Candles and Flames

Rhubarb and ginger cake I made this morning:

I've made this before, although not in this oven or this shaped pan, so I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out. It turned out fine, and as yummy as before.

If you would like to give it a go yourself, the recipe is from here:
https://www.riverford.co.uk/recipes/view/recipe/rhubarb-ginger-cake
However, due to ingredient availability I made the following changes to the recipe:
I used 200g self-raising flour instead of the flours and bi-carb that they use.

I used golden syrup instead of treacle.

I used dark brown sugar instead of muscovado sugar - and I didn't have 110g of it, so it was only about 80g.

Plus I had 4 sticks of rhubarb which only weighed 250g, rather than the 340g in the recipe.
And because this oven is fan-forced, I initially set it at 170, and then during cooking I dropped it to 165 and then 160 because it looked like the outside was cooking too quickly.

But apart from all that, I did follow the recipe!

Then I had to carry it up the hill during a break in the rain, for a special birthday lunch with the neighbours.

Blowing out the candles:

Later in the afternoon we started to get emergency alarms about a fire in Lal Lal:

That was a bit surprising given the almost non-stop rain we've had for the last couple of days. We couldn't tell from the map which building was on fire, so we popped down to have a look. It was the demolition yard, which we have visited a few times but which I seem to have only shown on my blog when we were looking for gates. We couldn't get close due to the number of firetrucks blocking the roads, so here's a couple of screen-shots from the Ballarat Courier story about the fire:

It will be interesting to hear what they decide caused the blaze.