Cake

I never thought we’d be a novelty-cake-making family, but Alan’s fish cake (fish-shaped cake, really; it was actually made mostly from chocolate) opened the fun-cake floodgates and now we can’t seem to stop (except on my birthday; my birthday = pavlova, every year).

Mo decided he wanted a digger cake months before his birthday last year; we showed him a few images of others’ efforts on the internet, and then told him we were going to use them as inspiration rather than copy one exactly, and he’d have to wait until his birthday party to see the final result.

We were pretty excited about the grand unveiling, expecting Mo’s face to light up with amazement and joy over our efforts. His first response? “I WANTED YOU TO PUT ALLLLLLLLL THE DIGGERS ON THERE, NOT JUST TWO.” 

This year we were stuck for ideas for both Hazel’s and Mo’s birthdays. Hazel liked Emma Wiggle (too fan-ish), dogs (too difficult/weird-looking) and, fortunately, marshmallows (we went with this option). One thing I love about making novelty cakes is the fact that it often involves Alan and I in the kitchen very late at night, over-tired and giggling over ridiculous things (in this case, how many ways a chopped-up marshmallow can look like genitalia) and wondering why we don’t just make a regularly-iced cakes like normal people. This was the end result of Hazel’s marshmallow cake:

I loved how the marshmallows and sprinkles turned out, but I wish we’d made a light-coloured buttercream frosting instead of sticking with the regular chocolate one. Hazel thought it was pretty awesome, mismatched top and bottom notwithstanding.

Deciding on Mo’s cake was even harder. I wanted to surprise him with cakes that looked like Lego blocks, but he was keen on the idea of a Ninja Turtle cake, and instead of telling him - “Moses, my dear, darling boy - you don’t even know who the Ninja Turtles are! You only love the idea of them because your friends are into them, but wouldn’t you prefer for us to make you something that you actually love, so that in 15 years’ time you can look back at photos of your fifth birthday and say, ‘Oh, did I used to love Lego?’ and we can say ‘YES!’???!” - instead of telling him that, Alan said, “OKAY!”

When he first decided to go with the Ninja Turtle cupcake idea, I thought I’d stick with the Lego-block cake idea and we could have a bake-off, but then I realised that would mean both a lot of work and a lot of cake, so I stepped back and left Alan to his crazy plan. He ignored all warnings we’d been given about the difficulties of fondant and spent three nights leading up to Mo’s birthday dying it, then baking the cake, and whipping up buttercream frosting. I stepped in and rescued him when it came to face-painting, having recognised that Alan was nearing breaking point and desperately wishing we’d gone with the Lego idea (I might have misread this, but I’m pretty sure that’s what was going through his mind at that point). I decided to mix up the emotions so that they didn’t all look cranky (which was the original plan).

They were too sweet even for the kids (which is a worry), and they’d taken approximately 20 hours to put together, but they looked pretty cool, and the texture of the fondant, buttercream, and cupcake together was so good (Alan used this recipe).

We have a year to recover and plan for the next lot.

Fat Shake

This looks yummy, right?

While at the library last week I picked up a cookbook from the “New Books” shelf, because Alan and I have recently agreed that all of our regular meals are boring and uninspiring and that we need to find new recipes (taste.com.au Sundays didn’t survive the move last year). We’d had the all-our-meals-are-boring conversation only the day before my library visit, where I found myself face-to-cover with a "phenomenal bestseller" of a cookbook; this seemed too much like a sign from heaven, so I borrowed it with nary a second thought. It was when I opened it at home that I discovered it was a Banting cookbook, which seems to be a diet fairly similar to the Paleo one, in that sugar is the devil and there’s an awful lot of bacon-consumption involved. Not one to be deterred (I do love bacon), I decided to try out one of the earlier recipes, because the picture looked very much like the chocolate frappés of which I’m a giant fan, and it had coconut cream in it. Mmmm, coconut cream. I ignored the name (“Chocolate Fat Shake”), and went out and bought the ingredients we didn’t already have, then came home, followed the recipe, whizzed everything up, and took my first sip. My initial thought was Weirdly salty, but okay!

 

Hazel took her first sip. This was also her last sip.

My second thought was, This is actually nothing at all like those frappés of which I’m a giant fan. And my last few thoughts before finishing it were, This is actually quite foul, and Would it be more of a waste if I tipped the rest out or if I forced myself to drink it and then vomited it up instead? and Why is this happening to meeeeee? 

The drink wasn’t really “weirdly” salty, given I had put salt into it, as the recipe had asked me to; why the recipe required salt in the first place was/is weird. I had assumed the amount of salt it asked for must be below the tasteable threshold, like in cookies, but no. That was not, in fact, the case. Salt and caramel? Yes. Salt plus milk, coconut and cocoa? No. No, no no nono. No. That combination’s never going to be a good idea. You know what would have been a good idea? Sugar. Sugar would have been a far more appropriate addition, and most certainly would not have made me gag.

