Never knowingly under-caked...

A Baker Days cake...

















Here’s a confession that won’t surprise people who know me well; I like to bake.  In fact, I love to bake.  You might say – in fact, I did, to a friend just this evening – that I am never knowingly under-caked.  I can’t help it, I think it’s in my blood (my mother is a demon baker), so bearing in mind that for most people their default model of parenting is the one they were brought up with, despite the fact that I really didn’t do much baking when I was young(er) and child-free, in my case the iced writing was on the wall the moment I became a mum.

There’s something about being able to offer your children a piece of cake for pud (after, of course, the requisite helping of fruit - *looks furtively around and thinks that yes, she probably got away with that one*), or being able to offer guests a slice with their cup of tea that is peculiarly satisfying.  Cake is, I think, something of a cure-all; life generally tends to look a lot less grim if there is a piece of it on a plate next to your cuppa.

Working from home I’m in the privileged position of being able to find time for all this baking (although even so, I don’t usually manage to until after the kids in are bed), but it’s still only a once a week indulgence, and  I certainly don’t ever get round to baking for people outside the family in the way that I might like to.  Because there’s something special about a cake as a gift for a good friend or a loved one, whether it’s for celebratory purposes or purely as a pick-me-up, isn’t there?

What I am not, however, is an expert at sending cake further than around the corner in the back of the car.  Just think of how it looks after you’ve brought a purchase home from the local WI Bazaar and you’ll get what I mean, so when I was contact by Bakerdays, I was very interested in the service they offer; their website gives you the opportunity to send a beautiful personalised cake through the post.  You can either use one of 300 existing designs or create your own to decorate one of 6 cake recipes, which they will ensure is delivered to your chosen recipient along with a party pack of candles, gift card, balloons and a party horn.  One of the sizes they offer will even fit through a standard letter box in its’ own tin.

Prices start at £14.99 for a letterbox-sized cake, which seems quite reasonable when compared to the price of a delivery of flowers, for example.  And when you can’t be with the people who are important to you, this is a great way to show you care – and to ensure that, like me, your friends and family are never knowingly under-caked...


This is a sponsored post, but all content and opinions are my own

Reflections on Boy #1's 8th Birthday Party...

1. Always take your own advice on the subject of chocolate and go for quality over quantity. Otherwise you will find yourself at 10.00pm the night before the party (during your last-minute birthday cake-baking rush) looking sadly at what should be a 'glossily combined' bowl of chocolate, condensed milk, sugar and butter and decided that based on the greying glutinous gloop in the bowl in front of you, yes, it is necessary to go out to the 24 hr supermarket to buy the expensive chocolate you were too mean to buy just a few hours earlier...

2. Just because it didn't rain last year's birthday party treasure hunt, that doesn't mean it won't rain on this year's birthday party treasure hunt. Prepare for a soaking. Dig out the wellies. Abandon any hope of looking stylish. Take heart; the designer-clad Russian mummies probably won't hang around to get the heels of their stillettos caught in the mud during mad dashes across the grass to run relays or arm-wrestle security guards in any case, so frankly, what does it matter if your wellington boots are Homebase specials rather than Hunter trendies?

3. Remember; if the cleaner you paid to come in and help out at last year's party was a disaster then, needing constant supervision and showing no more initiative than a sulky 13 year old girl, the chances are that nothing will have changed over the last 12 months.

4. You can never have too much pizza for kid's birthday parties. Think of a number, and double it. Then add on 10.

5. Don't waste too much time peeling carrots and slicing peppers etc: vegetable sticks really are there just for decorative purposes and to save face in the Healthy Eating stakes. (FFS - it's a party. Do you really expect them to eat raw broccoli?)

6. Never - but NEVER - leave your 2 beautiful Smartie-decorated chocolate ganache-clad birthday cakes (you know; the ones you were up until midnight the night before making) out in the kitchen with your cleaner there unsupervised. Otherwise, when you ask her to turn on the oven and put the pizza in you will only have yourself to blame when you just happen to go into the kitchen 5 minutes later to find she has put the fully-iced cakes in the oven instead of the pizza.

7. Should the unthinkable (as detailed above) happen, however, hold your nerve. Once you have whipped the cakes out of the oven, stuck them in the fridge to re-set the ganache, and have recovered from the shock with a medicinal glass of white wine or two, you may just find that slightly molten smarties actually taste quite nice on top of warm chocolate cake. And of course this is the perfect moment to thank your lucky stars that the birthday candles weren't already in place.

And finally...

8. There will always be one child who, on seeing the Ben 10 jigsaw and Milky Way bar you have prepared as a going home present, will say "I don't need the jigsaw, thanks. I'll just take the chocolate."

