Planning. Baking. Tasting. Shopping. Borrowing. Hoping. Cleaning. Waiting. Waiting. Smiling 
.....
|
|||||
|
I don’t celebrate Easter as a religious festival, not being religious – being the opposite in fact. I think of Easter as marking a transition from winter to spring, a kind of celebration of the warmth and wonderfulness to come over the next few months. Of course all festivals are marked with food in one way or another. You remember those burnt fairy cakes I mentioned in my last post? Well I rescued them enough to look like this:  Chocolatey Easterness! Look good don’t they? Didn’t taste too bad either! I expected them to taste dry and scorched after my midnight catastrophe, but my expectations were wrong; they were just fine. Well they’ve all gone, so they must’ve been And the Easter Bunny (of course there’s an Easter Bunny!) left lots of little eggs in the sweet little bags I made. Kim was mighty pleased – he was even happy when I told him I thought there was one bag for me (pink and flowery), one for his daddy (blue spots) and one for him (with the little bunny). No complaints at all. Probably because there was another pile of eggs for him too, one even had his name on it.  Very springy colours And if that doesn’t get you in the mood for spring, the Eden Project definitely will! (I think I’m in danger of becoming an ad for that place.) At this time of year the display of bulbs is stunning. The profusion of colour is enough to bring even the grumpiest bear out of winter hibernation. I know this from experience: even Kim’s daddy was smiling! Look at this:  The Mediterranean Biome wakes up! Smiling yet?  Candy stripes...  water-colour effects...  and full on blowsy! Oh come on, you must be smiling now! Well if you’re not, may I suggest you go back to bed for another month or two, because I don’t think there’s any other cure for winter hibernation syndrome. Happy Easter! love Stephie x I hope your Easter weekend has started off well? Miserable weather here, not at all spring like – my daffodils have been flattened under all the wind and rain. Nothing else to do but hunker down and batten the hatches against it all. And what better to take into your retreat than this…  Selvedge - the quilting issue, yay! And some knitting to keep my fingers busy - yep that's my knitting, not a photo on front of the magazine! It’s 2am now and I notice the Easter Bunny has been whilst I was trying to remedy a batch of burnt cup cakes for tomorrow (when did we start saying cupcakes instead of fairy cakes – I prefer fairy cakes; the cakes I make don’t go in cups). Cooking in the early hours isn’t always a good idea. I’ve had to cut off the tops and some of the bottoms of the sponges, so there’s only about a centimetre of them left, before I dolloped on some butter cream and mini eggs. Maybe no-one will notice… Looks like the Easter Bunny has been very generous to Kim this year; she won’t mind if I nibble a few of those wee chocolates will she? Well, it’s too late if she does, ha, ha! And on that note, I shall away to bed, lest I don’t wake up at all in the morning! Happy Easter everyone, hope you have a lovely day. Stephie x  Hap, hap, happy birthday to you!! Not me obviously, if only I was 12 again. Well, no actually forget that and switch the 1 and the 2 around – that’d be okay (well, erm, probably!). It was 12 years ago today that I had a caesarean section and my one and only child came rudely into this world. This time every year I have a little ritual that I go through: I take out an album filled with ephemera from the time of his birth and remind myself of the agony and the ecstasy!  Kim's first ever wash - he hasn't had too many since! He was 8 pounds 4 and 1/4 ounces  I've kept scan images from 12 weeks gestation;  records of my pregnancy made by my midwife Tina,  even details of what I had to eat during my stay in hospital!  Which brings me neatly on to what we'll be eating later today! Mmmmm. want some?! Happy birthday Kim, my beautiful boy, I love you! xxxx  Birthday cake  Birthday dress  Birthday smiles!
Birthday CakeIn honour of Kim’s birthday (which was a couple of days ago), this week’s pinboard is about chocolate cake!! Kim had his eye on one of those delicious looking Thornton’s chocolate cakes for his celebration tea. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but…I wanted to make him a birthday cake. It’s all part of the pleasure of being a mummy! Kim’s dad said that he thought Kim would be very disappointed if he couldn’t have a Thornton’s one, because that’s all he’d been talking about. So I asked Kim. He got very excited and said that he’d love me to bake him one. Then he proceeded to prescribe exactly what it should look and taste like. It had to be chocolate. It had to be sponge. It had to have chocolate icing. And, it had to have Thornton’s chocolates on top. In fact, Mummy, could you make me one of those Thorton’s cakes? Hmm, I smiled wanly. No novelty cake this year then: no Star Wars characters; no number 11 shaped cakes. But, who am I to complain? The child has taste – he loves chocolate and it was his birthday! So, this is what I came up with…  A chocolate layer cake
 Layered with chocolate truffle and topped with Thornton's chocolates
 But of course, I couldn't keep it completely grown up! He was only 11 after all. Chocolate Truffle recipeFor the cake I made a standard Victoria sponge and sliced the two cakes in half to give four layers. I then filled the layers with a simple (but rich!) chocolate truffle:
That’s it! Sim Chocolate Glaze recipe (used to ice the cake)
Stand back, admire, EAT! Both the above recipes have been adapted/taken from my well thumbed copy of Cakes, 101 Essential Tips, 1997, London, Dorling Kindersley Ltd. Don’t forget to check out the latest pinboard! |
I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why. |
||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Narrative Self - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
ple eh?!