Yes loyal readers, it’s me back with another spur-of-the-moment decision that has my husband rolling his eyes and my children weeping into their porridge!

Yesterday, I decided that since my lovely husband had gone into the city with our son and the eldest was off to his Dad’s for the weekend I would take the opportunity to bake. I honestly believe that nobody in the world bakes like me – I use every clean utensil in the house – and destroy the kitchen in the process!

I used Nigella Lawson’s recipes from How to be a Domestic Goddess and decided that what the family needed were a nice batch of lemon raspberry muffins. Alas, despite having an oven thermometer to make sure they were at the correct temperature they fell somewhat flat. Next time I think I’ll break the raspberries up a little but it seems a shame since the large chunk of juicy raspberry was what made these muffins so yummy. Ah well, they don’t look that much but they were certainly demolished quickly enough! These are #4 on my “50 things in 2009″ challenge.

So after my bake fail which I solely blamed on my rubbish oven, I decided to have one last shot and make my Dad a birthday cake. My Dad really isn’t a sweet tooth so I went with a Victoria Sponge instead of my usual chocolate confection, and again relied on the ever wonderful Ms Lawson for the recipe. I have to say, in all my baking attempts I think this is the item I’m most proud of. It was light, fluffy, delicious and came out of the oven evenly baked. I am so very proud of this cake! Somehow it also managed to feed eight adults and two children with leftovers so it was deceptively large too. This was #5 in the list.



Of course, in the process of making Dad’s birthday cake I managed to make my food processor go on fire. Being the able housewife (haha) that I am, I am laying the blame solely in my kitchen and have therefore decided that I need to rip out my kitchen, knock down the wall, rebuild a wall in my living room to half it in size and enlarge my culinary space. Oh, and I’m investing in a range-style cooker too. This is in addition to growing a baby, parenting three unruly children and attempting to finish unpacking (we only moved in 2.5 years ago). I think I might be kidding myself a little

I’ll leave you with a photo of the person who really came out of yesterday the best – my hubby reminded me that I wasn’t allowed to lick the spoon when I finished with the sponge batter because I’m pregnant and raw eggs are a no-no so my daughter helped me out. She looks pretty happy doesn’t she?

Posted under baking, with the kids