Custard Powder

I have a tin of Bird's Custard Powder in my cupboard that really needs to be used up before it becomes an antique. 

So I searched the interwebs for decent custard powder recipes and was led staight back to a book I have on my shelf....

Ah, good old Nigella and her cake-making genius.  The Birthday Custard Sponge recipe has custard powder in the cake mix and in the buttercream.

 

I ommited the chocolate icing, which looked altogether too sickly for my tastes, and just used buttercream for the sandwiching and topping. I then grated some chocolate on top for a little decoration and flavour.

 

Of course I had a little helper to keep me on track.  She's particularly good at mixing!

 

It turned out to be delicious and had a lovely moist puddingy texture. Yum yum.

 

It was also incredibly easy to make - just shove all the ingredients in a food processor and blend!  Then the cake takes 20 minutes to bake, which is great if you need a speedy cakey treat double quick, you can have this whipped up, cooled and iced within the hour.

 

I made it again this morning in fact.  This time I used only 3 eggs instead of the recipe's 4. 

4 seems a little excessive for one cake don't you think?  Not that I want to question Nigella of course.  But it did seem a little lighter this time round :)

 

 

So there you have it! A great use for custard powder, highly recommended, yummity yum x

Meadow Party

On Saturday Lillia turned 6 and had a "meadow" themed party at home to celebrate.  There were far too many sweet treats of course, with a few carrot sticks and cucumber slices thrown in to balance it out a bit. But most of all there were plenty of games and fun. I had a lot of fun making crochet bunting and other little decorations. The flower bunting above was inspired by this tutorial and it was perfect for a meadow theme.

I made up the pattern for mini bunting and used yarn left over from other projects to make it...

I was very pleased with this, I really love the colours. In fact all the bunting is still up! I don't think I will take it down until well after Easter is done :) As well as bunting there were many bunches of cheery daffs dotted about the place looking festive...

I love daffodils. Yellow is my favourite colour and they are only 99p a bunch, so at this time of year I can afford to have fresh flowers in the house!

I made a meadow cake of course...

And I also made plenty of butterfly biscuits...

...and toadstool muffins...

...and faced with leftover green buttercream icing I decided to create some "meadow muffins" too...!

Honestly I think I had eaten a ton of buttercream before 10am just from the odd lick of a spoon or finger! Myum myum! Good job Lillia was too busy making fairy rings using pink helium balloons to notice.

Every guest had their own butterfly cookie with their name piped on in icing, and we had little colourful windmills scatted about as well as in the party bags. They looked so pretty poking out, I totally forgot to take a photograph of them all lined up, it was just all so manic getting everything ready!

The vase holding the yellow windmill is one of mine by the way, do you like it?

Then of course we had our paper pom poms adding the finishing touch...

We played Pin the Tail on the Cow, musical statues, musical bumps, Pass the Parcel, we had an Easter egg hunt and then there was Wally the Wicked Wasp - our homemade pinata! Sadly I completely forgot to take a proper photo before he was smashed to a pulp by 6 sugar-fuelled 6-year-olds with a rolling pin. But here he is in action...

 

Lillia didn't want the pinata to be anything she liked, like a bumble bee or a toadstool, as she didn't like the idea of whacking it otherwise! Bless her. So a wicked wasp was the solution! He was stuffed full of chocolates and party blowers, they had a great time!

It was a tiring but lovely day.  Lillia had a wonderful birthday, I just can't believe she is 6-years-old.  Where did that time go?

There is still a bit of cake left so I best get on and help with the eating of it, might be some wine left somewhere in the fridge too :0)

Happy Birthday Lillipops

xx

5 years ago today...

5 years ago today I was still in hospital in a daze wondering how on earth I would ever be able to look after the tiny helpless creature in my arms.  Well, it was a long road but somehow we have made it through five years without too much incident and we have a perfect, gorgeous, opinionated, clumsy, clever, beautiful, funny, quirky, firey, skinny, energetic, imaginative, sensitive, lovely 5-year-old girl to show for it.

She is in school today then afterwards we are treating her to afternoon tea at the Cadburys Cafe, I don't know who is more excited about this :)  As is our tradition I made her one of her presents.  This year she chose something out of my Curious Creatures for Immature Adults book.

A pretty floral print doll perhaps?  A cuddly princess?  A cute little animal? Nooo...

She chose "Mr Skelly", the cheese-eating, dancing skeleton!  Not one to disappoint my daughter I set to work last night and after three hours of sewing and stuffing, a bit of swearing, and two glasses of prosecco our very own Mr Skelly was finished...

Of all the things I have made her Mr Skelly was the one that has had the biggest reaction.  She came downstairs to see her pile of pressies with Mr Skelly on top and ran squealing across the living room yelling "Mr Skelly Mr Skelly!"  So it was well worth the effort :)

I have to say I do rather love him.  He is settling in nicely and is currently sat in the armchair opposite me reading Lillia's new copy of The BFG.

