Since moving from Scotland to California, the time I spend baking with the kids has decreased. There are so many box mix options in the baking aisles at the Grocery Store and so few basics on offer compared to what I was able to pick up back home that it’s been easy to take the convenient route.

Recently, I’ve been watching The Great British Bake Off on Youtube (a little back home nostalgia), Jack happened to catch one with me at the weekend and declared that he was going to make a cake entirely on his own.

After some chat I managed to persuade him to try the very first cake I ever baked — a Victoria Sponge Cake. As a child it was the basic cake my Mum used for birthday cakes, it was easily adapted into cupcakes.

Since we are in the US, and butter isn’t butter, Caster Sugar doesn’t appear to exist and apparently we don’t need kitchen scales, I’ve adapted the recipe for ease of baking here.

Ingredients

Cake

• ½ cup, or 2 sticks of butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup of granulated white sugar
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup of white all purpose flour, sifted
• 1½ teaspoons of baking powder
• ½ teaspoon of salt

Filling

• 1 jam of Strawberry Jam (I use Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserve)
• ½ pint carton of Heavy Whipping Cream
• Powdered Confectioners Sugar for dusting

Method

Pre–heat your oven to 350°. Take 2 x 9 inch cake pans and line with parchment paper then spray lightly with pam baking spray.

In a large bowl and using a hand mixer, combine the sugar and butter until the butter looks white and the mixture is fluffy. This is the part where you get all of the air into the cake, so mix well.

Then add each egg, 1 at a time and mixing each well before adding the next. Once combined, add the Vanilla extract.

Take the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the mixture. Then, using a metal spoon, gently fold the dry ingredients into your mix until all are combined.

Divide into the 2 cake pans, and place into the oven on the middle shelf (try to put both on the same shelf for even cooking).

Bake for 22 minutes, before removing from oven check that the cake has came away from the edge of the tin and a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. If not, bake for a couple more minutes until ready.

Leave for 10 minutes then remove cakes from pan and place on cooling rack.

Filling

Once cakes are completely cool, you can begin to prepare the filling. ONLY do this step if your ready to eat the cake within the next hour, otherwise you will end up with a melted gooey mess cake sandwich.

First, pour the hard cream into a bowl and whisk using a hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Spread this mixture on one of the cakes.

Then, take the jam and spread on the other cake.

(As a note, we used an entire jar of jam and all of the cream on the cake pictured. It was far too much and made a big, gooey mess when we cut into it. Which was fine for us, but if this is for a special occasion be aware of how much filling you put on the cake!)

Now for the difficult part, you need to put cake piece with cream and sandwich with the jam piece so you have cake–cream–jam–cake.

Finished!

Sift the powdered confectioners sugar on the top and viola! Your cake is ready to share with friends, along with a nice cup of tea!

A few months ago, my 9 year old asked me if I could make him a Scarf that no–one else had at School. We compiled a list of his favourite TV programmes, had a look around to see what was available in local stores and whittled the list down to BMO from Adventure Time.

Before I go on, I would just like to let you know that I only learned how to Crochet a year ago, self taught through various Library books and the occasional YouTube tutorial. This is my very first attempt at writing a pattern, so please let me know if you spot any errors or if any part of this doesn’t make sense. All crochet terms are US.

Materials required

• 1 Skein of Aqua Yarn (I used Red Heart Super Saver Aruba)
• H Hook (5.00mm / UK 6)
• F Hook (3.75mm / UK 8 or 9)
• Yarn Needle
• Scraps of felt in cream, red, royal blue, light blue, black, green & yellow
• Print of attached PDF template
• 4 x Brads
• Embroidery floss to match felt colours

Scarf

All crochet terms are US.

• Row 1 — Using H Hook, Ch 22. Turn, and DC into 2nd stitch from hook. Continue for the rest of the row. Turn.
• Row 2–129 — Ch 2, DC into 2nd stitch from hook for rest of the row. Turn.
• Row 130 — Ch 2, DC into 2nd stitch from hook and continue for rest of the row. Fasten off.

Arms (Make 4)

• Using F Hook, make a magic circle and SC 5 into the ring.
• Mark your last stitch with a stitch marker, then SC 5 for the next 12 rows. Fasten off, leaving a large tail for stitching to the scarf later.

