I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS

Never have, so first thing and to cheer myself up, I had a mocha latte, sprinkled with Spanish hot chocolate.  I'm not much of a coffee fan to be honest, I find it too bitter, but I love a latte and found these on offer at  £1.25 for eight sachets (£2.49 in Asda).  I only buy this sort of thing when they are on offer, because I'm a bit of a tight wad, and the thought of my mug of coffee shop style latte only costing sixteen pence makes me smile!

Continuing on this theme, we popped into our nearest town yesterday, to pick up some essentials.   It was very busy for a Sunday, due to the snow and people not being able to shop earlier.

I noticed how packed Costa Coffee and Starbucks were. I tend to avoid large corporate coffee shops, opting for smaller family run ones, but that's just me.  I love ones like The Orchard Food and Coffee shop, which is funnily enough on the site of  another long gone coffee establishment, The Cadena,  one of the most amazing places, to my childhood eyes.  From the modern coffee shop below, a wonderful wooden staircase with a plush red patterned carpet,  lead you to the upper storey where high tea was served by waitresses who wore black and white uniforms with little white hat's like nurses.  It was silver service and a true treat when were were taken there as small children by my Mum or my Aunty Merle,  for tea.  I always remembered that halfway up the staircase,  there was a little booth where you paid your bill before you left.  The Cadena was demolished in 1983 and I remember being quite upset about it.  It's nice that a lovely little coffee shop occupies some of the space that was left after it was torn down.

Well, enough reminiscing. To further cheer myself up this Monday,  I baked a cake, a banana, raisin and walnut cake, minus walnuts, as I didn't have any,  I remembered from the last time I made this, that the batter was too much for my standard loaf tin, so it went into a bread tin instead. I made this cake last summer, using my electric oven, but it proved a bit of bugger to cook in the Aga, with the outside cooking ahead of the centre.  I even put foil over the top, but to no avail.  I ended up putting it in the simmering oven to finish off for a couple of hours.

Anyone for a bit of burnt brick cake?

Nice scorch mark there, ooh and a little bit of flour that I failed to mix in properly. Yes, I was supposed to mix each ingredient before adding the next (forgot) but this unappetising lump did actually taste ok and Mr. thoroughly enjoyed it.

As you can see, the Beast Cake, as I've now named it, barely fitted my cake plate...or my cake tin for that matter. 

Hoping your Monday bakes are better than mine!