a bright.

Can’t wait to wear it tomorrow.

Extra cake this week because I forgot Andreas and Matt last week.

Bieber (aka Stefan) is leaving, so I made him a goodbye Black forest gâteau.

This week’s cake is chocolate and apple cake. Very nice and egg free. Thanks to Emily and Donna for the recipe.

Recipe

Cake:

• 4oz butter (softened)
• 8oz caster sugar
• 1lb stewed apples (so about 1 1/2lb uncooked before  peeling and coring)
• 8oz self raising flour
• 1/2 oz cocoa (I think I doubled both cocoa quantities!)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• Some cinnamon and nutmeg (I just guessed)

The original recipe also suggested raisins, but the person I got this from said that it is better without but it is personal opinion

Icing:

• 5oz butter
• 4 tbs cocoa (again I used 8!!)
• 5oz icing sugar sifted (I used fondant icing to make it smoother)
• 3 tbs milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Grease a tin (doesn’t really matter what size or shape, but you may want to double quantities if it is a big tin).
3. Peel and core apples and put in the microwave until stewed (about 6 mins in mine).
4. Cream butter and sugar.
5. Add flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg to butter and sugar (don’t think you need to mix this particularly but it can go in the same bowl).
6. When apples are stewed and have cooled slightly, add bicarbonate of soda to them and stir whilst it grows, then add to the other ingredients and stir until smooth.
7. Bake for about 30-40 mins (I would check it isn’t getting burnt at 30 mins).
8. Slowly melt butter in a pan.
9. Add cocoa to butter, turn up heat a bit and cook for about a minute.
10. Add icing sugar and stir so there aren’t any lumps.
11. Very soon the texture will go yucky and you will think that it has gone wrong. Don’t worry – this is where you add the milk.
12. Stir until it is smooth and remove from heat to cool.
13. Don’t ice the cake until it has cooled as the icing is quite runny and it won’t stay on the cake!
14. Om nom nom nom