Carson's Corner: My cake recipe!

This is a post written by Carson himself as part of Carson's Corner


Hi Everyone!

Today I want to tell you all about my cake that I made on Saturday. It's a Vanilla Sponge with Raspberry Buttercream. It went down a treat with my mum, dad, nin and grandad (and if I say so, myself!)

So first off, Mum went and bought all the ingredients we needed like real butter, icing sugar and - important this one - SEEDLESS raspberry jam. We had a lot of the stuff in already to be fair though.



The recipe is crazy easy to remember. It's just 3 equal parts!

Cake recipe
225g self raising flour
225g butter
225g sugar
4 eggs
vanilla beans in a grinder

We don't have any electric whisks or mixers in our house so it was hard going to get it right. I even had a cake mix-splosion a couple of times hahaha! But mum gave me a little help and we did it in the end. Literally put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix like mad! Done. 
Oh, the vanilla is to taste apparently. I just ground it in until I saw a nice even spread of black dots in the mixture, seemed to work perfectly to be fair!



I put some greaseproof paper on the base of the cake tin so it didn't stick and then poured the mix inside the tin.

It took about an hour on gas mark 4 to cook (because mum said our oven is rubbish and we need a new one!). To test it was ready we did the knife test. So what you do is jab it in the middle and if it comes out clean  you know it's ready.

Buttercream recipe
140g butter
280g icing sugar
Half jar of seedless raspberry jam



Creaming together the butter and icing sugar was hard just using a spatula or a wooden spoon but keep doing it as the flavour will be worth it. The jam needs to be stirred to make it go like a sauce so it's easy to drizzle over the top too.

I'm obsessed with baking at the moment and I'm going to practice for a whole year and apply to enter junior bake off.

I thought the final result was amazing (big head!). 

What do you think?


Getting winter ready with the #ACEWinterRefresh challenge

Leaving the house to see ice on the windscreen is a pretty big indicator that winter is a'coming! Already. The absolute swine... 

This was me last week shivering my backside off whilst using the old credit card card to scrape it all off. To say I was under prepared is pretty fair. I wasn't dressed for it, I wasn't equipped for it. I just wasn't ready to admit that summer never truly appeared this year. 

This weekend I'm packing the summer wardrobe away and refreshing my winter wardrobe so at least I won't be shivering and quivering next time I'm de-icing the car ha!  I do love the season wardrobe changeover. It's like going shopping all over again, rediscovering items you forgot you even had. It grinds my gears having to re-wash everything though before it's wearable. Yes, no one wants to smell like a moth ball, but seriously... it's going to take a whole weekend to wash and dry all those winter woollens. Urgh, CBA. 



Being involved in the Britmums #ACEWinterRefresh challenge, I've been given a bit of a helping hand which is something I probably wouldn't have thought about doing myself. ACE for Colours Powder is guna reinvigorate your clothes, using its stain-removing powers to bring coloured garments back to life. So instead of whacking in a detergent pod and hoping it does it's thang, I've given it a boost with couple of tablespoons of ACE because by the sounds of it, it was likely to do all the hard work for me! 

True enough, there's a difference about these winter woollens. They don't look faded or old. They're looking pretty spankin' actually. And the freshness is something to behold. My house smells like Dot Cotton's workplace and I love it. 



Top tips for you...

1. Do the lighter thinner wash before the thicker heavier wash. They'll be almost dry on the radiators by the time second wash is done. Warm home, fresh smelling, efficient drying to boot! Speaking of efficiency, this bad boy comes in a fully recyclable Tetra Pak as well so no plastic - pretty important in today's day and age, in my humble opinion. 

2. Don't forget the accessories such as scarves, shawls, gloves and hats! They make any winter outfit complete so you need them tip top and revitalised as well!



3. Wash (using ACE of course), iron and vac-pac the summer wardrobe so they're ready to rock and roll come next year. There's nowt worse than waking to a beautiful warm sunny day and having no summer-wear you can grab quickly and easily, seriously.

Tell me your best tips below!   


This post is an entry for the BritMums #ACEWinterRefresh Challenge, sponsored by ACE for Colours Powder. 
Get help for all kinds of stains with the ACE Stain Helper http://www.acecleanuk.co.uk/ and pick up the range at your nearest Morrison’s store or buy online on Amazon.


google.com, pub-8301510335931825, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0