Tangerine, apricot and almond cake

I pass this recipe from a food magazine on...its bleedin' delicious. Moist, gooey and lovely served warm with ice cream...
Its supposed to be made with clementines, but I used tangerines. Blood oranges would also be lovely I am sure.

Tangerine, apricot and almond cake

100g dried apricots
175ml tangerine juice (6-8 tangerines)
100g soft butter
100g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
50g self-raising flour
175g ground almonds
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp flaked almonds
icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180 C or 160 C for fan ovens, or Gas Mark 4.

Finely chop the apricots and put in a pan with the juice. Simmer for 5 minutes and leave to cool.

Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl, then add the eggs and beat again til nice and fluffy. Add the flour and beat a little. Fold in the vanilla, ground almonds, and apricot/juice mix. Put in an 8 inch cake tin and bake for 30 minutes or so, until it is firm to the touch, and a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave for five minutes, then turn out to cool on a rack.



Cunning

We had a wee needle-felting session over christmas, and I made this little fox, to remind me of craftiness and cunnning for the next year.
Here he is watching the chickens eat their christmas cake...
It was minus 10 down here the night before last, but its much warmer - a whole 2 degrees today! Lets hope it melts soon and the poor animals can have a break from the cold.

The infinite beauty of an ice crystal

I spent some time over the last week trying to look at snowflakes under my flea-market microscope. And it seemed that it is true that each one is different. I couldn't photograph them, but wanted to put up some pictures here, most taken on Christmas morning, of the snow here. The most snow I've ever seen in Ireland.