the vegan lamington cake

I've been watching the episodes of Zumbo lately, and I really like his creative process for cake making. He just thinks about what he'd like to have in the cake, the flavours & textures, and writes it down, and voila!
I had to make a special birthday cake a few days ago, and one of Zumbo's recipes involved a coconut & dark chocolate ganache. Genius! This inspired me to make a lamington-esque cake - chocolate, coconut & raspberry.

For the ganache, I boiled sugar & cornflour in a tiny bit of sugar, and slowly mixed in coconut cream to create a vegan coconut custard mix. I then poured this over chocolate to make a thick ganache - so good!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished cake, but these are the layers - 2 layers of chocolate tahini cake (modified from this recipe), and 1 layer of a jam cake (I just made up the recipe, it was good!)

In between were layers of ganache or raspberries. The raspberries were so great to cut through the richness.

Despite the cake tasting rich, it was not overwhelming. The whole cake had not a very high sugar content, but the chocolate definitely delivered a buzz!

Mmm. A good thing to create.

kittens!

I had lots of fun drawing all these kittens! I do like cats, even though they make me sneeze. I decided to base them around a fun colour scheme that I don't normally work with - and I wanted also for them all to have little bits of personality on show.

As always, they're made of certified organic cotton and lined with recycled cotton. And they're cute!

Kitten purses are available
Pocket Carnival store
Pocket Carnival etsy

work in progress...

Usually I work on some purses one day, some cards the next, a little of this and a little of that. This week, however, has been a combination of being overwhelmed by what is happening in Japan, plus lots of purse orders. So it's been a sewing week.

I have been almost glued to my sewing seat, watching things or listening to music on the computer. I'm getting there... if I can get it all finished by Friday, the weekend will be so nice.

Miso soup for lunch... oh Japan, I hope you'll be okay! This nuclear stuff is so very scary. I guess it's an overwhelming and unwanted lesson that nuclear power can never be 100% safe, no matter how careful we are.

I did get a new fabric delivery today which is exciting! So many new products on the way, I can't wait to show you!