Let's #ACEit when washing whites!

 

I've been sent a bottle of ACE Ultra for Whites to try out. 

In our household, the main culprits for getting that dull grey look and hard-to-remove stains are the kids school polo shirts, shirts and white school socks. 

Common culprits: White school socks often end up grey! 

School polo shirts soon lose their whiteness and brightness!

We also have some nearly white handtowels that I use in the kitchen for when I've washed my hands. It is recommended that ACE Ultra for Whites is ONLY used on completely white items but I knew that I wouldn't mind if the colour of these towels changed as they're rather old anyway. 

I have to confess that I didn't have any fresh stains to use the ACE on as the kids have been studying from home this term for medical reasons so we didn't get the usual "school dinner tomato sauce stains" that are usually a regular feature in our household! 

So the stains were older "baked in" ones like the yellowing around the collar and underarms. I realise that allowing stains to "bake in" is actually one of the worst things you can do. You can read some great tips for how to avoid this on the Britmums website.

But nonetheless, we put the ACE Ultra for Whites to the test. There are several ways of using it including for directly treating stains before washing and leaving to soak. However, my usual way of washing is as quick and straightforward as possible so I put it in the fabric conditioner drawer as we don't have a dedicated CL compartment as some washing machines do and I didn't need to use fabric conditioner. 

As I expected, the baked in stains proved stubborn but I was impressed with the improvement in the towels! I have some white bath mat towels that I'm planning to use this on now as I think it will help them stay bright and white when use in every wash of whites.  

For the shirts it was harder to notice the difference. But as I mentioned, these stains are old "baked in" ones so it wasn't really the fairest test. I'll definitely be using it straight away on any new fresh stains in future. Even with the shirts, I think there has been some improvement in reducing the yellowing neck stains. 

I was amazed at the fresh smell of the clothes. As ACE Ultra for Whites contains bleach, I have to admit that I was worried about being left with an unpleasant bleach smell but I was very happy to have a fresh clean smell wafting around my home as the clothes dried. 

In future, I'll definitely be taking note of the tips on the ACE website to help me #ACEit when it comes to keeping whites bright!

Gifted item: I received a bottle of ACE Ultra for Whites for the purposes of this post. All opinions are my own.

This post is an entry for the #ACEit Challenge, sponsored by ACE. Get ideas on how to wash whites, treat stains and laundry like a boss with tips from the ACE site! 

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Chocolate chip loaf cake

Another day, another loaf cake. This time our chocolate cravings took hold so we made a chocolate chip chocolate loaf cake. I suppose it could be called a double-chocolate loaf cake as it has cacao powder in the batter as well as chocolate chips in it. 

Once again I tried to keep the sugar content a little lower and switched some of the fat content for greek yogurt. I have found that oil seems to work better in chocolate cakes for keeping the cake more moist compared to butter. 

Ingredients:

100g self-raising flour

25g cocoa or cacao powder

1 tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

2 eggs

50g olive oil

50g greek yogurt

20g chopped white chocolate (or chocolate chips)

30g chopped milk or dark chocolate (or chocolate chips)

Strawberries to garnish

Drizzle of melted white chocolate to decorate if desired. 

Method:

Once again, as with the Basil, Lemon and Poppy seed loaf cake, the method is really simple. Perhaps just a little tricker because I mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately first.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160C and grease and line a loaf tin. I used a loaf-tin liner and found that I didn't need to grease it. 

2. Mix all of the wet ingredients together. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients together except for the chopped chunks of chocolate. 

3. Then mix around half of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Add the chopped chocolate to the remaining dry ingredients. The idea being that if they are coated with the flour and cacao powder it should make them less likely to sink in the cake when cooking. Then add the last of the dry ingredients with the chocolate chunks in into the main mixture and fold in to combine. 

4. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 35-40 minutes at 160C (fan). It took 37 minutes in our oven. 

If you wish to you can melt a little white chocolate to drizzle over the top and garnish with some chopped strawberries. 

 

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Lemon, poppy seed and basil loaf cake

One of my favourite cake flavour combinations has to be Lemon and Poppy seed. In the past, I've made gluten-free lemon and poppy seed cupcakes and even a vegan version of a lemon and poppy seed cake for GBBO's Vegan week bake along back in 2018. 

Lately I've been really into baking loaf-cakes. They seem to have a reliability about them that I don't seem to master with a circular shaped cake! So it made sense to try a lemon and poppy seed loaf cake. To give it an extra flavour twist I also included some finely chopped fresh basil. 

If I can get away with it, I often try to reduce the amount of sugar and fat in cake recipes. So I got away with 100g of caster sugar in this recipe and used a combination of greek yogurt and butter so that I didn't need loads of butter. Both of these tweaks seemed to work out well. 

Ingredients:

125g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

50g butter - room temperature

50g greek yogurt

2 large eggs

Juice of half a lemon and zest of a lemon

20g poppy seeds

A few leaves of fresh basil - finely chopped (plus extra for garnish)

A little icing sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice to decorate if desired (or a drop of gin mixed with icing sugar for an extra treat) 

Method:

The method really was as simple as combining everything together in the stand mixer, pouring into a lined loaf tin and popping in a pre-heated oven at 160C for 35-40 minutes. It actually took 42 minutes in my oven. 

I put the poppy seeds into the mix last but everything else went in at the same time.

I've found that if I use a loaf-tin liner then I don't even need to grease the tin first whereas with baking paper I do tend to grease the tin too. 

The trouble with the loaf shaped cakes is that between the 5 of us, they dissappear rather quickly - A generous sized slice each and it's gone or two thinner slices each if we're trying to eat less of it each time. 

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