Sugar free first birthday cake

My precious little nephew turned one on the weekend.  All the extended family went back to the winery where we first celebrated his birth for a weekend of fun.

At the request of his parents, I made a sugar free, honey free, sweetener free, super healthy smash cake.  Apparently this is what all the cool hipster kids are having these days.  Sweet stuff is so 2008.

I used this recipe for carrot and date cake and then frosted it using plain greek yoghurt and decorated it with frozen blackberries, borage and coriander flowers and a light sprinkling of edible gold stars for a bit of whimsy.  The birthday boy seemed to love it but I'm not going to lie, there weren't too many takers from the hardened sugar addicts amongst us!!

Happy Birthday little M!

Conversations with Minty and Turi...

Me: stop putting your hand in your mouth. It's filthy!

Turi [pointing to his stomach]: well its ok.  Now i can just have a muddy puddle in here.

------

Turi: I want an animal party where they bring around snakes and turtles and things and you get to hold them.

Me: oh a reptile party.  I don't really want to have to pay for a reptile party.  How about a bug party and we could have worms and a stick insect and other bugs you could touch?

Turi: no I HATE bugs.

Me: ok another type of party then.  What about a dinosaur party?

Turi [excitedly]: Yeah!!  They could bring a T-rex for me to touch!!

Me [suppressing laughter][: Darling there aren't any live dinosaurs anymore, they're extinct.

Turi [disappointed]: awwww!!

-----

whilst collecting the eggs… 

Minty [excitedly holding an egg aloft]: one egg!!

Me: The shell is a bit wrinkly.  I think we need to give the chickens some more shell grit.

Minty [admonishing]: don't say shell grit!

Me [surprised]: why can't I say shell grit?

Minty [in an overly dramatised whisper while pointing to the egg]: because this is the shell grit

(Just a quick explanation for those of you for whom this conversation made no sense.  Chickens need to be given shell grit to help their egg shells develop properly.  This can be given in the form of crushed up egg shells but you have to be careful to make sure the pieces are very small so they don't start recognising their own eggs as food!)

In which Betty makes a break for freedom and I make a pink dinosaur cake...

We have chickens!  Three Isa Browns.  I had my heart set on getting Araucanas and/or Marans so that I could have blue and chocolate brown eggs but in the end the price was prohibitive (Marans close to point of lay are about $100 each).  I decided that it was much more practical to start out with something cheap and productive while I learn the ropes!

So far I have to say that things haven't gone entirely smoothly!!  Within the first hour they had broken the ramp to the nesting box, tipped over their fancy new water dish three times and pulled out one of their perches.  Of course when I attempted to fix the ramp a chicken escaped.  I fairly promptly lured it back to the coop with pita bread and patted myself on the back for my superior chicken herding skills.  

However now this particular chicken, who for the purpose of this story we will call Betty, has had a taste of freedom she makes a dash for the door every time I open it.  By dusk the chickens had once again knocked over the ramp and were therefore unable to get into the roosting box for the night (although I must say I am a little suspicious that perhaps they merely knocked it over as part of an elaborate escape plan).  I opened the door to fix the ramp (again) and Betty got out and rushed across into the cow paddock.  This time she was nowhere near as easy to recapture.  In the end I put on my gardening gloves, picked up the other two ladies (Anastasia and Chocolate Brownie), shoved them in the roosting box and locked the door.  I then ineffectually chased Betty around for what seemed an eternity and eventually she went back to the coop of her own accord just to show me who was boss.  Clearly I am going to have to work on my chicken handling skills if this relationship is going to work!

In other non chicken related news, we celebrated my niece's third birthday today.  I made her a three layer chocolate cake with subtle pink ombre marshmallow icing and edible gold stars sprinkled on top.  She asked for a 'dinosaur cake' but since I'm not a huge fan of shape cakes I just put a little triceratops on the cake plate.  Minty even made it a tiny party hat so it would be more festive!

Happy (belated) birthday!

Remember that photo shoot we did a few weeks ago?  Well my dad turned 70 and the kids made 'human' numbers for the card!  It was all very 'Mister Maker' of us!  So happy belated birthday to dad and also to mum (who isn't 70) whose birthday was last week!

Conversations with Minty and Turi...

While watching 'Hello Dolly'...

