Monthly Archives: May 2011

Dee’s (not so secret now) very easy chocolate fudge cake recipe

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8″ and 10″ chocolate cakes stacked

We had great excitement in the house this weekend with an 8th birthday party yesterday. Being slightly distracted when our youngest was writing out her party invitations it was only after she’d handed them out that I discovered she’d written 40 (silly mummy, lesson learned).

Even allowing for some of her guests not turning up that still meant a big cake was in order. Thankfully on the day the sun was shining and the bouncy castle and a football kept them all entertained outside.



Several different cake mixes



When I was a full time mum I used to make cakes for friends and family – just for fun wedding, birthday or special occasion cakes. The house picture was Mr G’s 40th cake.. a near replica of our house which has been an ongoing renovation project for the past 10 years. It was a mixture of chocolate, Madeira, chocolate biscuit and gingerbread and lots of fun to make.

 This weekend the small one’s request was for a triple decker chocolate cake. We compromised with a gooey double decker and now I’m not making nearly as many cakes as I used to, am sharing one of my recipes below…


Gingerbread House (filled with sweets)


For a 10″ round chocolate cake baked in a deep cake tin you’ll need the following ingredients at room temperature:

450g unsalted butter
450g caster sugar, sieved
8 medium free range eggs
450g self raising flour, sieved
4 tblsp warm water
4 tblsp cocoa mixed with 4 tblsp warm water

Oven temperature 160oC, cooking time 75 mins (or thereabouts).

As the quantity of ingredients is quite large to fit into the food processor bowl, I whiz up the butter and sugar in the processor first until mixed, then add the rest of the ingredients in no particular order, stopping the mix now and again to incorporate with a spatula.

Grease and line a deep cake tin, pour in the smooth mixture then bake, testing with a skewer towards the end. Once the cake’s out of the oven, leave for a few minutes to cool before turning out onto a rack.

When I’m cutting cakes into different shapes, once cooled I wrap them up in tin foil and freeze them. This makes them easier to cut into unusual shapes and decorate without getting cake crumbs everywhere.



Chocolate Cake covered with fondant icing

 For enough chocolate fudge to fill and cover the 10″ cake the ingredients are:

185g granulated sugar
100g unsalted butter
250g Cocoa Chocolate 70%
185g evaporate milk
2-5 drops vanilla essence

Combine the sugar and evaporated milk in a heavy saucepan. Place the pan over low heat and allow the sugar to dissolve, stirring frequently. When all the granules of sugar have melted, bring the mixture to the boil and simmer gently for 6 minutes without stirring.



Madeira Cake covered with fondant icing

 Take the pan off the heat, stir in the chocolate pieces and keep stirring until the chocolate has melted. Finally stir in the butter and vanilla essence.

Transfer to a bowl, cool then cover with clingfilm and chill for a couple of hours until it’s thickened.

All that’s left to do then is to spread it on and get gooey! Enjoy :)

Kale, Kale and Cabbage… we love our greens!

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Life’s been pretty busy here in the Sewelly household with one thing and another and I’ve been aware that the planting in our own garden has been falling behind (apart from the polytunnel which is immaculate ☺)
So on Tuesday as I was working away at the computer, and knowing that my chances of visiting a local garden centre soon were slim, I ordered some winter cabbage and pea/bean seeds online.
I have a few favourite seed suppliers – see here for links  and one of those is  The Secret Garden Centre  based in Newmarket, Cork. 
Brian and Sarah (owners of the centre) recently revamped their website and it’s a delight to visit. Packed full of colourful pictures and tempting gift ideas, the site and online shop are easy to navigate and hold just enough seed varieties to choose (organic, heritage and regular) without overwhelming.
I first came across The Secret Garden last year when I was searching for green manures, organic pest and disease controls and Bordeaux mixture, all of which they stock. If they weren’t so far away I’m sure the girls and I would be regular visitors, sampling some of their cake and watching the ducks and nesting birds.
I was delighted to find the seeds in the postbox this morning (just two days later), and as befitting the garden centre’s Irish Green Awards status, they were packed securely in a recycled jiffy bag.
I haven’t prepared the legume bed in our garden yet so tucked those packets away in the seed tin and immediately headed outside with my Cabbage Winnigstadt and Cabbage Holland Late Winter, both organic seeds from Suffolk Herbs.
This year two brassica beds have been put aside in the garden (we like our greens and could even go a third if we had the space). The first already has kohl rabi and swede at small seedling stage that were sown directly a couple of weeks ago and today I transplanted some Kale Kapitan, Black Russian Kale and Scarlet Curly Kale that had been started off undercover.
In previous years due to lack of space, windowsills and polytunnel I’ve sown all the brassica seeds directly into the soil. This year I’ve started as much as I can inside. This should benefit the seedlings in that they’ll be much more able to withstand attack from the dreaded slug and the worst of the weather.
The second brassica bed has had a green manure of field beans growing in it over the winter months. The nitrogen  fixing nodules will benefit the cabbage and cauliflower crops that are due to be housed there once I’ve dug the beans in and weeded it. 

