day three: Little Flower School

Nicolette and Sarah.

 We had an early morning jaunt to the markets on the Monday after the Wedding Symposium weekend with Nicolette and Sarah. We sought out such lovely flowers, beautiful deep pink garden roses, lilies, gorgeous daliahs, incredible dancing lady/oncidium orchids-colours I'd never seen before-a luscious black and a pretty pale cream.

pretty arrangement

The class began with an introduction to all the flowers. Something that delighted me was when Sarah and Nicolette described their wild excitement at discovering the green and faun tinged copper foliage you can see being used in the arrangement above. Nicolette said she spied it from afar and knew she needed it, the man who grew it was quite charmingly bemused and said it wasn't really worth cutting, that it was a sucker meaning it was a rebel branch growing from the rootstock.

 We did a clever chicken-wire-in-a-low-bowl for arranging. I set myself the challenge of choosing blooms I was not immediately drawn to, namely: anything too bright.

a dark version

white wall background

 I do love bright flowers but when I am making arrangements for myself I will always head for pale and pretty with something to offset it like crocea/spiny thorny twigs etc. I was pretty tired by the end of the day as I also went to work in betwix the market foray and the class but I was reasonably happy with the end result. 

My show and tell present to the girls.

 I found this on a morning walk with my dog. I've seen it for sale at the markets before. I can't recall it's name I think it starts with 'h'. I brought it in as I suspect it's a native and thought the girls might like to see it. They loved it and wanted to take it home, alas that was not possible.

upside down peach cake

to help with the long days

a little baking

One of my friends made a gorgeous cake, her very sweet partner said that it was the Grandfather of all cakes, the First Cake etc so I was inclined to try the recipe out as it was a carrot cake {a type of cake of which I am particularly fond, when done well}.

happily this recipe only called for one carrot's worth of gratings

It was a recipe from Ottolenghi. I have a book of his called 'Plenty,' which is full of delightful recipes. I find he used spices that I don't usually use which is great because it opens up many different flavours. I feel like it's easy to use the same old spices but quite fun to use sumac, za'atar, cumin etc. Anyway this carrot cake---> http://www.ottolenghi.co.uk/recipes/carrot-cake was pretty darn delicious. It has a really lovely moist crumb with a pleasant crunch to the outer part of the cake. The flavours were warm and rich but not too much. A cake I could probably eat for breakfast. On an indulgent day.


I always struggle to follow a recipe exactly but with this one I made only a few little tweaks. I used ginger and cardamom powder instead of cinnamon and clove, I added a little lime rind to the icing and for the nut topping I used about 20g each of pistachio and walnut {both lightly toasted} and a little sprinkling of dried {edible} rose petals. We had it for a little afternoon treaty with some earl grey. I was very happy with how it all came together. I realise that my favourite cakes are ones that have whipped-into-stiff-peak egg whites folded into the batter for the last step. It seems to give that lovely lightness to the crumb, but then it's also nicely dense. Oh Cake, I adore you.

rose, pistachio and walnut. I like the number three.

lime rind. absolutely worth grating

flowers and cake for afternoon tea

our tame cockatoo. he seemed to be fond of the cake also.