Monster Mash!

Tori turned three on the 21st of July. Yes, three. Already.

I was off in London living the Olympic high life on the day so yesterday we had a second celebration together. She had birthday with Daddy on the day and birthday with Mummy and Caius this week. We had a lovely day out together, playing in the park and making a visit to the Build-A-Bear Workshop for a treat before heading back for an afternoon in English Folkfan‘s back garden in the sunshine with bubbles and flowers galore (and MORE presents for the birthday girl).

Then home for cake. MONSTER CAKE for my little Monster.

I had fun making these – I used a recipe/design from the book Caius bought me for my birthday back in June and whilst I had a few icing issues (my first batch was too runny and went grey rather than purple {made a good mud monster in the end} and I didn’t quite perfect it later) the end results were quite good. They made me smile and I think Tori was impressed (possibly more by the amount of E-numbers than my cake-making prowess).

Preparing all the eyes! (mini lollipops and peach ring sweets)

Making the fur

Green furry monster and ‘purple’ mud monster taking shape

With their faces made

Fuzzy pink monster

The whole herd!

Having individual cakes instead of one big one was a nice change and they were good fun and fairly simple to make. Very sweet though with all the extra bits!!

Happy Birthday Dad! 247/365

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.
H. L. Mencken

And another cake…

Today I have been a member of Twitter for two whole years. This was pointed out to me by @EnglishFolkfan who sent me a link to http://howlonghaveyoubeentweeting.com/ because she knew I’d use it as an excuse for cake. I like cake.

I also like a challenge and decided that my 2nd Tweetday cake had to be Twittery. So I went on a hunt for blue icing, made myself a template of the Twitter logo and came out with the following result. Just because I could.

More Cake – By Popular Request

A couple of people have asked if I could post the recipe for the cake I made when Liberty and I got together the other week and who am I to refuse? Cake is one of the greatest joys in life and Marble Cake has always been one of my favourites because it’s just so pretty and fun AND it’s dead easy to make too The basic recipe is one from Mary Berry’s Fast Cakes book and it’s really simple to tweak to your own preferences – a great hit with kids for birthdays…and big kids who just like cake…

Basic Ingredients:

6 oz / 175g soft margarine

6 0z/ 175g caster sugar

6oz/ 175g self-raising flour

1½ level teaspoons baking powder

3 eggs

1 level tablespoon cocoa/hot chocolate powder

Optional Ingredients:

Food colouring of your choice – whatever colour and however many

2 oz/ 50g Chocolate drops

2 oz/ 50g sultanas/dried fruit

Any other flavourings you fancy…

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line with greaseproof paper an 8″/20cm round cake tin.

Put the margarine, sugar, flour, baking powder and eggs in a bowl and beat together until the mixture is well blended and smooth.

Separate the mixture out into as many different bowls as you want colours/flavours in your cake.

If you are using cocoa, mix it with a tablespoon of hot water to make a smooth paste before adding it to one of your bowls of mixture and stirring it in. If you’re using hot chocolate powder just chuck it in the mixture and stir lots!

In your other bowls add a few drops of food colouring and mix until you get the colour you desire.

I like to put white chocolate chips in the chocolate cake mix and milk chocolate chips in the plain sponge mixture but you can do whatever you like really!

Next put your cake mixture into your tin a spoonful at a time. Do a spoon of each type of mix as you go round so that they alternate throughout the cake.

Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes until the sponge is well risen and golden brown and the top springs back when lightly touched with your fingertips.

Turn it out to cool on a wire rack and then ice or decorate as required! – I melted a Milk Chocolate Scot block and drowned my cake in it, then melted some white chocolate and drizzled that on top of that and then liberally sprinkled the top with mini marshmallows…

Decoration is not my strong point...

How much more fun is that than just plain sponge?!

Any Excuse For Cake.

Tomorrow promises to be good:

In the evening it is a concert at my church by Of One Accord, the choir my Mum is a part of, to celebrate my Mum and our friend’s 60th Birthdays which are coming up very soon. We have all been busy baking goodies for the interval and preparing ‘stuff’ to pretty the church and it should be a really good night for everyone.

(If you happen to be local and free you are more than welcome to come along too, whoever you are. Wem Methodist Church, Aston Street, Wem, North Shropshire. Doors open 7pm, concert starts 7.30pm. £5 on the door.)

ALSO

Liberty is coming to my house tomorrow to hang out before we head to the above concert.

It is far too long since we actually saw each other in person rather than just being words on screens, be they laptops or phones.

This event means that tomorrow promises certain things:

Pizza – A uni tradition we have continued. It used to be our reward for trekking up the giant hill we lived at the top of – the calories don’t count if you’ve just dragged yourself up a hill that size. Trust me.

Cake – Similar to above. Except this time I made the cake myself instead of buying one like we always did at uni when we were lazy students.

Girly DVDs – I say ‘girly’. Our idea of girly and everyone else’s tend to differ. We define ‘girly’ by ‘stuff the OHs won’t watch with us’ – such as Primeval, Supernatural, Torchwood, various sci-fi/fantasy films and, in this case, Alice.

I am very much looking forward to tomorrow. I should have put it on my Reasons To Be Cheerful post earlier. This can be my second R2BC post instead….

Is it tomorrow yet???

Happy Birthday to me!

It’s my birthday – I have reached the grand old age of 22, hurrah.

Apparently this means I’m meant to grow up and be an adult and do sensible things like work in an office and eat pizza with a knife a fork.

I don’t think so.

I like being silly, I like making things up and writing them down, I like sitting on the floor and playing with my daughter’s building blocks and  I REALLY like eating pizza with my hands and getting covered in cheese. I’m not giving that up just for a number.

I also love presents and the prospect of unwrapping lots later actually makes me feel like I’m six years old – the fact that my 11 month old daughter will be fighting me for the wrapping paper may contradict this but that’s a minor detail. For the rest of today I am six and I want to unwrap things, eat lots of food and have cake. Lots of cake. I do hope there’s cake…