It feels like summer

It feels very much as if summer has come early. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I’ve got a blind pulled to keep the glare off the screen as I type. It’s left me struggling to make up my mind if the advent of such good weather is a help or a hindrance to coping with the current situation, as somehow it’s managing to both lift my spirits and dampen them at the same time. Encouraging me outdoors while at the same time reminding me of all of the things I can’t do once I’m out there. 

There have been the first tentative signs of things moving in the right direction here as an ever increasing number of local independents are offering home delivery and in some cases very careful in store shopping. Yesterday the government announced that some more shops will open during June but a coffeeshop visit is still a long way off. One bright note on this front was discovering that bread-source have a great online service. This is one of my favourite local haunts where I’ve spent many a leisurely hour over coffee, cake and something good to read. If you follow me on twitter you’ll have seen the photographic evidence on many an occasion. I’ve been on their site this afternoon and a selection of treats along with replenishment of my flour supplies will be arriving in a couple of days time. If I can’t get to Bread Source then they can come to me.

One of the positives of the current weather was receiving a request to bake a summer cake at the weekend, in particular a cake that included pineapple. Finding fresh pineapple at the moment may be way out of the question but they did have tinned when I went on my Saturday morning expedition to our local store. With that in place I made pineapple and camomile cake. I based my bake on this Ruby Tandoh recipe and it was gorgeous. Definitely a cake with the look, feel and taste of summer. I had to use tea bags rather than dried flowers but they still managed to infuse the cake with a delicate camomile flavour. The curd was so good I may make a another batch just to have it on toast for breakfast. I will just warn you about one thing though, the recipe makes for a very serious size cake. I halved everything and we still had enough for three people over two days. Although I am sat here now wondering if I shouldn’t have gone for the full thing and given us cake for the next two evenings as well.