Me: Gee he's a very tall man!

Minty: why is he so tall?

Turi: I think he eats all his dinner

Minty: I think he's just six footed

----

While telling Minty I'd bought us tickets to the ballet...

Minty: I want the whole family to come!

Me: I couldn't afford tickets for everyone, so I just bought two

Minty [crossly]: Well I want dad to take me and you can stay home and look after Turi because that's your job!

Me: But dad doesn't even like ballet!

Minty: he likes belly dancers…

----

Formulating his epic birthday list...

Turi: For my next birthday I want a wendy house and a Fireman Sam CD

Me [amused]: Your birthday list is getting very long.  Already you've asked for a dog, a trampoline and a red remote control car and your birthday isn't even till November.  Is there anything else you want to add?

Minty: What about a cat?

Turi [thoughtfully]: Maybe...

Me: So a cat and a dog?

Turi: Nah… maybe not a cat.  I think a reindeer.

My little valentine...

I have a horrible sinus infection.  I've got nearly two weeks worth of photos and stories to blog about but I'm having trouble putting down my tissues long enough to type anything.  So instead just a little photo of Minty on valentines day.  She turned five last week and honestly I'm beginning to feel like I'm struggling to keep up with her.  There's nothing like the quick wit of an irrepressible 5-year old combined with the incessant whining and intermittent screaming of a 3-year old to make you feel like someone has been slowly picking your brain out of your nostril with a toothpick.  There are times now that I feel like she is one step ahead of me in an argument  and on days like today when my brain is sluggish and groggy she makes me feel like a dullard.  We've been butting heads and pushing each other to the limit.  But no one can make me laugh like she can and if I had to choose someone to be trapped in an elevator with it would definitely be her (and not just because she has the bladder control of a camel).  

She spent Sunday night in the emergency room with croup and during the long hours waiting for drugs to work, x-ray results and monitoring sats, she kept us all entertained with amusing renditions of I-spy.  'I spy with my little eye something beginning with z… zero tolerance for violence and aggression sign!' (breathless hilarity ensues).  

While I've been writing this she has been dancing uninhibited to a selection of music of her own choosing - Madonna, Cabaret, The Lion King, Evanescence and Swan Lake.  I miss the days when she didn't know how to operate i-tunes.

On being 30 and turning to jelly…

So I just turned thirty - which probably isn't a big deal since I've been acting middle aged since I was about 12 and most of my friends are pushing 40 but somehow it inspired a bit of a birthday funk.  Probably not helped by waking up with a bout of viral conjunctivitis on my birthday (a thoughtful birthday gift from the kids!).

With a new decade looming it felt like some sort of mega-new-years-eve style event in which I should make some resolutions.  So here are my resolutions for my 30s, the things I'm going to try and do now that I'm all grown up...

Make my bed every day (I'm ashamed to admit this task has long been neglected in our household).  I think making an effort to keep our bedroom nice will be a mood lifter.  Now I'm not talking about anything extreme like hospital corners - just a shake of the doona and general 3 minute room reset after I get dressed in the morning.

Like Jelly.  For some reason I never liked it as a child but now that I'm all grown up there is something about the theatricality of a moulded jelly that really appeals to me.  I recently bought mum Wobble, a cookbook dedicated entirely to the art of jelly making.  I have to confess I have no idea if mum even likes jelly but I really wanted this book for myself (it really is a bad habit of mine, purchasing gifts I actually want to keep!  So don't be surprised if you end up with a retro eames pencil sharpener on your next birthday… you've been warned!)  Anyway, I digress, mum made me an awesome mandarin and vanilla bean jelly for my birthday lunch.  It was like a very sophisticated version of something from an Enid Blyton book, because you know jelly is a requisite food on any of her fictional tables.  (As noted in this amusing excerpt from the Wishing Chair, 'Then came the supper.  It was so queer.  The long, long table was spread with plates and glasses and dishes, but there was no food at all, no, not even a yellow jelly.')  So this year I'm hoping to put jelly on the table when we're celebrating, because really is there anything more delightful?

Introduce cocktail Friday.  I'm instigating this as a little rewarding adult 'me' time.  With a little help from this gorgeous little book, I'll try a new cocktail every week this year.

