I am so sorry for my lack of posting over the last week. With all the preparation for Nairn’s birthday party I really have not had two seconds to catch up on emails, twitter, messages or your blogs. Rest assured I’ll catch my tail this week at some point but for now I am still here, barely

Just a quick photopost today. Firstly, I re-attempted the lemon and raspberry muffins that completely failed last time I made them. Surprisingly, putting the liners into a muffin tin was all I needed to do for these to work! They really are so yummy that I was fighting the kids off to get one myself. I am a bad Mummy. On the bottom plate you’ll see my attempt at Laura’s oat biscuits which I think I made an error with somewhere, probably in measuring the butter whilst trying to let Nairn “help”. They were still yummy, just a little drier than I’d expected. I’ll try them again today and see how we get on.

Nairn’s party went really well and I’ll post photographs as soon as I’ve cleared it with the parents of any other children in the snaps. I’ll run down what worked and what didn’t for any of you planning a party for a three year old in the future (for a taster – pass the parcel goooood, musical statues baaaaad).

Posted under baking

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