I won’t be making that one again, although a full six hours passed before I felt any form of hunger again, so… No, I don’t even know what point I’m making here, I’m definitely not drinking that thing again no matter how satiating it may be. My stomach was probably too scared to signal its need for food in case I sent more Fat Shake its way.

Tomorrow’s experiment: Cauli-rice! Probably with bacon! (Perhaps I should have chosen a different cookbook.)

Alan's 30th

Alan and I went out on Saturday night, for our first dinner out together since my birthday in March last year. It was lovely, and I’m starting to think perhaps we sucked at dating for all those years simply because we didn’t actually need dates then. Now that we feel like we don’t have the time or energy for luxuries such as conversation, it was incredibly nice to sit (or lean on the wall next to us and close our eyes momentarily) and chat and eat good food and drink good wine and nod our heads to good music and enjoy each others’ company. It was also a bonus to realise that this guy sitting opposite me was fun! And interesting! And good looking! And we were already married, so I could have mini naps against the wall because I didn’t have to pretend to be sparkly for him; I look this tired because of his children. He gets it.

I’m looking forward to our next D&M, some time in the early months of 2015.

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For his birthday, Alan requested a cake with smarties, and Moses wanted it to be a chocolate cake, so we turned to google and, after scrolling through the various “smarties on cake” images, were inspired by the simplicity of this one, and decided to make it using this recipe. But we didn’t have the right tin size, so we poured the leftover batter into a square tin, and then, when it came time to decorate, I figured we should at least try to chop up the square one to make a tail, and then Alan suggested we add a couple of fins, and we ended up with this:

It was fun to make and yummy to eat, but now I feel slightly ill whenever I think of chocolate.

Nous faisons

I find it hard to let Moses play or paint however he wants when the way he wants to do it makes no sense/ruins a perfectly good Paint With Water page. I’ve mentioned my issues with Duplo before – if I make a house, I don’t want nobody messin’ with my blocks, mmmkay? I don’t care if you want to build a dinosaur, have you even seen the amazing pattern I’m building into the wall?! That kind of thing.

I know I should be the mature one, being, you know, Mo’s mother, so I let him do what he likes even if it means pulling my awesome house apart (okay, occasionally I find him other blocks so the house stays intact, but usually I let him pull my house apart)(Okay, so sometimes I tell him he has to find other blocks if he wants to build his dinosaur because I’m still building my house, but generally if I can’t bear to pull my house apart I find him other blocks and usually I just let him pull my house apart). On the days when it’s very hard, I wait for him to go to sleep and then I do it properly the way I prefer.

His.

Mine.

You’ll notice I did mine one colour at a time, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.

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In other news, inspired by Todd Sampson, we decided to buy/try a fruit we’d never bought/tried before every day for a week. We ran out after 5 days:

Tamarillo

Coconut

Pomegranate

Blood Orange

Star Fruit

Apparently trying new things encourages creativity (I think that’s what Todd said; I didn’t watch the show) so yay for our brains.

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Speaking of creativity, we’ve decided to make Sundays taste.com.au days, where we choose a new recipe for dinner from the website in the hope of finding another batch of meals to eat until we get bored of them. Last week was our first: San Choy Bau. It’s totally going on the menu, it was GOOD.

(I figure I’m allowed to post photos of food again, since it’s been over a year since the last time. I hope that’s okay with you.)

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Speaking of Christmas, I have only one present to buy this year – I scored my niece in the Secret Santa draw. I haven’t seen her for 2 years (her family moved to England), so I’m slightly worried that what I choose will be met with disappointment and/or tears. By slightly worried, I mean seriously panicked.

I’ve figured that if I include lots of little bits and pieces then hopefully at least one thing will make her happy and she won’t leave our place feeling like she totally lucked out and wishing she got one of her other aunties in the draw instead. Apparently she likes crafty things, so I spent a substantial amount of time on Etsy and stumbled across these colouring books, which I love. And then I realised the shipping was nearly TWENTY DOLLARS, so I decided just to make my own pages.

I won’t tell you how old she is for fear that you’ll write to say that these are completely inappropriate for a 5-year-old. I want to colour them in, so if she does run out crying, at least I’ll have something to do to console myself.

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Speaking of crying, Mo’s started asking for a “farm crab story” from both me and Alan at dinner times – that’s two crab stories we have to come up with per night. He started just asking for a crab story, and then at some point he decided the story should be set on a farm, and now he asks specifically for a farm crab story. Our stories started off pretty well; I reckon we had a few good childrens’ book ideas. At first I enjoyed being forced to be creative, and I’d get right into telling mine, animatedly explaining what Curtis the crab was feeling as he scuttled his way around the barn, etc. Now, 3 weeks on, I have no inspiration left, and Alan’s are getting pretty boring too (truth be told).

It occurs to me just now that perhaps Mo’s not expecting a new story each night; we have read other books thousands of times without him growing tired of them, after all… I’m glad we had this talk, thanks.