Create a beautiful garden.  I'm by no means a gardener.  Up until now leaving a plant in my care basically amounted to a death sentence for the poor leafy friend.  Maybe it won't be any different this time around since so far all I've done is begin to wage a war on all the weeds that have taken up residence in my garden.  But I have dreams of apple trees, herb gardens, hollyhocks and foxgloves (I'm not sure if I even really know what a foxglove is but with such a magically evocative name I'm sure it must be fabulous!).  It's funny how the older I get the more I end up becoming my parents.  I think I've mentioned before that my dad is a passionate photographer.  For years I didn't take a single picture and refused to even consider photography as a worthwhile endeavour.  Now it's absolutely one of my favourite hobbies.  The same could probably said for gardening.  Whenever dad has a free moment you can usually find him somewhere in the garden.  I'm hoping some of the skills might have magically rubbed off on me!!

Never eat McDonalds again.  I know it's bad for me and I could make (or buy) a much nicer burger that actually resembles real food.  I'm going to fight the lure of my childhood memories of the golden arches.

That's about it.  I'm not sure how long my resolve will last on all of these.  Maybe only a few weeks!  If anyone is interested I'm blogging over at food fanatics today with a post on kale.

In which I make a cursed wishing cake...

 

As promised, here is part two of the Faraway Tree party…  

I was tasked with recreating the 'wishing cake' from the Land of Birthdays.  The girls fell in love with this illustration in my old edition of The Enchanted Wood.  I was looking forward to having lots of fun piping all those garlands and flowers but sadly things did not go entirely to plan.

 

The Mr. is away on a 10 day ski trip in New Zealand so I am currently enduring a stint of single parenting (props to those of you who do this all the time - I'm in awe!).  I hadn't had much sleep in the days preceding and on cake-making-day the kids were in a particularly feral mood.  There was a brawl, and a bowl was thrown across the room and smashed into hundreds of tiny pieces.  My nerves were on edge.  I realised late in the afternoon I didn't have all the ingredients I needed so we had to make an emergency trip to the shops with said feral children in tow - more calamity ensued.  

By bed time I thought the dramas were over.  The cake was out of the oven and the house was finally calm.  And then I realised I had lost my case of piping tips.  I searched the entire house, unpacked innumerable boxes and even tried to climb into the roof space to see if they had been accidentally put in long term storage.  All to no avail.  

After a few tears, I got angry and decided I wasn't going to let it defeat me.  I managed to locate one star tip and a fine round tip that I hadn't put away in the case after I last used them.  I wasn't going to be able to pipe the leaves or flowers but I was going to do my best to cobble something together.  5 cups of coffee later, and well after midnight I had something resembling the picture.  I figured I'd pop to the supermarket on the way to the party and pick up some pre-made sugar flowers to stick where the piped ones should have been.

I successfully transported the cake on the almost two hour dive to the party.  Now if you've ever been to Puffing Billy you'll know how twisty the roads are around the Belgrave area, so this was no mean feat.  Just as a feeling of relief was washing over me, on the final roundabout the top two layers of cake slid off the bottom layer and the whole cake went smack onto the cake carrier.  The entire front section of icing smooshed off - the pink piped swag, the garland of silver cachous I had painstakingly stuck on and the perfectly smoothed pale green buttercream below was ruined in an instant.  I waved my fists in the air and said a bad word that begins with F.

Honestly at that point I just felt like throwing the cake in the bin and pouting.  But you know it was a kid's birthday party and I'm supposed to be a mature adult.  So I pulled myself (and the cake) together, stuck those sugar flowers over the gaping icing holes and attempted to feign a party enthusiasm I really wasn't feeling (insert overly theatrical jazz hands here).

I realise the kids weren't at all concerned about the smooshed front, but something about my A type perfectionist personality couldn't really let it go.  Even now just looking at the pictures makes me feel a bit dejected.  I think I had a cakexistential crisis of sorts.  What was the point of all that decorating and heartache laced between the chocolate layers, when it was destined only to be cut and eaten?  Maybe I'll just buy my next cake at Woolworths… 

In case you were wondering what was underneath the icing, the cake was a three layer chocolate tofu cake sandwiched with raspberry filling (due to dietary restrictions of the birthday girl this cake had to be wheat and dairy free).

In which Turi is a gobbledok and we take a train to the land of birthdays...