So once again, I set too planting the tiny seeds into modules, bringing them on under the protection of the tunnel until a) they’re big enough to transplant and b) I’ve prepared the bed.

It still surprises me how much you can do in an hour. It never surprises me how much better I feel after some time pottering with the plants, and I now have the added bonus of that  feel-good factor when you know you can tick off a few more jobs from the seemingly never ending list.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb (& why I love Twitter)

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Twitter’s a great place to hang out… sometimes you can ask a simple question and sometimes the replies come firing in, within seconds. Last night I sent out a simple tweet:

“Harvested an armful of rhubarb from community garden today but what can I make that doesn’t include lots of sugar?”

Here are the replies, and they all sounded so delicious that I thought I’d share them…

@LoveToGrowLass : rhubarb chutney, stewed rhubarb with maple syrup, grated ginger and lemon, served with yogurt

@Guestlandlord: use it as a layer at the bottom of a bread and butter pudding. Its sharpness cuts the richness of the B & B’s sugar/custard.

@luckylottielisa : pan fried mackerel and roasted rhubarb.

@likemamuse2bake : rhubarb chutney

@frandowdsofa : recipe ideas here http://frandowdsofa.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/rhubarb-rhubarb/ Also mixing small chunks into pork burgers worked nicely, with extra crumbled black pudding.

@JadaJelly : rhubarb and orange slump http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5883/rhubarb-and-orange-slump

@fenifur : Baking/stewing it with pineapple or strawberries, rhubarb daal. Also http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/recipes

@EcoGitesLenault – rhubarb chutney http://forum.downsizer.net/index.php?component=catalogdisplay&show_post=751106&Cuisine=&Course=&Special1=&search_text=rhubarb

Hard to choose but think I’ll be trying out the chutney and will post up the recipe once it’s made. A big thanks to everyone who took the trouble to reply, and you can find me at www.twitter.com/Greensideupveg most evenings ;)  

World Naked Gardening Day – a liberating experience?