Now earlier this week I promised you a dancing skeleton and a cake the colour of a dead fish.  Having delivered on my first promise it is only fair I share with you the cake.  Before I do I must first explain.  I made a fabulous (and huge) two layer madeira cake sandwiched together with jam and buttercream.  I then went to ice it using ready-to-roll royal icing but failed miserably.  I just couldn't get it to look like anything other than a big white lump of wibbly wobbliness.  So hubby whipped up a ton of buttercream and we dyed it pink, not counting for the fact that buttercream is slightly yellow and therefore the whole thing went a kind of dead salmon colour...

Believe me it tasted divine...it just looked like salmon mousse.

I am now off to get ready for the next round of celebrations and chat to Mr Skelly about cheese.  Happy 5th birthday Lillia!  

Cosy feet

Apparently snow is on its way so I made myself my own pair of slipper socks to match Hubby's and Lillia's.  Now we shall all have cosy toes when the white stuff arrives.

Yellow is my absolute favourite colour so they had to be yellow :)  I mixed some soft acrylic double-knit yarn with the same aran yarn I used for their's.

Perfect.

On the hook is the next pair - aran with a deep purple this time...

I am slightly addicted to making these.  Every time I finish one pair I think of somebody else to make a pair for and a fair stock of these socks are slowly piling up in my Christmas present basket!  And lets face it I have plenty of time to sit and make them - with just over a week until my due date I am still here at home waiting for signs that this baby is going to make an appearance. I have been so convinced all the way through that she would be early that now the due date is approaching I am beginning to doubt my instincts!
Still, wtih Lillia at school for a large portion of each day it has been nice to enjoy some nice quiet time on my own before the whirlwind of a newborn arrives.  In the kitchen some homemade bakewell tart...

I still can't believe I actually made this, it's totally divine!

And also some fresh pineapple...

I think I'd have to eat about ten fresh pineapples to actually stimulate labour of course...but at least it's tasty and healthy :)

£25 voucher giveaway!

In what has been a truly awful week for reasons I don't have the energy to go into, and I wouldn't want to tarnish my lovely sunny blog with tales of woe and hardship anyway, there has been a little ray of sunshine - the lovely people at CSN Stores have given me a £25 voucher to give away to one of my readers!  Plus the opportunity to review one of their products on this blog.  Very exciting all round.

CSN Stores has several lovely online stores where you can find everything from ceiling lights to cookware, cake stands to furniture, so you'll have plenty of choice when it comes to spending your winnings.

Personally I am tempted by the traditional, yet digital (joy!), scales...

And very tempted by the cake stands...

And maybe when the baby arrives we could toast the new arrival with a colourful glass full of bubbly...

For your chance to win the £25 voucher just leave me a comment on this post telling me your favourite thing to bake, comments muct be left by 5pm on Monday 19th July!  How simple is that!  I'll use a random name generator to pick a winner (spam will be removed first!)  For an extra chance to win please follow this blog and leave me an extra comment to tell me you have done so, if you already do then leave me an extra comment to tell me so! 

I'll announce the winners on Monday night.  Good luck everyone!

Edited to add: Please ensure you leave me your email address when entering so I can contact you with your voucher straight away should you win!

The Cupcake Cafe

After a day out in Margate, collecting shells on the beach and enjoying shell mosaics at the grotto, we needed a place to sit down and get some grub.  After a short tour of the old town I spotted the Cupcake Cafe.  Hubby refused to go in at first, saying that the toasties it offered would not be enough for his manly appetite.  But with Lillia on my side (the chairs outside were pink which was reason enough for her) I soon won that particular argument.

Inside it was delightful, exactly my cup of tea - quiet, quirky and neat...

With little finishing touches like paper lanterns...

After some extremely yummy cheese toasties for me and the little one, and a manly sized portion of beans and cheese on toast that nearly defeated hubby, we moved onto the house speciality - cupcakes!

An oreo cupcake for hubby...

And a lemon cupcake for me...

Yummy yum!  Oh dear now I am drooling...

My new kitchen hook

I love cake I do!

I love making it and I love eating it and I love neat, colourful little images of cake too.

When we went shopping on Lillia's birthday earlier this week we couldn't resist a visit to the Mystical Fairies shop at Bluewater here in Kent. 

We went in to find a little birthday treat for Lillia, which we did in the form of a decorate-your-own princess mirror, but we also came away with a little treat for me too...

I've needed a hook for my kitchen calendar for ages and now I have the perfect cakey one to use...

It is perfect for hanging my calendar (a freebie from Ideal Home magazine)...

Now I'll remember all those April birthdays...including mine!  ;)

Hope you are all enjoying the Easter weekend xx