 

You may have guessed from my last post that there has been a bit of a Faraway Tree obsession brewing about these parts lately.  This weekend we went to a very special Faraway Tree themed birthday party centred around a journey on Puffing Billy (an old restored steam train).  There are quite a few steam trains throughout the books and the forest around Puffing Billy is very reminiscent of Enid Blyton's enchanted wood, so it really was a perfect setting.

All the children were invited to dress as their favourite character from the book.  Minty decided to dress as Bessie.  For those of you not intimately acquainted with the books, when Bessie visits the Land of Birthdays at the top of the Faraway Tree she wishes for fairy wings that could really fly.  I made Minty's wings in chiffon in a simple gathered Waldorf inspired design.  The skirt was a very quick freehand overlocked number.  It was only about 9 degrees so Minty had to add her coat for extra warmth!  Turi dressed up as one of the three bears (the children visit the three bears to help rescue Jo from the polar bears in the land of ice and snow).  We borrowed a generic animal suit from a friend and paired it with his bear mask recycled from here.  Turi was so excited to be wearing his costume.  He kept whispering to me proudly, 'people will see me'.  They really did look particularly adorable, and lots of random tourists stopped to take their picture while they were waiting for the train!

This post was getting a bit long so I've had to split it into two.  Come back tomorrow for part two.

House (and life) update...

 

I realise I haven't been stopping around here much lately.  The days seem to be getting busier and busier and I've been finding it increasingly difficult to slow down and record things here.  I haven't been picking up the camera, my sewing machine has been sitting idle in the corner gathering dust, and while I've still been busy creating in the kitchen I can't be bothered blogging about it before we've eaten!  So here is a readers digest version of the last few weeks, for those of you who are interested:

The Mr turned 30.  Celebrations were had - I made ice-cream cake.

The kids are as crazy as ever.  Highlights (or should I say lowlights?) include Minty giving herself a haircut and smashing her head through a window (thankfully the curtain broke her fall and she was unhurt).  Meanwhile, Turi learned to climb out of his cot and is now refusing to nap during the day.  

I decided to make my health a priority and started getting up at dawn to try and squeeze a walk in before the kids get up.  I know a few other mums who swear by this strategy.  Sadly Turi got wind of my early morning absence and started getting up earlier and earlier so as not to miss out.  After a series of 4am starts I eventually gave up and abandoned my pursuit of a healthier lifestyle.  I am back to consuming excessive amounts of chocolate and caffeine in order to combat the haze of sleep deprivation.  

I've started packing for our move.  We're hoping to be in our new house some time in May.  I'm finally beginning to understand what people mean when they say they 'hate moving'.  The last time we moved was about 6 years ago and we had hardly any 'stuff'.  This time around it is a very different story.  So far it has taken me three days to pack the contents of one bookshelf.  Kids certainly are the antidote to efficiency.

Things are moving along steadily with the house.  I finally bought tiles for the bathroom floor.  I ended up going with natural stone to tie in with the rustic vibe of the oversized timber window.  I love the unique variations in every tile and can't wait to see them laid.  As an added bonus they were a total bargain at only $28 a square meter!

 

This is the half wall that partitions off the shower in the kids bathroom with the vanity in front.

 

There is now a bulkhead above the space  where the bath will sit.  This neatly resolves the join between the plasterboard and the oversized window frame, as well as helping to define the space.

 

The plaster board is up in most of the house.  Plastering the high ceiling in the kitchen was a gargantuan effort - a special thanks to everyone who helped out!

Here is a peek at our pantry door (the white door near Minty).  It was reclaimed from a historic house on the island and dates from the 1920s.  I love the character it adds to this space.  It does need a little TLC and a new coat of paint (I'm thinking glossy black) but it already looks gorgeous, especially at night with only the pantry light on so that the little window panes glow.

 

Left: This is the entry - the Mr cut a 'man hole' in the plaster board where the door will be!  Right: Looking into the multi-purpose (office/sewing) room.

 

This is Turi's room.  My claw foot bath had a nasty accident and needs one of its feet reattached!

 

The lounge room - we still need to build the stairs joining this to the lower level.

Finally you can clearly see the variation in ceiling heights.  We are still considering further defining the space by adding a dropped timber ceiling above the dining table to make it feel a bit more intimate.