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Picture courtesy of http://www.wngd.org/
Well today was the day. I’d talked the talk… was I going to walk the walk? Saturday, 14th May 201 1 is World Naked Gardening Day and Facebook and Twitter have been awash with comments about it.
In the end what swayed me to take part in this interesting sounding occasion wasn’t my overwhelming desire to get naked outside, but the reaction of my three children when I told them I was thinking of doing so. They were completely mortified and once they realised that I might actually do it, even more so.
I then found myself explaining that we’re all born naked and that it’s a perfectly natural state to be in a safe environment etc… Sadly they were unable to explain to me why they were so hung up about the idea of wearing no clothes, and NO WAY were they going to join me.  Already, they’d been programmed (or had we brought them up?) to think of nakedness as being very wrong.  They giggled, laughed and cringed, not taking me seriously at all, so that was it. I didn’t mention it again but always game for a bit of a challenge…
After completing their morning activity drop offs, I arrived home and headed outside, determined to go for it before I changed my mind.  A couple of points here… it was windy and cold this morning in our rural location so gardening outside was completely out of the question.  Also, it couldn’t be guaranteed that the neighbouring farmer wouldn’t arrive suddenly to check his cattle so the only place I was willing to shed my kit was in the Polytunnel. It was a cosy 20°C and there were no chilly breezes either.
Also, just to be clear, other than an occasional walk around the house in my birthday suit when the house was quiet, getting naked outside wasn’t something that I’d ever done before. 
So once in the Polytunnel, having checked that there was nobody around, I took off all my clothes.
In actual fact that was the worse bit as I couldn’t help but feel a bit daft as I stripped off, wondering to myself what an earth I was doing.
Donning only my silver pumps (this was a special event) I immediately headed to the potting bench where I could safely stand and transplant a few cauliflower and kale seedlings. After a few minutes and feeling a bit more adventurous I started to move around and tackle some stray weeds.
Surprisingly I enjoyed the feeling of walking around naked, just me and my veggies in an (almost) natural environment with the sun shining down, so feeling a tad braver I started looking for more things to do. I transplanted some tarragon seedlings, replaced a few munched up beans with some fresh ones and tidied the paths. I then sat and admired my work, enjoying the sensation of the sun on my skin.
Being new to naked gardening, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would have nothing to wipe my hands on (usually jeans), or that it’s a good idea to fill up the watering can beforehand (the tap’s by the front gate). I also had to evict a bumblebee and a horsefly. Other than that nothing extraordinary happened. I just pottered around in the buff.
After 45 minutes my little sojourn was over. It was back to the realities of child pick-ups and drop offs and I reluctantly dressed again.
However, the short experience was enough to leave me with a different state of mind.
My body is fit and healthy. It allows me to walk and to dance, to work and to love. It’s borne and breastfed three children. Yes, it has its wobbly bits – let’s face it, as much as we’d all love to have figures like Helen Mirren the reality is that most of us on the wrong side of 40 are unlikely to.
What it did bring home to me was that women of all ages have to learn to accept and love their bodies just the way they are. We’re too easily swayed by magazines, tv and even other girl friends. We’re so hung up about how we look we forget that it’s what’s on the inside that matters the most.
So if feeling better about who and what we are means getting in the nip once a year on World Naked Gardening Day (or more if you’re game for Dip In the Nip), then so be it…. I’m in (and by the way, next time it’s 40°C in the polytunnel and I’m alone… well, who’s to know .)
World Naked Gardening Day

World Naked Gardening Day

Lettuce… how many should I plant?

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I’m sure many of us starting out made the mistake of sowing all the lettuce seeds in the pack.

However, after years of growing this humble little salad crop I think I’ve finally sussed it. Six plants. Six little seeds of a loose leafed, cut and come variety is all a lettuce eating family needs… to be truthful we could probably get away with four. Four tiny seeds from a pack of 150 costing €2.50. If my maths are correct that’s just over one and a half cent per lettuce head.

There are many reasons for growing your own food but surely that alone makes it worthwhile?

Frilly little lettuce plants interplanted with colourful flowers look quite pretty in a window box too. Once the seeds have been sown (which takes a couple of minutes) all you have to do is remember to water them. That’s it. Once the plants have started to grow just plant another four (and so on) to keep your crop going.

The lettuce I’ve sown here is a cut and come variety (meaning you just pick the leaves as you need them, or snip the tops of with scissors rather than harvesting the whole plant).

These were planted in the polytunnel at the end of February. They grow well outdoors but you’d have to cover them with a cloche if you wanted to start them that early.

My favourites are the packets of mixed salad leaf varieties as they come in all colours, shapes and sizes.

By the way… slugs love lettuce, so it’s always a good idea to sow a few extra (one for the slug, one for the snail, one to eat and one to fail).  However, I’d planted marigolds (tagetes) next to these and not a single leaf was nibbled (the marigolds were just stalks though!)

So if you’ve never grown any veg before, why not give lettuce a go and then you’ll always have a bit of greenery to add to your sarnie at lunchtime.