BAKING AND CAKES IN THE BALLROOM CAFE.

I love baking nearly as much as I love writing. What better way to wind down than to set to baking a cake.

   My mother loved to bake cakes too, as well as puddings she steamed for after the roast lunch on Sunday. She never seemed to have to take out a recipe book; it was all in her head. She always said if you kept key ingredients in the food cupboard, you would never be stuck.

 Flour in those days came in large white cloth sacks and it was my job to scoop it out with a big metal scoop and weigh it.

   I know now she only got me to set it on the scales to humour a  young helper. She herself could throw the ingredients together and whip up a cake in no time.

We made lemon cakes, coffe cakes, the rich family chocolate cake for special occasions and seed cakes. But it was what we called ordinary sponge, which I still love best.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY

                                                        


On St Patrick's Day my father always woke early, got his knife and tramped across the frields to dig up the shamrock so we all could wear a bunch on our coat lapels.

  Sometimes we went along with him, our heads down scanning the grass. We searched, hoping to find the lucky four leaf shamrock. More often than not, we only found clover. As our feet got wet from the heavy March dew on the grass, we waited patiently for Dad to pronounce that the bunch of green flowers he had located was shamrock.

I am so proud that The Ballroom Café is featured in the Irish Echo in New York and 50 states across the USA for St Patrick's Day 2015.  Read about the amazing women who inspired the novel. 

THE BALLROOM CAFE IN THE BIG APPLE AND BEYOND.


I am so proud to be in the |Irish Echo across 50 states of the USA for St Patrick's Day talking about what inspired me  to write The Ballroom Café. Drop by and take a look...........