Peach Cobbler Porridge & 1st Birthday Party

Ok, I have a confession...I don't actually really know what peach cobbler is...didn't stop me having my version of it in porridge form for the last 2 mornings though!! A while back I was looking through some of the blogs I follow for porridge ideas and came across Clean Eating Chelsey's Peach Cobbler Oatmeal. I adapted it slightly as I didn't have any bananas in but did the basic porridge mix of oats, milk, chopped peaches (tinned in my case) and cinnamon...

yesterday I topped it with almonds, dessicated coconut and peanut butter...

this was delicious :) the coconut was a bit unnecessary but the almonds and peanut butter worked great with the peaches, and I loved the taste of the cinnamon in the porridge.

This morning I decided to have the same base porridge again - oats, milk, cinnamon & peaches - (not least because the remaining tinned peaches were taking up precious fridge space!!) but I topped it with peanut butter and Jordan's raisin & almond granola for extra crunch...

this was amazing, I added extra cinnamon which tasted so good, and the combination of flavours was great...definitely a new favourite porridge idea!! :)

Tomorrow is my baby boy's 1st birthday (sob!), but it is also my daughter's first proper day at school (double sob!!) so today was a bit of busy one - we had baby's party this afternoon as would be too tiring after school tomorrow, but we also went swimming as that was thing daughter chose to do on her last day of hols (plus now she's at school full time, I work Saturdays and Liam works Sundays...we're not gonna have much family time for a while, well until the school holidays at least!!) Anyway, self indulgent ramble over...we had a lot of baking to do today! But first swimming and then a quick lunch to re-fuel - pasta with a sauce made of passata, leftover sausage meat from our New Year's Day meal, and frozen broad beans...

yum :) sausage meat stuffing is one of my favourite parts of a roast and it worked really well with this pasta dish.

Now, onto the baking...in Blue Peter style, here's one I made earlier...

A basic chocolate 2 layer sponge cake - 200g sugar, 200g butter, 4 eggs, 155g self raising flour, 45g cocoa powder, 1 tsp baking powder and 2 tbsp milk - into 2x 20cm sandwich tins and baked for 20 minutes at 170C fan. I also added "ears" made out of shop bought swiss roll to make a teddy bear face. I was organised and baked this first thing this morning that it was cool and ready to ice straight after lunch.

I filled and covered with chocolate butter icing (I did 125g butter, 250g icing sugar, 20g cocoa and a little milk...would probably do 150g butter and 300g icing sugar next time though as was only just enough)...

crumbled 3 Flake bars over it for "fur"...

and added features using white and milk chocolate buttons and a bit of messy white icing...

the mouth went a bit wrong but I'm quite pleased with it, especially considering it was just cobbled together in my mind rather than following instructions for a teddy bear cake!

We had a bit of a teddy bear theme going on - Liam made teddy bear shaped choc chip biscuits...

and I made teddy bear shaped sandwiches...

what a waste of time and bread...definitely a one-off for a party rather than something to do for everyday packed lunches!!

The party table looked teddy bear-tastic though I think!

from nearest: pom bear crisps, teddy shaped egg mayo sandwiches, maple glazed sausages, carrot sticks and dip, teddy shaped ham and cucumber sandwiches, teddy bear biscuits.

And of course the cake...

with the teddy bear that was the Pass the Parcel prize, I may have gone a bit overboard (!!) but seeing as this is probably my last baby (yet another sob!!) I wanted to do a special 1st birthday party...not that he noticed of course but his big sister enjoyed it! :)

One more day before healthy eating starts - baby's real birthday tomorrow. There probably won't actually be that much unhealthy eating involved - Liam and I are going out for lunch with the baby but apart from that the main celebrations were today. I'm quite looking forward to getting back to healthy eating really anyway - feeling very blobbish but just don't have the willpower to resist "naughty" foods when I have an excuse like birthdays...it will be a different story come Thursday though...I hope!