no to pudding, yes to cake?

As i said in my flourless chocolate cake blog, I dont really sign up to the whole christmas pudding deal but since it was left in my hands to dole out this years christmas meal, quite frankly my much cherished grandad would have gone home were there not something that at least winked towards a traditional christmas desert; so something had to be done. So christmas puddings take months and months to make and I simply refuse to buy ready made things for christmas dinner. I know someday this will probably change and I can see why million of people do buy in ready roasties and already prepared veg, I don't judge anyone for it and there are some really great shortcuts out there but I'm lucky enough that I have enough surplus time to prattle about for a few hours and do everything homemade, so for now i will. So with a christmas pudding out the window a christmas cake was slightly more plausible. Its a lot simpler to make, it doesn't require as much time and as I did, I think you can jazz it up a bit more and just look that bit more special. I will properly blog the recipe at some point but it's long and fiddily and I want to have a look at it and make it as simple and straight forward for you to follow, so for now I'm just going to wet your whistle with a little picture. Enjoy! 

sometimes when there are no words, pies will do....

xoxox

happier times!!

This week my little Charlie turned 2. Well not "my" little Charlie as I am happily childless and a bit scared of kids as a rule.... but my best friends son. Charlie is one of the few exceptions to my scary child rule and is a joy to be around, I'm going to say 98% of the time...there's just the other 2% where we wonder if we should just sell him and have done with it. Possibly one of my favourite things about him is that the boy likes cake and is a good tester with a definite sense of what he likes, much room for failure, hard to impress. So slightly scary was the task when Charlotte (his mumma and my partner in crime) asked me to bake his birthday cake. Now I know its a child's birthday cake so usually it consists of the old Victoria Sponge malarkey, which is great BUT that 'aint cutting the mustard so i had to whip a little something special out of my icing bag. So I dug out my trusty Peggy Porschen "Chic Cake" book, this is the place where I got my faux wedding cake from and it made a happy return. I wanted to show you all something a bit different, so instead of the Victoria Sponge, we have ladies and gentlemen, a Chocolate Orange Marble Cake. His party isn't till tomorrow so I'm going to try and get you some pictures of everyone having a munch but if it tastes as good as it looks (for my second iced cake anyway...) Im going to be a happy bunny and hopefully so is my little bubs! 

xoxox

omelette....

For brunch today, we had omelette, it was good :) 

xoxox