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!!

Lots & Lots of Peanut Butter!

I haven’t been blogging as much lately (making the most of the summer holidays…they are going too fast!!) and my camera is filling up with photos that I want to share with you!

A major recent highlight are all these amazing nut butters that my Dad brought with him when he came to visit this morning. He was on a business trip in America last week and managed to find time to do a bit of shopping as well, thanks Dad!

Last time he went, he’d brought be back lots of Reese’s peanut butter cups and peanut butter M&Ms, so this time I’d just prompted him with PB&Co and Justin’s nut butters (and Lara/Luna bars but he didn’t manage to find those sadly), I wasn’t expecting him to lug so many jars back though!!
I love all four of these PB&Co flavours…

And it has been far too long since I’ve had any Justin’s nut butter, my favourite!

I'm also very excited to try Justin’s version of peanut butter cups, amazing!!

I have also been eating some other new-to-me peanut butters recently. I ordered the PB Crave peanut butters from American Sweets. So far I have tried the Razzle Dazzle and Cookie Nookie…

I have to admit, these aren’t as amazing as I’d been hoping. They are fun, but they are a bit artificial tasting. The Razzle Dazzle one was the flavour I was most looking forward to, but it uses artificial raspberry flavour and that doesn’t come across particularly strongly anyway. Sweet, smooth peanut butter…I’ll eat it, but I won’t be buying another jar.

Another new thing I have tried recently is Tina’s two ingredient pancake. As my bananas were quite large, I used one banana and 2 eggs. I made sure to cook it really slowly as Tina recommends, and it came out perfectly. Topped with PB&Co Bees Knees honey peanut butter…delicious!

I have also been enjoying some old favourites. Lots of fried eggs sandwiches (with cheese & ketchup, both in bread & muffins, yum!)…

Salads with falafel and egg mayonnaise…

and lots of fruit and cheese plates…

I have also started receiving Graze boxes again as they sent me an email offering me 3 boxes half price. However I was reminded why I stopped ordering them when I ate all 4 punnets in one morning, whoops!

I loved all of these, but was surprised by how much I enjoyed the tropical daiquiri punnet – dried sour mango didn’t sound sweet enough for me (!) but it was really smooth and moreish!

Right, I think that is me mostly caught up. I didn’t end up making any cake decorations today as my friend persuaded me to go out with her last night and whilst I didn’t have a lot to drink (folk week is still too fresh in my memory!!), I didn’t get home til 2.30am so I have been super tired today! I did manage to go to the gym for a quick workout with Liam this afternoon though, and I have most of tomorrow free to sort out the cake. I wanted to be able to concentrate and enjoy doing it, not force myself when I was exhausted!!

Have you ever received Graze boxes? What do you think of them? I do like the idea of them, and love the novelty factor of receiving lots of different dried fruits without having to buy big bags of everything. However I always end up eating them way too quickly to justify the cost of them, so I think once my half price offer has run out I will stop getting them again. I've started buying little packs of Nakd flavoured raisins, and some fruit and nut mixes which are also good for snacks, so I don't really need the Graze punnets. Hope you're all having a lovely weekend!

Visit From Izzy’s Godmother

Izzy's Godmother arrived yesterday morning to spend a couple of days with us, much to Izzy’s excitement! Sarah is from Cornwall, so I thought it only fitting that we had some Cornish chocolate as one of snacks (!) I bought this at Exeter Food Festival back in April...not quite sure how it's survived in my cupboard for so long!

This was ok, but the apple flavour wasn’t really there. It was just normal milk chocolate with crumbled biscuit and “apple” pieces (which were really apple juice, lemon juice and way too many other ingredients) on top. I still managed to eat the whole 100g, minus the one row that Sarah ate, in less than 24 hours, haha, oops!

Sarah and I went out in the evening for dinner. We went to a new-ish restaurant in my town that I hadn’t been to before and it was fab. The menu was really clear, with lots of gluten free, vegetarian and vegan options clearly labelled. I had a couple of glasses of Pimms and lemonade…

We shared the mezze platter to start. Sarah is avoiding gluten at the moment, so we had this with gluten free bread and I ate the couscous (they had said they’d put it on a separate plate for us but must’ve forgotten. Sarah has only been avoiding gluten for a week so far anyway so wasn’t bothered as it wasn’t touching anything else, but I’m sure they’d have sorted it for us if we’d asked, the staff were all really helpful)

We both agreed that the cheesy baked mushroom was our favourite, but it was all delicious. My plate…

Couscous, roasted veg, green salad, mozzarella, baked mushroom, houmous and gf bread…delicious!

For my main I chose the filo parcels that were stuffed with feta and sundried tomatoes, served with salad and new potatoes.

This was nice, but not as good as the starter. The filling was a bit too rich for me. I often find that problem in restaurants – they use too much goats cheese/feta!

Sarah and I were both super full, but we fancied something sweet to finish off our meal. We shared a bowl of ice cream – 2 scoops of pistachio, one scoop of honeycomb.

Divine, I loved the slightly more unique flavours that they had on the menu!

This morning, we all started the day off with a smoothie – frozen banana, strawberries and raspberries plus Kara coconut milk, a little agave and some coconut butter. Sarah really enjoyed this and I’ve inspired her to make smoothies for her weekend breakfasts now, yey!

Izzy was a bit upset that we were going out for dinner last night, as she’d remembered me saying a while ago that we might be able to have mac n cheese n peas (using gluten free pasta) – her favourite! So we had that for lunch today, plus Mama Pea’s Thai Fried Quinoa for lunch yesterday…I don’t normally cook full meals at lunchtime but I kind of liked it. The children ate so much better/more at lunchtime than they usually do in the evenings, although I’m not sure Liam would be impressed if I stopped cooking dinners!

