Monthly Archives: February 2018

Lemon Marmalade Cake

Receipe for Lemon Marmalade Cake.

This cake is very easy to make. lemon marmalade cake, bolo de lemão, Algarve, Fuseta, Tavira

Ingredients.

  1. 250 grams self raising flour.

  2. 250 grams sugar (I used soft yellow sugar but I am sure white sugar will do).

  3. 2 ripe lemons

  4. half a teaspoon salt

  5. half a teaspoon baking soda

  6. Lemon marmalade

  7. 4 eggs

Method.

Use a sufficiently large bowl where you can mix everything together in using a electrical cake mixer/egg beater.

Put the flour, sugar, salt and baking soda into the bowl. Break four eggs and add them in (holding back the shell of'course 🙂 ).

Take each lemon and using a fine grater grate of the rind of both lemons. Add the grating to the cake mix. Cut the lemons and squeeze and collect the lemon juice. Remove the seeds. Now add the juice to the cake mix.

Using the electrical beater, beat the cake mix until it is light and fluffy. The better you beat it, the lighter the cake will be. If you want a lighter sponge reduce the amount of flour by 25-30 grams .

Put it in the oven at 200 ºC for 40 minutes.

I prefer to use a round tray with a hole in the centre as I find this gives you   a more fluffy cake. You can use a standard 8 inch round baking tray too.

After the cake is ready pop it out, let it cool and then slice it into two. Apply a layer of lemon marmalade to the bottom part and then sandwich the cake back together. All done!

I find the cake tastes better from the second day onwards after the marmalade permeates it.

This is the receipe I used to make lemon marmalade. I only used 200 grams less of sugar per kilogram of lemons and add some pieces of cinnamon sticks and s few cloves.

https://snapguide.com/guides/make-lemon-marmalade/

All done!

As an aside here are some picks of water chilli pickle and some of my olives I have prepared. The olives are decent to eat :).

piri piri conserva, chilli pickle, Algarve, Fuseta, Tavira

olives, azeitonas, Algarve, Fuseta, Tavira

I just used a few slices of lemon, a couple of garlic and a bit of wild thyme. I got a lot more to marinade. Até logo peeps! Vesão em portuguese vai breve 🙂

An Electric Quad Bike for Work and Fun

Due to the large distances that needed to be traversed in the while carrying out harvesting and land management activities, I decided I needed some sort of machine to move about. Having to haul a loaded wheelbarrow an average distance of 2 km is not really my idea of fun. Adult electric quad bike, electric ATV

I wanted an electric vehicle that would be in keeping my overall renewable energy strategy. I began searching for electric quad bikes. Initially all I could find were quad bikes only suitable for children and very expensive adult size quad bikes available and assembled in Europe.

Once again the Chinese came to the rescue with a solution. For the past three years I've been very pleased with the Chinese designs and built direct drive electric scooter. I now found a model of quad bike that seemed to be both affordable and capable.

I ordered it through a Portuguese company based in the north of Portugal. Now that I know the model, I know I could have saved over 100 euros if I had imported directly via a distributor based in Germany. However I am happy with the technical support I have received from the Portuguese company to date.

The Model: HB-EATV750M

The bike arrived partly assembled. I had to put on the wheels and the handle bar and not much else.

The bike is adequately suitable for a medium sized adult and can carry a maximum weight of 120 kilograms. It has a two speed controller and a reverse mode which is very useful for getting out of trouble. I find that the 1000 Watt motor to be sufficiently powerful for what's needed. It runs on a voltage of 48 Volts. If you open the throttle fully from a stationary position it will rear up and do a 'wheelie' 🙂 I won't be doing these intentionally as it is an unnecessary risk. This model is a chain rear wheel drive. The bigger front tyres do make a difference in clambering over obstacles.

The bike is not road legal and can only be used on private property. This does not affect me too much as I was banned from driving years ago. I have a bridle path I can go up and down and have created a corridor through a couple of Portuguese neighbours' properties. electric quad bike, ATV, Fuseta , Portugal

It has a rated maximum speed of 25 km an hour and a range of about 20 kilometres on full charge. It is not recommended for use in wet conditions as the electrics have not been protected in waterproof housings. Fortunately we don't have many rainy days here in the Algarve, Portugal.

Work capability.

It's early days yet but almost a month of usage, I have to say I am really impressed with the quad bike.

I was intially going to buy a trailer. Besides the expense I think what's available is inadequate. I have found a wheel barrow attached with a couple of elasticized luggage straps are adequate for my needs. This allow the the wheelbarrow sufficient diagonal play required during turning, I am going to modify the wheel barrow by cutting down the stands for additional ground clearance and fitting on some sort of extension to carry larger volumes of brush wood. 1000W adult electric quad bike, ATV, Fuseta, Algarve

I haven't used it for recreation at all but I will keep you posted . 🙂