Wacky Cake
This recipe comes from the Great Depression when butter, eggs, and milk were rationed.
DRY
1.5 cups flour
1 cup white sugar *
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1tsp baking SODA
1/2 tsp salt
WET
1 cup warm water
6 tbsp oil*
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp white vinegar

1. Preheat oven 350°F
2. Spray oil two 8"x8" baking pans. ** This needs to done BEFORE you mix the batter.
3. In a large bowl add all DRY ingredients and whisk well to distribute the baking soda evenly. Create a well in the center.
4. In another bowl, add and stir together all the WET ingredients.
5. Give the wet ingredients a quick stir to incorporate the oil and slowly pour into the DRY ingredients. Whisk together until all the lumps are gone. The batter will froth a bit because the vinegar and baking soda are reacting.
6. IMMEDIATELY divide the batter between the two baking pans. Tap the pans on the counter to remove any larger bubbles. Place in oven and bake at 350°F for 12-15 mins.
** Until tooth pock pulls clean.
* I use 3/4 cup of sugar and only 5 tbsp oil to reduce calories.
This cake also freezes well.
If you use 2 - 8"x8" pans the layers will be thin and will cook with 12-15 minutes.
** If use only 1- 8"x8" pan, it will take 18-20 mins.
Extra: instead of frosting, I add a handful of chocolate chips to top of cake when come out of oven to melt, then spread evenly w spatula. This creates a chocolate coating like on z dingdong.

#recipe #food #cake #chocolate #DairyFree #Eggless #vegan

Random Gems #6

From time to time when I go out shooting, I’ll end up with a non-sequitur of a photograph – something that just don’t fit with the theme of the rest of the images in the set, usually in such a jarring way that it’s not worth including. Other times, I’ll take just one or two photos of something, meaning it won’t earn its own post. When that happens, I tend to put the image aside to include in a medley post, which I call my Random Gems series.

Somehow, it has been 8 years – almost to the day, weirdly enough, which I didn’t realise until I looked up the date when writing this post – since my last Random Gems post. Since then I have been slowly been adding to the collection, building up a small pile of images I felt were worth sharing. This assortment is in no particular order, other than it is grouped by which camera took the photo and then by file name, which is actually a very particular sort of order now I think about it.

Jump to Gallery

This has also led to the longest ‘Kit List’ section I’m ever likely to include on a post, thanks to it covering 8 years and two almost separate camera systems with an assortment of interchangeable lenses, with a bonus third point-and-shoot camera to boot.

First, we have images taken with my 60D, starting with this lovely colourful leaf in a garden.
1/125sec, f/2.8, ISO 160, 100mm
And this shot of my cat Freddie. I love the lighting on his face in this shot. This is also an old enough photo that my living room hasn’t been toddlerfied.
1/60sec, f/4, ISO 1000, 55mm
I have a pretty good memory for photos I’ve taken – I’ll usually instantly recognise one of my own images – but the circumstances of the shot are another matter entirely. For instance, I remember taking this photo of an abandoned, weathered umbrella, but I had to look it up in Lightroom to see roughly where I was (on a walk in the countryside near me).
1/30sec, f/4, ISO 400, 47mm
A good example of isolated photos where I’ve only taken one shot is whenever I decide to pop out to take a photo of a particularly interesting moon, usually from either my front or back garden.
1/125sec, f/11, ISO 100, 300mm
Somewhere on my list of things to shoot is finding somewhere with a decent foreground so I can take a photo of the moon with some interesting context, rather than just a closeup of the Moon, which is all I usually do.

I know exactly where this next photo was taken – Swanage, in Dorset – although if I’m honest I can’t remember why it wasn’t in a set with any other shots from there. It must have been a flying visit where I didn’t take many photos.
1/1600sec, f/4, ISO 100, 24mm
I remember this shot too – it’s a rolled up hose in a fire engine.
1/160sec, f/4, ISO 100, 60mm
This is a shot of Eastbourne beach, admittedly taken from slightly closer up than is traditional.
1/1600sec, f/4, ISO 100, 45mm
We are going to move, very briefly, onto a few shots taken by my Sony DSC-RX100 IV. This camera can focus pretty close, so you can get some cute distortions of cats’ heads. It’s worth noting that although this camera has a 24-70mm lens at 35mm equivalent, the EXIF data comes up with its ‘true’ focal length, which is why this image is marked as only being 8mm.

1/30sec, f/1.8, ISO 800, 8.8mm

When shot at more standard focal lengths, they look more normal – but still cute.
1/60sec, f/2.5, ISO 3200, 10.15mm
And here is a shot of the Shard in London, lit up at dusk.

1/320sec, f/2.8, ISO 320, 22.57mm

We’re moving on to some newer images from my R6 Mk II, starting with a much more recent attempt at photographing the Moon.
1/600sec, f/8, ISO 100, 500mm
This is a shot from one of my many lineside trips to the Bluebell Railway. The line runs through the countryside, so there’s often some sights to see entirely unrelated to trains, so they won’t end up in the post.
1/1000sec, f/4, ISO 100, 42mm
A more recent sight lineside (from a trip I’ve not released yet) was this field full of dandelions. I’ve never seen so many dandelion clocks in one place. If there hadn’t been a fence in the way I might have wandered over and set fire to some of them (not really, but I might have done some flame-free macro shots).

1/2000sec, f/2.8, ISO 100, 35mm
1/800sec, f/4, ISO 100, 25mm
The last little run of images in this set comes from a family meal last year. I got a lot of great shots of family (that I don’t tend to share any more), but I also used the opportunity to grab a few shots of the food – although this first shot is less about the food, more about the bottle on our table.

1/100sec, f/6.3, ISO 16000, 85mm

Did I have a burger? Of course I did.
1/100sec, f/2, ISO 3200, 85mm
I also had brownies and waffles for dessert, because that’s also a staple of my diet.
1/125sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 40mm
There’s quite the assortment of images here. To be honest I’m finding less and less that I’m putting images aside for this series – part of the reason it took 8 years to pull together this set. I’m not sure if that’s because it’s not often been in my mind and I’m just including these sorts of images in the galleries at the ends of posts, or because I’m keeping more focussed (heh) when I’m out shooting. That said, I’m hoping to get some errant wildlife shots when I’m out at the railway at some point – not least because there’s often birds of prey circling around near the track – so I have no idea when the next post in this series might be ready for sharing.

As is becoming standard, I’ve put a gallery below with a few extra shots in it. Shots cut from a post about shots cut from other posts. I know.

#camera #cameras #food #nature #Photography #RandomGems #travel