Before Sarah left this afternoon, I had one new thing to introduce her to – my favourite brand of raw chocolate! I love this.

All too soon it was time for Sarah to leave. I was really impressed with Izzy though – normally she cries and/or strops whenever someone has to go, but she said bye to Sarah happily with lots of cuddles!

This evening I have been to a new-to-me Body Pump class which was fantastic!! The Friday evening class that I usually go to has been cancelled until September as the instructor is pregnant, so I went to a different sports centre within the trust, about 25-30 mins drive away. I’d never driven to that town before, so that was an accomplishment (for me!) in itself, and then the class was brilliant…really upbeat and I felt stronger than usual, ha, great start to the weekend!

Do you have any plans for the weekend? Any tips for decorating cakes? Not such a random question, honest…I will be doing lots of baking on Sunday/Monday as it is Izzy’s (late) birthday party on Tuesday. I’d originally planned to order a rice paper topper with Disney princesses on it (her request!) which would have made for an easy cake, but I forgot until too late, so annoyed with myself! So today Mum bought me some bits from Lakeland – a couple of sets of little cutters and some coloured roll out icings. I’ve never done anything like that before so we will see how the cake turns out…I’ll share the photos on Wednesday either way!

Weekend in North Devon

Hello! How are you all? I seem to have gone AWOL over the last week, whoops. The summer holidays got a bit on top of me - we have been busy doing lots of things, meeting up with friends etc...without a camera in sight!
I did take lots of photos last weekend though, albeit on my iphone rather than with my camera, so I thought I would share those with you to "get me back into" blogging. I went up to North Devon for my friend's birthday weekend. I got a train up early Saturday morning and came back Sunday lunchtime...while Liam stayed at home with the children, bliss!

As I said, the train was - by my standards - early on the Saturday morning, so all I had time for before leaving home was a coffee. I had a Luna bar on the train to keep me going...

I wish I'd eaten more though as we didn't end up eating lunch til gone 2pm!! When I arrived in Barnstaple I went to my friend's house to catch up with everyone. There were 9 of us in total (including my friend and her husband) for the weekend. Once we were all organised, we headed to Tesco to buy lunch and then drove to a beach called Braunton. We parked our cars there before embarking on a walk to Croyde beach, which took us about 1.5 hours. Lots of pretty views, and Go Ahead bars provided by our host to keep us all going...

When we made it to Croyde beach, we spread out our towels and sat down to eat lunch. I was so hungry by this point!! Falafel wrap (this wasn't like normal falafel wraps - it contained sweet potato falafel and mango chutney...really good), fruit and water...

plus a pack of veg crisps...love these!

Once we'd all finished eating we walked down to the sea for a paddle...

Sadly we only had about half an hour by the sea as we figured with 6 girls wanting showers we better make sure we were back at the house with plenty of time to get ready for our evening out!

We still had to walk back to the cars...

With more great views - at this point I was wishing I had brought my camera with me!

Once we got back to Sarah's house, we all took it in turns to shower and get ready. I had a berry cider whilst at the house...

I normally stick to spirits if I'm drinking, and whilst this was quite nice I think it contributed to my stomach ache/bloatedness later in the evening...too many bubbles!!

For dinner, Sarah had reserved us a table at The Bank in Barnstaple. We were seated in a room at the back, with balloons all over the table, so whilst there were a few other diners also in the room, it felt like our own private party!! Unfortunately my phone didn't deal too well with the low lighting, but these are the photos I took. Strawberry daquiri...I ended up having 2 of these...amazing!!

And for dinner, pancakes filled with a creamy mushroom and green bean mix...

This was really tasty, full of different types of mushrooms. It was also really filling - I surprised myself by turning down dessert, despite things like banoffee pie on the menu!!

We went on to a couple of bars after dinner, including a cocktail bar where I decided I was ready for "dessert" of a creamy chocolate mint cocktail...

So good, but it definitely finished me off for the night! I was in a lot of pain with a really bad tummy ache by this point so I stuck to water after this. I still did lots of dancing to "retro 80s music" (Mama Mia, Grease, Macarena, Build Me Up Buttercup etc...it was like being back at uni when that type of music used to play all the time!) when we went on to the nightclub though - at first I had to kind of force myself for my friend's sake, as I was in so much pain, but by the end I was having fun again!

We didn't go home until about 2.30am so I was hoping for a nice lie-in without children. Unfortunately my body clock had other ideas and woke me up at 7.30am. Boo. I read in bed for a few hours before heading downstairs to have breakfast. Cocoa rocks, orange juice and several mugs of tea...

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing at Sarah's house, watching DVDs and waking up properly. I got a train home just after lunch (after teaching Sarah to make omelettes, which we filled with cheese, mushrooms, peppers and onion. Photo didn't come out though) and came home to flowers...

and Liam having finally got round to putting up my graduation photo and his guitar (still need to buy a frame for his grad photo, and he has another guitar that he wants to hang on the wall too), haha, apparently he missed me!! ;-)

Such a nice weekend away - just what I needed to recharge my batteries - but it was nice to be home too. Izzy and Toby had so many things to tell me about what they'd been up to with Liam all weekend, so it sounds like a nice time was had by all! :)

Have you been away anywhere nice recently? Any summer holidays to far off places?? We aren't going abroad this year so have just done little trips. Butlins, the zoo, my weekend away etc. There's plenty to do around where we live - and with the children so young it is probably easiest to stay close by anyway - but it was lovely to sit on a sandy beach in the sunshine for half an hour...if only the weather was more consistently summery here!!