Going To Seed and an unlikely (but delicious) cake ....

The summer is waning slowly, surely. The garden prepares already for next year. The seedheads are forming and already starting to rattle with the promise of next year's blooms.

Sometimes I feel like I'm going to seed a bit too! With cronky knees and a wonky back I sometimes feel so ancient and very tired. So if I can't dig the garden or weed I shall have to make do with depicting it from the comfort of my desk.

I ripped away at some magazines this weekend, sticking the pale hues I had chosen into my diary and securing the torn edges with Golden Gel Medium. Then I brushed over lightly with a little acrylic paint. The seed heads I sketched using spaghetti dipped in ink. This works well to ensure a wavery, slightly unpredictable line - useful for "loosening up" a drawing.

Doesn't the above picture look delicious? Lovely cake. A great way to disguise courgettes. The trick is to peel them so that there is no green in the cake. Someone might suspect a hidden vegetable that way. It is a beautiful moist cake which has disappeared very quickly down inside my kids!

Recipe for Courgette Cake:

1 medium courgette

150g sugar

100g softened butter

2 eggs

200g flour

3 tsp baking powder.

Beat the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat as hard as you can.

Add the flour and baking powder and stir in and finally add the grated courgette.

I cooked it in a bread tin, which I had greased, at 180 degrees or Gas 4 until a skewer comes out clean on testing.

Cool on a wire tray and fool the kids it's regular, but very nice, cake.

Finally eat it up with a nice cuppa, with or without the accompanying rabbit!