Legs (Make 4)

• Using F Hook, make a magic circle and SC 7 into the ring.
• Mark your last stitch with a stitch marker, then SC 7 for the next 9 rows. Fasten off, leaving a large tail for stitching to the scarf later.

PDF

Using the attached PDF, cut out felt pieces as marked.

Now for the fun bit!

First, place the pieces at the end of the scarf as pictured below:

Attach the brads to BMO’s screen to make eyes, and using a running stitch detail the mouth. Then, stitch the screen onto the scarf using matching embroidery floss (or not, depending on what you have in your stash).

I then attach the arms and legs using the yarn needle and a whipstitch, placing them where I feel they look "right". Have a go and trust your instincts!

Finished!

Ta–Da! Now you should have one fantastic looking BMO scarf ready for that special Adventure Time fan in your life.

As I said at the start, this is my very first Crochet tutorial, your feedback on any mistakes, parts I miss out or sections that just make no sense at all would be very much appreciated.

Hello there! Well, its been a while! Settling into living in California was a little more difficult than we originally anticipated, but over the past month or so things have all started to click into place and I have been able to start again with crafting and creating.

During my absence I have experimented a little with embroidery hoops, taught myself to crochet and explored every craft shop I could possibly find as well as sticking with my old favourite, felt.

I have a number of Tutorials waiting to be published over the next few weeks, and hopefully I will start using the Blog a little more.

Thanks for reading.

Well, it’s once again been a while hasn’t it? Apologies again, although I can genuinely hand on heart say that it has been one of the busiest times of our life!

So, what’s happened since August 5th?

Firstly and most importantly our Visa documentation was approved! On Wednesday Ed and I flew to Belfast for our face to face interview, which went well. On Saturday morning our passports arrived with our shiny USA visa’s safely attached inside — hooray!

Secondly, our house sale concluded (after 16 months and four buyers) and on Monday just past we moved out of our home of five years and into a caravan, our temporary accommodation. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a challenge. It’s a lovely static caravan and is perfect for a holiday, but going from our old (and in my opinion very spacious) home into a two bed caravan has been, well, interesting. But it’s short term.

We are now on the sad part of our adventure — we leave two weeks today and our days are filled with last visits to places and goodbyes. Leaving drinks are being organised, the boys are having a leaving party next week with a handful of their closest friends and close family goodbyes have almost all been arranged.

I will be updating the Blog more frequently now as we are finding our days less full as we get more organised. If you want to follow our new adventure remember to follow me on Twitter (@redandrosyhq) or on Instagram (@redandrosy) which is updated far more frequently than the Blog. To be honest, Instagram is updated many, many times a day!

Thanks so much for reading.

So I’ve finally done it (well, I did it two weeks ago, I’ve only just got round to writing this post). I’ve closed my business officially with the tax office. Red and Rosy no longer sells creative, bespoke handmade gifts and can no longer make any money of any sort. It’s quite refreshing to be honest, I thought I would be really upset but I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

I’m not going to lie to you — it’s been a tough few years. I’ve only had a handful of negative experiences, but I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting many lovely crafters and customers and I can honestly say it’s been a pleasure.

So — for those of you who didn’t know we are off on a big, new adventure. My husband has a new job based in San Francisco and we are moving to Marin, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge. I will eventually get Ed (the Web Superhero) to amend my website to make it less "selling" and more "family adventure". We are still in the UK, and still visa-less for the moment but we have finally sold our house after 16 months and four buyers having to pull out, and we are almost ready to go. Our home is slowly getting emptier, and in the next month or so we will be leaving our home and moving into temporary accommodation until we leave.

It would be lovely you would like to follow our adventure — in addition to (trying) to Blog more you can also find me on Twitter (@redandrosyhq), Facebook and if you are on Instagram come and say hi, you can find me at @redandrosy. Right now my Instagram is full of pictures of the kids and our “final visit” to places around Edinburgh & East Lothian, but soon it should be full of San Francisco, Marin and our many new adventures (Disneyland is the first promised place to vacation to!)

Thanks again to everyone who have left comments, interacted and purchased items from me and here’s to my family’s big new adventure!