Birthdays

I am not going to focus too much on the absence of blogging over the last little while.  There has been a bit going on, specifically birthdays.  Most notably the birth day of our daughter in November.  This is pretty much the reason for the lack of posts, but then December comes and we have my husbands birthday, our son turned 4, Christmas, New Year and just when I think all is quietening down, our other daughter turned 2! So we had a couple of shindigs to celebrate and amongst these were 2 children’s birthday cakes.  The most stressful part of it all!

For our son, I decided I would give the new craze of cake pop making a whirl.  They were very homemade, and to be honest, not my cup of tea (mushed up cake with frosting rolled into a call and dipped in chocolate!) probably because its only a mouthful and I love a big wodge of cake to get stuck into if I am indulging.  But for a kids birthday it was the best thing!! They were a little time consuming but could be done in steps over a few days and the best bit was that they were a cinch to serve, each kid just took one and gobbled and yes always make more as they will be back for more!  These will be a regular fixture at our parties (as long as I plan ahead!).  And since we celebrated my husbands birthday at the same party, the cake in which the pop sat was a yummy proper chocolate cake studded with freckles all the way from Australia!

For the 2 year old girly birthday party, I added a bit of a flower theme and challenged myself to make the Womens Weekly Birthday Cake Book marshmallow flowers, very sticky business.  Also the marshmallows were brought from Australia courtesy of my visiting brother in law, as the ones we have here in Dubai are not a patch on the Pascals confections.

The main cake was another cake craze, the rainbow cake, layers of coloured butter cake piled up with white frosting and covered so that only when the cake was sliced open was the surprise revealed.  I think the marshmallows were the most exciting part for the kids, what is it with kids and marshmallows!

So no recipes today, a couple of pictures and the posts will hopefully flow on from here.  Last week I bought a tripod, a photo editing program and have been researching on how to best improve the ‘look’ of my blog.  Its a working progress so be patient.  I am also excited about new recipes, perfecting some good home favourites and looking at new ideas for kids, super healthy ideas and of course for those special times.