Fairy Butterfly Garden Cake

This afternoon, Izzy is having a joint birthday party with 3 other friends. Her actual birthday was almost a month ago, and she had a beach party for family the weekend before, plus a trip to Paignton Zoo on her actual birthday, and she considers our trip to Butlins to be part of her birthday too...so this is the 4th and final celebration!!

I made the cake yesterday ready to take today, so I thought I would share some photos of it. It is a whopper 8 egg cake - a double recipe of my favourite lemon drizzle cake, baked in two 9 inch square pans.   Izzy and I first made the decorations in the morning, using butterfly and flower cutters from Lakeland, plus coloured roll out icing.  

Then last night, I set to making the cake. It was the first time using the oven in this house to bake with, so I was a little nervous. Bizarrely, the cake on the middle shelf took 30 mins to cook through, whereas the one on the top shelf took at least another 10 minutes?! All was well in the end though, once they were out of the oven I drizzled them with a mix of lemon juice and caster sugar and left them to cool.

I wasn’t sure how much butter icing I would need to cover the cakes, so I decided to make more than I’d probably need – 250g butter, 500g icing sugar + the zest of one lemon, lemon juice and a tiny amount of green food colour gel. In the end I used almost all of this!

I normally find it really difficult to ice the sides of cakes, so I decided to ice this one layer at a time, rather than just putting icing in the middle first and then trying to do the sides once it is a double layer cake. Although, not surprisingly, it was much easier to ice a square cake than a round one so it didn’t take too long in the end, yey!

Then it was Liam’s turn to do the fiddly piping to make some grass. We drew a rough design and did a bit of practising on a bit of paper first!

And then it was time to get decorating…

Grass…

Plus flowers…

A (bought!) fairy…

And finally butterflies…finished!!

I took more photos in better light this afternoon…can you tell I’m very pleased with how it turned out?!! Haha, sorry for the photo overload!!

I’ve got six pink candles to put on it too, but I’m leaving that til the last moment as I don’t want to spoil it!! I’m not looking forward to cutting into it either, sob (!), but I figure that as it is square that will be a lot easier – because it is a joint party, each child has only invited 8 friends each, so I reckon I’ll be bringing at least half the cake back home again later!!

Right, I’m off to finish getting ready for the party, I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you how it went We went to the beach this morning and the waves were a bit rougher than I’d realised so my “paddling” led to my shorts and top getting soaked…change of clothes needed!!

Happy Birthday Liam!

24 presents for his 24th birthday...

You'll have to wait for my re-cap tomorrow to see what's inside!!

And lots & lots of cake...

Brownies and cookies that he took into work yesterday:

I made a double batch of each, so we have quite a few leftovers still at home too!!

A chocolate fudge cake - this recipe for the cake, with this icing messily placed on top (<-- how do you ice the sides of a cake without it all falling down??!)...

and a Liam-style (ie no cherries or other fruit in sight!) rocky road for today:

I deliberately put marshmallows in the rocky road - mainly because Liam loves them (and we had some sitting in the cupboard) but also because it means that at least one "baked" good will not be eaten by me, haha, although I'm sure plenty others will!! It also has digestive biscuits, smarties and revels in it (as well as the usual chocolate, butter & golden syrup)...Liam loves rocky road but I don't think I've ever made it before...not sure why as it's super easy, so fingers crossed he likes it!

Right, off to take the birthday boy up his breakfast in bed...

Mum, we need our your tray back! ;)

Have a great day everyone!

WIAW - Birthday Fun

Hello! Happy What I Ate Wednesday! Thanks as always to Jenn, and congrats on turning 50!! ;-)



As well as being WIAW's 50th, today is a very special day. It is my last day as a Mother of a one year-old... I can't believe Toby is going to be two tomorrow!!

My eats therefore haven't been quite as "clean" as I would like them to be today - because Izzy is back at school tomorrow, we started celebrating Toby's birthday early!

Liam had booked the day off work both today and tomorrow, and the children didn't wake us up until 8.50am this morning...bliss! Except we then had to rush to go get ready to go out, so breakfast was a quick bowl of Maple Sunrise with milk and sliced banana.

We then went to meet some friends who both have a child Izzy's age and another child slightly older than Toby, so they all get on really well together. We played in the outside play park for quite a while before the rain started.

And then headed inside to have lunch. Worst photo ever as we were in such a rush this morning that I didn't have time to take a photo of my lunch at home. I had mixed quinoa with raw red pepper, cold basil tofu and goats cheese. Plus a box of seaweed rice crackers, and quite a few unpictured chocolate 'animal' biscuits, oops.

After lunch we went for a walk outside to see the ducks and burn off some energy.

We then said goodbye to our friends and rushed home as we had family coming round for cake and birthday presents...and balloons!

After opening some presents...

My Dad bought Izzy a magazine so that she wouldn't feel left out!

it was time for cake :)

You can see some more (better - this one was a bit rushed!) photos of the cakes on my Facebook page, I made a lemon drizzle cake for the main cake (with lemon sugar drizzle on top of both layers, lemon butter icing in the middle, and lemon glace icing on top...I do like my icing!!) and also banoffee cupcakes (banana cake, toffee icing)...

I chose to eat a cupcake which was delicious...

Liam did the icing - he has a much steadier hand than I do!

and I also tasted a few crumbs of the lemon cake which was amazing - a nice zingy lemon flavour! My Grandparents are all coming round to see Toby tomorrow, so I will probably treat myself to a slice of the lemon cake then :)

I ended up having a 2nd cupcake as well as Izzy had eyes bigger than her tummy and after eating a slice of lemon cake, and then licking half the icing off the cupcake, she decided she didn't want it after all! I was the only one who would consider eating it & couldn't bear to see it going to waste!!

The party only finished just before the time we normally eat dinner so Liam and I didn't eat until after the children were in bed. Quick dinner = cheese on toast.

Hopefully that will be all I eat today. I'm still feeling quite full, and with it being Toby's actual birthday tomorrow, I'm sure more cake will be in my future then. I'll get back on track properly on Friday when normal routine (Izzy at school, Liam at work) will resume!

What would be your favourite type of birthday cake? Big cake or cupcakes? I love all cake, but I think carrot cake would be my go-to favourite. But neither Liam or my sisters would eat that, so I've learnt to tame my baking down! Liam really liked both the lemon cake and the banoffee cupcakes though which is good - leftovers disappear much more quickly if he likes it!!