Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a bitter sweet day for me. I think about my mother quite a bit. All the memories - the funny, the sad, the big moments and the everyday. I didn't visit her grave today. I wouldn't have stopped crying if I had. She died a long time ago now, but the pain of loss is still real. I think about her every single day. She walks beside me. I often reflect on how she would react to something or what she might say or think about a particular issue.

But it is too indulgent to only think about such things. So, on a happier note I made a cake for Mr S' grandmother and we went for a visit.


It is a very good Cherry Cake which I have been making since I was a little girl. It is a very good butter cake with chopped glace cherries and a milk icing. Making this cake was entirely intentional. As I made it, I thought about growing up and learning to cook in my mother's kitchen. She was an excellent cook, with many recipe books that I spent hours pouring over as a child. This recipe comes from one of these books. It has stains on some of the pages. It is a good indication of where her popular recipes might be located.

And the cake was delicious!

Basically the recipe is:

Cream together 6oz (175g) of butter and 3/4 cup of caster sugar and then mix in 3 eggs (one at a time). Sift in 3/4 cup of self raising flour, stir in 3 tablespoons of milk and then sift in a further 3/4 cup of plain flour. Lastly stir in 4 oz (125g) of chopped glace cherries. Pour the batter into a ring tin (buttered of course) and cook in a moderate oven for about 30 mins. (cooking time depends on the tin - in a normal round cake tin it will take longer)

The icing is a nob of butter, icing sugar and enough milk to make a stiff paste.

Oh, and this is what my son made me:

I'll make a 'crafty' boy of him yet!!!