Mother's Day

I hope you've all had a great day if you've been celebrating! Mine has been spent mainly with my children, and then this afternoon we took a cake over to my Mum's to share with my Mum, my Grandma and my sister...I love having my family all in the same town, makes getting together so much easier! :)

Liam left for work just before 7am this morning, and unfortunately the children got me up soon after...no breakfast in bed for me! I did however get a present that daughter had made at school (yey for her going back just for Friday morning - looks like that was good timing for making Mother's Day things!!)...a card with a rhyme and a gingerbread lady cookie...

I tried not to think about all the 4/5 year olds' hands that had gone into making this!! We shared it after breakfast (well, a latte for me, I was too tired to eat proper food) and it was actually surprisingly tasty :)

Once baby went for his nap, it was then time to bake... As Liam and the fussier of my sisters weren't going to be there this afternoon, I decided to make a slightly more adventurous cake than I'd usually be able to, and I'm relieved pleased to say it turned out brilliantly!! Parsnip and Maple Syrup Cake... I followed the recipe exactly except I used cinnamon instead of mixed spice as I wasn't going to buy a jar just for 2 tsp! Feel free to skip to nearer the bottom if you don't want to see step-by-step photos...not sure why I'm posting them (yawn!) except I took the effort to take them so may as well make use of them!!

First it was time to prepare the add-ins...

there was a lot of grating! Grated parsnips, grated apple, zest and juice of the orange, and chopped pecans...

*Note to self: next time grate the apple last so it doesn't go brown...not that it mattered for the cake, but it didn't look as pretty for the photo!!!

I then melted the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup...

in the microwave, to make washing up easier!

before whisking in the eggs and adding the flour, baking powder and cinnamon...

all stirred together...

then tip in the parsnip, apple, orange and pecans...

all mixed together, looked so good...

Into the sandwich tins...I didn't actually measure them as they're the only sandwich tins I have...they were a bit too full though so I'm thinking they're maybe a bit smaller than 20cm!!



and into the oven for 45 minutes...

The recipe is confusing as there are 2 different times in it, but as the comments suggest, 45 minutes is definitely the right one! So after 45 minutes they looked like this...

I think I should have let them cool a bit more in the tin before turning them out as they fell apart a bit, still salvageable though! :)

It was then time for lunch while the cakes cooled. Liam came home on his lunch break but we were both too tired to cook properly so just had cheese on toast...

I obviously had twice this amount!

Liam also brought home some flowers for the children to give me which I wasn't expecting at all - with daughter being in hospital etc we haven't been very organised lately so were just pleased she'd made something at school!

Tulips are my favourites, so pretty! :) apparently Liam was standing by the flowers being indecisive about colours - purple are my favourite and one of the checkout assistants suggested that orange would go well...I can't decide if she was right or not?!!

Obviously they haven't stayed on my cooker! Instead they're sitting on the dining table making the room look pretty, yey, I love having flowers in the house!

Liam also got my some Nak'd bars from him (I think he was feeling guilty for not having arranged anything earlier!!) a bit strange as I'm clearly not his mother, but hey, I won't complain about being given Nak'd bars! :)

I'm actually quite impressed that he bought me these rather than a standard box of chocolates...he obviously does occasionally pay attention to what I eat!! :)

Anyway...back to the cake...

In my hurry to get it ready, I actually forgot to take a photo of the filling! It was really simple though, just a 250g tub of mascarpone mixed with 3-4tbsp of maple syrup...

I was a bit worried that the mix would be a bit too runny to fill the cake, but actually once it was on the cake it was much sturdier than it had seemed in the bowl...

Ignore the dip bottom left - baby managed to grab a chunk out of it while it was on the counter!!! Still looked good enough to eat though...

I dusted it with icing sugar just before taking it round to my Mum's...managing to make a bit of a mess in the process!

Worth it in the end...

This was really tasty. My little sister (who I thought was less fussy than my other sister!) refused to try it, but everyone else - my Mum, Mum's partner, my Grandma, daughter and baby - really enjoyed it...

it didn't taste of parsnip at all, but had a lovely texture, next time I would put more pecans in it to give extra crunch. I was a bit worried about the maple-mascarpone not being sweet enough, but it went really well, yum. Although at 697 calories per slice (1/8th which is pretty much what most of us had) it's not one to be made too often!! When Liam finished work he came round and, slightly reluctantly, agreed to try it (he doesn't like carrot cake so wasn't expecting to like this) and actually liked it so much that he brought some of the leftovers home with him...success!! :)

Dinner tonight was nothing really worth writing about - we didn't get home from Mum's until past the children's bedtime so they had cereal and then we had meat-free burgers, chips and corn on the cob...

Healthy eating starts again tomorrow??! On a more serious note, I must start going to the gym again - I haven't been since daughter became ill about 3 weeks ago! Her antibiotics course finished this morning and her dressing came off her neck this evening so no more excuses. Liam oh-so-subtly pointed out the other day that seeing as I don't seem to be able to stick to a lower calorie allowance because I love food too much, I need to earn more calories by doing exercise so I can eat more. So true!