Visiting Thea & Sami's studio and lemon syrup cake

What a crazy busy week we've had. Hence the lack of blog posts from around here.

It was nice however to end the week with a visit to Thea & Sami which is one of Brisbane's best screen-printing design studios. Thea invited me, and a few other Brissy bloggers, to an ultra-casual morning tea in her shop/studio.

Thea's fabrics.
In the background you can see vintage chairs with her fabrics used as upholstery

I bought a few tea-towels. They are very cool.

Thea designs and hand screen-prints natural fabrics and creates linen homewares - they really are first class products. I've always admired Thea's work from when she used to create hand screen-printed clothing. She is renowned for her award winning Brisbane printed skirts that was favoured by a former Premier of Queensland (and it wasn't Peter Beattie!).

Image courtesy of Thea & Sami blog.
The skirt is no longer available but Thea still sells the  screen-print as a panel

Thea's screen-print of Brisbane is available HERE.
It is fabulous and touches my Brissy heart.

It was also great to catch up with Katherine from theoldboathouse, A-M from The House A-M Built, Annie from Red roses and crystal and of course Thea. We stuffed ourselves full of cake and sweets. A-M brought delicious carrot cake, Annie treated us to some home-made jam drops and I brought along a fantastically easy-to-bake lemon syrup cake.

Jam-drops and lemon syrup cake

I promised everyone to include the recipe here. It is a Nigella Lawson recipe from her How to be a Domestic Goddess (I think Jason bought it for me...ever hopeful he is...).


Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake
125g unsalted butter
175g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
175g self raising flour
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons milk (I used Greek yoghurt because that's just how I roll)
23x13x7cm loaf tin buttered and lined

For the syrup:
juice of 1 and a half lemons
100g icing sugar


Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 180 C/ gas mark 4.
Butter and line your loaf tin well.
Cream together butter and sugar and add eggs and lemon zest, beating them in well.
Gently fold in the flour and the salt, mixing thoroughly and then add the milk (or yoghurt).
Spoon the batter into your prepared tin and bake for 45 mins or until cake tester comes out clean.

For the syrup:
Put the lemon juice and icing sugar into a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.

As soon as cake is out of oven, puncture all over with skewer and pour over the syrup. Leave cake to cool completely before removing from the tin.


Make it, because it is simply good.

Also, Thea's shop/studio, if you're interested, is located in Unit 1/ 6 Jones Road Capalaba. It's open every Friday from 10am to 4pm or by appointment. It's good to support local designers, so they are able to keep on creating. Thanks Thea!