5 year old boys, PMT, and self doubt; a dangerous cocktail

Five year old boys and PMT do not mix well.

That is my considered opinion after a morning when I raised my voice more often than I should have during breakfast, harrassed beyond the end of my already hormonally-challenged temper by constant requests to read him his train-tastic railway magazine (Boy #2 is a train spotter extraordinaire in the making) and his tantrums over his too-sloppy weetabix, his too-sloppy cornflakes, and his napkin - which he refuses to tuck into his waist-band - falling repeatedly onto the floor.

So, whilst sorting the Boys' breakfasts, their lunch boxes, the pack of chopped vegetables that Boy #1 needed to take into class for a project today, getting them to brush their teeth, put their shoes on and check that they had all the various kit they needed for their day, I shouted. Loudly. There may have been swearing in there, too. There was certainly a great deal of hissiness and general crossness on my part, and if I'm honest, a remark that I may well go back to work and leave Boy #2 with a nanny if he continued to behave like this every morning. Which was not a helpful thing to say, since if it comes to that, it will be nothing to do with his behaviour and everything to do with financial realities and / or my trying to re-establish myself as an employable human being.

And it's too close to being a real possibility for me to allow him to think of having a nanny as a punishment.

In the heat of the moment I'm falling into the trap, I think, of imagining that what I say to him won't be remembered in years to come and yet, he's 5, for goodness' sake. He already remembers events that happened last year and the year before. Hell, he remembers that the blasted train magazine he was leafing through this morning was a present from his cousin last February. I can no longer rely on the fact that he is too little to process and store away things that are said and done; he isn't.

It's just unfortunate that his end-of-week tiredness, his kicking against the restraints of going back to school after a summer of doing what he likes, when he likes, collide with what seems to be an increasingly fierce PMT as I get older.

I need to take a step back in those situations. I need to take a deep breath. Is it really worth getting wound up over too-sloppy weetabix, for example? Why not bite my tongue, simply throw it away and start again? Because it's one of those battles that really, really aren't worth fighting, and in any case, desperate to get him to eat something, anything for breakfast before a long school day, that's what I did this morning. Crossly, yes. Muttering about over-priviledged little pashas and starving children in Africa, yes, but eventually, that's what I did; throw it away and start again.

Writing this down here, it's glaringly obvious that in situations like this, I need to aim for the high ground. I am the parent; I am the grown up. I am the one who should be able to keep their temper. Perhaps I need my own star chart here? Awarding myself points for fulfilling the promise 'I will keep my temper when Boy #2 is having one of those mornings'? It's certainly worth thinking about.

In the meantime, I'm off to make the vanilla cake that I promised him when I dropped him unwillingly off at school this morning. Well. Given the circumstances - and the time of the month - I think it will make both of us feel better...

Stream of consciousness...

This weekend I will be;

Baking cakes for our compound Easter Egg hunt; 1 nut-free, 1 not (and oh-so-delicious, but which necessitates practically steam-cleaning all the cooking utensils I've used to make it to avoid cross-contamination with anything that I might use to bake for the Boys afterwards. Worth it, though.)

Wrestling Boy #2 to his Saturday morning Dutch class which he really doesn't want to go - and which I really don't blame him for as amazingly the sun is shining and it's above 10degC - but there you go, that's just the way it is...

Taking both Boys to a Star Wars birthday party and spending the rest of the weekend fielding questions my older son sets me to trip me up on my woeful lack of knowledge of episodes 1 - 3 (who CARES what the name of the funny looking Jedi Knight with the dreadlocks was called, anyway? 7 and 5 year old boys, that's who...)

Having drinks with some girl friends (husbands and children not allowed) and wondering when the last time I did that was... And then, as the white wine continues to be poured, forgetting all about that thought and just enjoying the moment.

Putting on white jeans (WHITE JEANS!) for the first time since last summer.

Realising very shorting after putting on the white jeans that Moscow may be warm enough for that now, but it certainly isn't clean enough...

Bemoaning my lack of clothes suitable for Spring. And washing my white jeans - again.

Taking both Boys to an Easter Egg hunt and trying to restrain them from eating all their chocolate haul in one go so that I can sneak the odd one myself when their backs are turned. (OK, who am I kidding here? 'The ODD one'?)

Cooking lunch for some friends and thinking smugly about the fact that since I don't have to drive I can actually have a glass of wine with it.

Checking my blog and the twitter-sphere and panicking about the tumble-weed wasteland out there (where IS everyone?) before realising they too are having the weekend off and not doing anything as foolish as wasting their time checking their blog etc and panicking about the tumble-weed wasteland out there...

Resolving to spread the love a bit by commenting on the blogs that I do read so that if there are any tumble-weed wasteland moments for anyone else, their impact might be reduced.