Baking: fire engine birthdays and Easter days

The Tiny One turned two! Not so tiny any more. He had a little party with his chums. I made Nigella's birthday biscuits from The Domestic Goddess, with a number two cutter and Smarties. You can never go wrong with Smarties.

I had a bit of a cake dilemma: the Tiny One asked for a fire engine, but I just wasn't comfortable with all the red food colouring that would entail for toddlers. I had a little brainwave and went with red fruit covering instead. You have to squint a bit to see it (!) but the cake above is a fire engine shape, coloured red with strawberry halves, peanut butter & jam biscuits for the wheels (another recipe from The Domestic Goddess), a breadstick ladder and blue candles for the fire engine lights. It was, to coin my Essex heritage, proper yum!

But the Tiny One wasn't content with just one cake, oh no. His party was nearly a week after his birthday so I asked him what cake he'd like for the day itself and he chose satsuma cake! Now, a) he's completely invented the idea and b) that's a pretty cool choice of a cake from a two-year-old who could have gone for something much less healthy and discerning. Luckily for me my elephantine memory for recipes (thank goodness my memory works for something) remembered Nigella's Christmassy clementine cake from How to Eat which involves boiling clementines for a ridiculous amount of time then pulverising them. Et voila! It was seriously good.

Here's the rest of the party fare, mid-party: number two biscuits (Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, p.212), peanut butter & jam jewels (same book, p.221), peanut-butter squares (same book, p.223, and oh my goodness they were incredible), and the cake (buttermilk birthday cake, p.210). It all went on my sewing table. Now that's sacrifice for you.

We also made these Easter nest cakes (since we're in the baking zone). Last year I made a proper Easter cake which was fabulous but time-consuming. These no-bake Shredded Wheat and chocolate affairs were simple, moreish and still had the requisite Easter-wow factor. If you're a time-poor, aim-high mum (like me!), go for them. I'm definitely nest caking again next year. Want to know the recipe? Oh go on then (another Nigella Domestic Goddess affair - yes, I can get a bit cook-book obsessive). I've put the ingredients in bold...

Melt 200g milk chocolate and 25g dark chocolate with 25g unsalted butter. I did this in the microwave on low, you can use a bowl over a steaming pot of water if you want. Stir it then leave it for a moment to cool. Crumble 100g shredded wheat into another bowl then mix in the chocolate. Your children will love this bit (mine did). Take little handfuls and place them on a lined baking sheet in vague nest shapes. Nigella says to make them about 7cm in diameter but I went smaller so I felt less guilty about the little ones eating them (and me, let's be honest). She also says to add the approx 25 chocolate eggs once cooled but I added them at the point of making so that they'd stick. They then sat in the fridge for about an hour before we started gobbling. (Proper recipe can be found in Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, p.231)

Making: changes

We have been waiting for the change-over from winter to spring. And here it is. Some days are still hat & gloves weather, like the photo of the Tiny One above. Other days, like yesterday, the windows are flung open, the jumpers are discarded, and the garden becomes a room in our home.

 

I have been making changes with the blog design. There may still be a little tinkering to do but why wait to write because of that?

 

I want to tell you that some days I feel so myself and other days are still playing catch-up. It's like the difference between riding a wave on a surfboard or swimming in it. There's no drowning going on, but the wave riding is the hope I'm heading for.

 

I have so many plans and ideas that just tinkle from my head, dance merrily on the floor below me then wander off to get lost somewhere. Time keeps marching on, life keeps needing to be lived, and I am now settling down to that rhythm. I'm doing what I can, rather than living always frustrated at the lack of time to do what I could have done.

 

There has been precious little sewing going on since Christmas, and what I have done has run away without a photograph. I made my parents a king-size quilt, a mammoth task, and I am still waiting to show it to you. I finished sewing my sister-in-law's belated Christmas presents. I've made a cape for a boy's birthday. I've made a one-strand mobile for myself. And right now I'm in the middle of sewing another king-size quilt, this time for my brother. As normal service resumes on this blog, I'll show you as many of these as I can.

 

But I want to tell you that as I sat at my sewing machine yesterday for the first time in a fortnight, and heard the first whizz of the needle as it woke from its slumber, my eyes pricked with tears. The kind that you get when the television shows you a happy ending, a cured child, or a couple brought together at last. Part of me felt silly at being so pathetic. But the rest of me felt that quiet joy and ease that comes with finding yourself again, and smiled at it. Everything about sewing tells me who I am. And sometimes I need reminding.