lego cake ::

so as you are probably aware, the toddler turned three on saturday. To celebrate this milestone, there was a very lego/duplo filled day, which included a fairly time consuming, stress inducing first attempt at a decorated cake. By decorated in this instance I mean anything that isn't simply smeared with butter icing and sprinkled with a few hundreds and thousands.

I have experience of these kind of elaborate children's birthday cakes, but only really in the receiving and eating of. My mum was a great birthday cake supplier (highlights of mine include a grand princess pony castle, cinderella complete with pumpkin carriage and sugar mice and winnie the pooh and honey pot) and my sister has continued this tradition with her own 3 children (highlights created by her include iggle piggle with blanket, peppa pig and a giant cupcake). I often receive running commentary and photographic evidence of my sister's successes late in to the night before a big event, but as with most things it wasn't until I attempted it myself did I realise quite how much work was involved in creating such masterpieces.

Don't get me wrong, I knew it wouldn't be easy and really I had hoped it would be something I wouldn't need to do for a few years yet, but Milo had different ideas (damn pinterest and Milo's overshoulder watching of it!), but I've watched Cake Boss, I hunted out a few youtube instructional videos, spent a fortune in hobbycraft, took a deep breath and begun.

For anyone interested in creating one yourself (though I promise you I'm not sure it's worth all the stress, panic, heartache, sweat and tears) here is a little overview of what I did.

I couldn't find a rectangular tin (well not one that wasn't horrifically expensive anyway) so I purchased a square tin, made a huge batch of Pam Corbin's victoria sponge mix and made two square cakes. Once they had cooled I cut one in half, sandwiched on to the other with butter icing, I then covered the whole thing with butter icing. Johnny was initially responsible for the bricks on top of the cake and decided to use rice krispie squares instead of cake for these, which I too covered in butter icing. As it happened Johnny, on out celebrating a friends birthday, the night before 'project birthday cake' broke his thumb falling off a stationary bike, therefore he spent the whole evening watching over my shoulder with unhelpful insights, unable to do any of the actual cake making/decorating.

For the fondant icing, I bought one green packet and one white packet, I then coloured three lots of the white with red, blue and yellow. If I was to do this again, I would certainly purchase all the colours, it was so time consuming mixing the colours and I couldn't get them quite as bright as I had hoped. I covered the cake with the green and the rice krispie bricks with the other colours, using a small round cutter to make the little nubs on top, attaching with a little apricot jam.

I got the idea for the lego heads from here, using marshmallows, dipped in yellow candy melts. I used a special food colouring pen for the faces, but I wouldn't do this again as the pen did not like going on the candy melts, I imagine black food colouring and a paintbrush would have been a better idea.

A friend leant us a lego mould which we used for the little chocolate blocks, so that was nice and easy!

So there we go, this was actually the very first birthday cake I made for Milo, as his first was shop bought and his second made by Johnny, not too bad for a first attempt, Milo loved it and we shall be eating cake for at least a week!

A new obsession :: bread ::

For Christmas my lovely man added to my growing collection of river cottage handbooks, with 'vol 3 : bread'. When Milo first starting eating real food, and I was being a precious first time mother all concerned about what I gave him, I started making my own bread, I got ok at it but never brilliant, and it took up a lot of my day, so we purchased a bread machine. I've never regretted it, there isn't much better than waking up to the smell of fresh bread, especially when all you've had to do is measure out some ingredients pop them in a tin and press some buttons.

But with the addition of this book to my library I thought I'd have a go at doing it by hand again. The introduction to this book is fabulous, it's amazing to learn so much of the science behind bread, it's crazy how much goes in to making something we so often take for granted and which consists of so few ingredients.

I had a shot at making my own sourdough starter and consequently sourdough bread. But it was a bit hit and miss, the starter seemed pretty active to me (not that I know a lot about such things) but the bread never seemed to rise very much, I still quite enjoyed it, but Johnny wasn't a big fan of the taste.

I turned my attentions to using reliable, shop purchased yeast and regular bread. I was so surprised at how well the first few loaves came out. All white to begin with, using yoghurt as the recipe suggested, and they were all amazing! Great crust, lovely light middle's and incredibly moreish, seriously this bread baking business is not good for my health (well my waistline at least!).

I'm becoming obsessed now, I literally had to stop myself making more this morning, when I already have some left over from yesterday and no one home to feed!

If you've never tried I encourage you to give it a go, it's so rewarding doing it all yourself, and truly there is something quite magical about turning 3 simple ingredients (plus a few yummy extras if you want them) in to something wonderful.