Busy Baking

Mother's day cupcakes for our Mum's (obviously). Double ones were mocha with coffee butter icing, and the single cakes were chocolate with ground almonds. I packaged these in nice cupcakes boxes and both our Mum's loved them. 

Alex had a bake sale at preschool Wednesday, so Tuesday I made this big chocolate tray bake made with vegetable oil instead of butter. It went down extremely quickly and I was quite surprised how nice it tasted as I don't often like cakes made with oil, so I thought I'd share the recipe. 

Chocolate Traybake

75g cocoa powder

200ml boiling water

3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

4 eggs

370g light muscovado sugar

180ml vegetable oil

200g self raising flour

Icing

150g dark chocolate

3 tablespoons milk

M&M's (or any other chocolate delights)!

Whisk cocoa powder with 200ml boiling water, and then whisk in the bicarbonate of soda, leave to cool for about 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 160C fan/180C/gas mark 4. Grease and line a tray bake tin approx 23 x 30 x 4cm. 

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, and oil, then stir in the flour, and cocoa solution. Pour mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until risen and firm. Run a knife around the edges and leave to cool. 

To make the icing melt the chocolate with the milk in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until smooth  and using the back of a spoon or palette knife ice the cake, scatter over the M&M's, wait to cool and enjoy!

This is also really nice warm with ice cream too, and would be great for an easy birthday cake. 

Mother's Day

Whilst some of you may have been spoilt with lovely lie ins and breakfast in bed on Sunday morning I was left to deal with the breakfast for the boys and usual nappy changing and feeding duties. James had worked 11 hours the day before (he works most days without much of a break) and didn't get in until nearly midnight. It was annoying because in some ways I was jealous of everybody else but on the other hand I knew he needed the rest after such a hard week.

I don't expect much on Mother's day, I don't really think it's about presents and materialistic things it's the little things that make it perfect. This year was the first year that Alex came home with a handmade card which I will treasure for years to come, I was impressed that he managed to trace over the letters to write Mum and he is getting so good at trying to write his name.

We had a lovely roast dinner at my parents house, nothing beats a parent's home cooked roast dinner in my opinion, my youngest brother had also made a delicious chocolate and cinnamon cake with Alex on Saturday which we had for pudding. James had to work at 4pm which is actually an hour later than usual so that was sort of a bonus. It was nice to spend some time with my Mum browsing around the shops to ourselves (well sort of, Sam was asleep in then buggy).

Next year I just hope James might make a little more effect in trying to make it feel more of a special day though, I know he works so hard for us and is often knackered, but I am knackered in a different way and just want that one day to feel a bit spoilt with a lie and breakfast or lunch. When he asked what was wrong (when I was stomping around the house with a 'face on' but saying "I'm fine" when he kept asking whilst playing the xbox...) and said I am always like this on Mother's Day I tried not to sound like a spoilt brat, but when he said "it's not my day to spoil you it's the boy's day to do it". The boys are 3 and 3 months...not sure they are quite capable of making breakfast for themselves or baking a cake or something, so I hope he gets his act together for next year, who knows!

I don't mean to moan but I was a little bit miffed! Still it was a lovely day and the first of being a Mum of two wonderful little boys :)

Silent Sunday

Proper Vanilla Butter Icing

So yesterday I made some belated cakes for our Mums for Mothers Day (it was a busy weekend, out Saturday at a wedding and working Sunday), and I just wanted to make them look and hopefully taste a bit nicer than usual. 

Flicking through one of my many cupcake books I came across a lovely looking vanilla butter icing recipe which used vanilla pods. Just so happens I had some about so had to give it a go...

Yum I am never going to use vanilla essence again Ok I probably will for the bog standard quick bakes but shh we'll forget about that! Just wish I had tried putting it in the cakes beforehand too, oh well that sounds like a good excuse to bake some more to me!

I just guess with butter icing quantities as I always end up adding more icing sugar than the recipes suggest, generally a large knob of butter beaten until smooth then gradually add a generous amount of sifted icing sugar. Once it's all mixed together spilt half a vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds into icing and mix again.

The cakes went down very well! 

So did the scraping of the icing bowl...whoops!

Mother's Day...and why I'm not looking forward to it this year

source

Mother's Day to me is an extra special day where I get to be a little bit spoilt, and a day where we can each see each other's Mother's and appreciate them and what they do for us. The last two years I have been lucky enough to get Mother's Day booked off work (as Sunday's are the only day I work), unfortunately this year I didn't have enough holiday left over (our holidays run April-April) and I am gutted. 

Not only am I gutted I have to be in on Mother's Day I got told this week that work are reviewing all the hours (3rd year in a row), and my consultation is yep you got it, on Mother's Day! Wow what a fab present!

Also another part of the rant, since Christmas they haven't been giving extra hours so I have been in around 11/11.30 every week, on Mother's Day they have me in a 10am so I have no lie in either. Typical as I am at a friends wedding reception on the Saturday evening at a venue over an hour away, the only other time I have been in at 10am since Christmas was also the Sunday after another wedding, SODS LAW!

I know Mother's Day is just a day, and a bit of a gimmick for the card/present shops, but it's one day excluding a Birthday that you just get to feel that extra bit special and it sounds silly but I am going to miss having a proper one this year. 

At least we are all on the mend this week, me and Alex came down with such a horrible cold virus thing last week resulting in us being on the sofa burning up for 4 days, nice to be feeling semi normal again! Now on with the big pile if housework that I need to catch up on...here's hoping I still have a job come next week!