A recent cakey offering!

I haven't had much to blog about recently, I seem to be busy with a number of work, play and life related projects at the moment but nothing yielding results just yet.

So it's a quick catch up with some cake. I made this cake the other week and I have called it my Vanilla Black cake, Vanilla Black was a wonderful veggie restaurant which used to be in York a few years ago but they relocated to London, boo hoo!

My cake consists of 2 sponges, done to a victoria sponge recipe.

They are sandwiched together with chocolate ganache, warmed cream with a good quality dark choc melted into it and beaten.

Next, mix up a bog standard vanilla buttercream icing and spread liberally on and around cake if you have plenty for the edges.

Next the fun bit, I've been wanting to try out a doily pattern for ages so I scattered cocoa through the holes and here it is.

I did share it with some family members as it was quite rich and it lasted a full week with small portions.

On a different subject, birdies.... they have returned, Ruby is back on the scene and hanging around for food again with her new man who I've named Ralph. He's a bit photo shy so no pic of him!

This year mr & mrs chaffinch are still around but new birdies on the block are tits, both blue and great. One chappie is rather cheeky and comes up to the window like Ruby and I've called him Graham the great tit.

Do excuse those disgusting window ledges, please bear in mind this is a rented house and my landlords do not seem to know the meaning of the word maintenance or how to offer a nice house for rent. Why give your tenants a nice house when they seem to put up with living in a hovel and still pay the extortionate rent! I never thought I'd be here this long is the answer to why I'm having to put up with these conditions.

There's been an overnight bunny tragedy. I saw the smallest baby bunnies I'd ever seen yesterday, their eyes were barely open so I'm guessing maybe only a day old. There were 4 or 5, some a bit weak and weedy and only 1 quite active one. Usually I see the mother come to them but they really did seem to be alone and stumbling around on the gravel parking area, no shelter, no grass to eat and no mother in sight. The area where the nest is was in a raised border and this is where they attempted to get back to last night but they were too small to jump up the little raised wall into the border. Loathed to intervene incase the mother returned and our scent was on them, we made a small ramp up the wall in the hope they would crawl back up. 
The last I saw at dusk was the weakest bunny struggling to walk as if it's legs were not formed properly, the others went in a corner out of my view, I thought an owl or weasel may come for them overnight.
This morning when I went outside I found the smallest one which was not a surprise were it had last been but I was horrified to find the other 4 all dead in a huddle near to my car. I guess they had starved and frozen overnight, it was such a sad sight but this must be a case of the mother completely abandoning them for some reason. Nature can be cruel, unfortunately for me it goes hand in hand with the bad vibes I feel living in this place, I just don't like being exposed to this as it puts me on a real downer.

So I think this brings me full circle to the point I need to make a weekend cake to cheer myself up. It will be courgette lemon cake with cream cheese frosting.

Have a good weekend folks!