Cake of the Day

Have been on a bit of a baking binge, there is so much fresh fruit around at the moment that needs to be used up, including the over ripe bananas that were stressing me out in the bottom of my fridge. I made a chocolate chip banana loaf from the New Zealand Baking Book. I bought it for Mum for Christmas but it is currently on secondment in my kitchen ;)

It is a bit of a winner this recipe, and could well become a lunch box staple


In case you think I was being all healthy and added something like pumpkin puree to it, no. Those are some butterscotch chips I found in the back of the pantry, I bought them back from Canada with me over a year ago. I have to say, they really added something to it, too bad it was a oncer, don't think I have ever seen buttersctoch chips in New Zealand, but super yum, banana and butterscotch, mmmm............

Shhh....Secret Squirrel

My blueberry muffins have a secret........


A big fat dollop of lemon curd on the inside

They end up like this

And OMG, they are so good, too good, I weigh more now than I did when I just had Millie me thinks I need to eat less muffins, but it is just so hard!

Christmas Cookery

Two of my favorite things are Christmas and magazines, so the ultimate combination is of course Christmas magazines. I spend a alot of time sitting on the couch reading said magazines and planning all the things I think I am going to make, often there is small problem of actual execution, but my intentions are always good. This year there was even more contemplation than usual as I was chained to the couch feeding my newborn little girl, but I did manage to get a few things made. I was especially inspired by two NZ magazines this year, the Christmas issue of the Australian Womans Weekly that was beautiful and full of lovely recipes and the Your Home and Garden magazine which had some beautiful craft ideas that I have filed away in the one day when I have an organized life section of my brain.
I found these tins at the Warehouse and thought they were perfect for giving presents away in


These Christmas truffles were among the easiest and ymmiest Christmas food I have ever made/eaten

We had lots of fun making and decorating cookies for Santa and his reindeer on their stopover at our house.




We made these Christmas cookies for Ben's classmates and packaged them up, I had so much trouble with the cookie cutters and the dough, I think it must have been the Auckland humidity.




For some reason we also had a lot of pirate events on too, so it gave us a chance for some pirate dressups and some pirate baking, was a very piratey Christmas at our house!

Up to Date

I have really let this blog slide in the last couple of months, but there was a small matter of a tiny baby girl to attend to. Somehow, in the most manic three months of our life we managed to have two birthday parties and do a little bit of cooking for them.Up first was Ben's 5 th Birthday, we had a Dinosaur theme and the cake I basically copied straight from a Donna Hay Kid's issue from a few years back. I say I, but actually, I just told John what to do and he did it for me, I was the creative Director!It all came together really well, we had the party at a Children's Gym and had to provide afternoon tea, I made it up in some cool dinosaur boxes that I found on TradeMe and put the party favors inside too, some dinosaur tatoos and a dinosaur bubble bath



We also hastily made some dinosaur cupcakes


And finally the cake, embellished with some Ice Age 3 toys from McDonald's!


Next up was Jack's Third birthday, which we had a Butterfly Creek, all we had to do there was provide the cake and the party bags, I had decided on a brown and orange theme, a la the Monarch butterfly. The cake was easy peasy, I had a heart shaped tin, bought some ready to roll chocolate fondant and coloured some white fondant with black and orange food colouring and used some petal cut outs to make the shapes, I was really happy with how it all turned out and he had a great day!

I did some potato prints to make the invitations in the colours of the theme



The cake


The party table


The Party Bags


And the best part of all.......eating cake



When I look back now I really do not know how we did it, 2 parties and a new baby girl all within 3 weeks, but we did and it all managed to turn out pretty well.

Making me happy today....

Raisin oat cookies, because I have a thousand things to do, I procrastinate by making cookies and the midwife told me that oats are good for making milk, sounds like a good enough reason to me.

The Beautiful flowers sent to me from my lovely brother in London

Baby Shower

Cupcakes in all their pink glory

The present pile: what a lucky baby

The food: mini lemon tarts with blueberries, mini chocolate tarts, caramel slice among other things.

I had a lovely baby shower last week, the theme was a girly afternoon tea. It was well and truly an homage to pinkness, no, I don't know the babes gender, and I feel in my bones it is probably another boy so I relished the opportunity to embrace the symbols of the feminine, before I am likely locked into a testosterone fueled life forever. Marisa did a great job of organising all the decorations and games and being the control freak that I am, I did the food. I had a great day and was so lucky to receive some amazing gifts, there is a dearth of photos, not that they were not taken, but note to my friend the photographer, standing over the top of a heavily pregnant woman as she kneels on the floor opening gifts, maybe not the best angle for a flattering shot. I am hitting the delete button on those ones.