Easter 2012

It's been a busy Easter weekend this year. We went to Snibston Discovery Museum with Leigh's parents on Good Friday, had a brilliant roast dinner (courtesy of Leigh!) on Saturday. Then it was Easter breakfast at church and morning service for me and the boys followed by Easter egg hunt at our friends' house. The weather was not great, but good enough for the children to have an excited 10 minutes running round the garden searching out chocolate!

Easter Monday we went to another friends' house for a late Mardi Gras party - we made carnival masks for the occasion...




I'm not sure, but I think Zachary's face says "do I really have to pose for this?"! I made some mini key lime pies



The recipe described them as "speedy," but I think that was solely on the basis that the filling didn't need to be cooked! Pressing biscuit mixture into 24 mini muffin sections of a tin was not speedy! Fortunately though, the mixture puffed up quite a bit in the oven (the base did need to be cooked) and I could reshape my otherwise slightly ropey bases when they came out and were still hot!

Tuesday was fairly quiet although we did go out to Staunton Harold in the afternoon and today we have been to Twycross Zoo with Uncle Jamie. Again, weather not fantastic, but the hail did hold off while we were there and it was great. Hopefully swimming tomorrow and friends over for some dinner. Out for dinner on Friday night and then CBeebies Live on Saturday afternoon (which I think Leigh and I are looking forward to more than the boys!). Busy but lovely. Monday might come as a bit of a shock to the system...

Realisation

I have realised that lately this blog has become less about my general day to day doings and more just a run-down of what I've baked recently! I shall attempt to put this right...in the meantime though...just so you don't get bored...!

Auntie Becky's birthday cake - as decorated by Zachary. Vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling and topped with buttercream.




Easter fruity Simnel slice - delicious although highly bad for you. There's a 500g pack of marzipan in there (along with everything else!)



Uncle Jamie's birthday cake (essentially the same as Becky's but with a different colour icing and topping!)



Mini blueberry tarts. Nice.



I had planned to have another bash at something yeast-based this week - hot cross buns. But not managed it so far. Hopefully I will soon - I need a day when I will regularly be back at the house to check on the 3 risings/provings they need and not be rushed about how long I give them to rise (as it's turned colder, and despite what the recipe says, nothing will double in size in an hour at the temperature the house is at the moment!). Watch this space.

More baking - hooray!

I made a Mary Berry Hokey Pokey Coffee cake this week and some rather nice cherry biscuits (from a new baking book I was given for Mother's Day). The coffee cake came out really well and I even managed to get the walnut praline right this time round (no stirring, just swirling!), and the biscuits were good, although not as crisp as we had imagined they might be. Still tasty though and a good straightforward recipe.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(the title is really about my baking efforts but I got carried away talking about Zachary's party too!)

Zachary's party went really well - the balloon modellers were a massive hit with everyone! Paid them a flat rate for basically as many balloons as they could do in a hour - 2 or 3 children must have gone home with around 5 balloon models! Here's Zachary with his hat and his spider!!!




His birthday cake came out well - I had arranged to borrow a number '4' cake tin from a local cake shop, but when I collected it I realised it was much smaller than I had imagined...not really going to feed 15 children plus parents kind of small. But luckily, Leigh remembered that a cake decorating book I have has a grid at the back for making lots of different size vanilla sponge and fruit cakes (for wedding cakes and other tiered delights), so we cracked that open, got out the big square tin with adjustable sides and made a 9" square two-layer cake sandwiched with jam and buttercream. Yum. Then as befits the theme of the party, I decorated it...



and made some little gingerbread spidermen to go with it (please no comments on the 'skill' or otherwise of my icing here!!!).



I used Edd Kimber's recipe and I don't know whether I ended up using too much golden syrup (I prefer working with weight in syrup because I know my tablespoons always end up too full!) or something else, but it ended up really greasy and even adding more flour didn't really seem to help because then it was almost impossible to roll out! I did manage to salvage 15 men from it though and they were delicious. I shall definitely be using the recipe again, if just to prove that I can make it properly!


I also made some shortbread biscuits and piped webs onto them but forgot to take a photo!

Then we get to the chelsea buns. I have made chelsea buns once before and have been wanting to try them again ... but this was not a great effort.



They don't look too bad and were quite nice straight out of the oven, but as they cooled they got more dense and hard and I knew that leaving them overnight would result in little rocks the next day! I used our KitchenAid to knead the dough - I always get on really well with it when I make dough for our pizza bases, but it was not to be this time. I had worked out my timings so that I could make them while Zachary was at nursery one morning (and they had to be done by the time I went to get him as we were going straight out for lunch from school), but either the room wasn't warm enough, or something went wrong with the kneading because the dough just did not rise! I had allowed an hour for the first rising, then realised after 45 minutes that something wasn't right (!) and switched the heating on, but it was all too late by then. When I make pizza dough, I usually leave it to rise for the entire afternoon - I need to try these again when I have much more time available and I can really wait until the first rising is done properly. Ho hum.

Spider Walnut Halves

So, my Mum sent me a bag full of walnut halves as a birthday present (there were other presents too!) for my "creative side." Hmmmm. I had not come up with anything interesting so far and I mentioned it to friends who came over at the weekend.

They had many suggestions, nipple tassles and a string bikini being some of the more racy! Natalie suggested turning them into tortoises, then Lyndsey thought about putting jiggly bugs in them - this gave me the idea of getting them boys to paint them like ladybirds and beetles and then it hit me. Zachary's having a Spiderman party next weekend and I'm short of spiders for a treasure hunt game. I was going to print out some paper ones, but I can make them from the walnut halves! I can't believe we actually came up with something for them! We already have a can of black spray paint and I'm going on a googly eyes shopping spree tomorrow - just need to work out how to get legs on...

Pear and Almond Flapjack Tart

Well, the topping was not so flapjacky, but still very tasty! From Good Food magazine Feb 2012...



I think we took it out of the tin too early as the pastry just dropped off at the slightest touch! Either that or my pastry was too short...

500g block dessert pastry (I made my own pastry - 250g plain flour, 125g butter, 2 dessert spoons icing sugar, bind with 1 egg yolk and a tbspn cold water. I did have to add extra water on top of that but very slowly to make sure not too much. Then wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes)
5 pears, peeled, cored and sliced (I used conference pears which were quite crisp, but didn't taste very peary in the tart. Perhaps need riper pears or a different variety)
25g golden caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
large pinch mixed spice
flaked almonds, to finish
pouring cream or custard to serve

Topping -
140g porridge oats
50g plain flour
50g ground almonds (if your pears are really ripe and juicy, it's a good idea to sprinkle an extra layer of ground almonds over the pastry before adding the pears)
100g golden caster sugar
140g cold butter, diced
3 tbsp golden syrup

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Roll out the pastry and use to line a 23cm tart tin (mine was a deep one), leaving a sight overhang. Line with greaseproof paper and baking beans, then bake for 20 mins. Remove the beans and paper, trim the pastry, then return to the oven for 10 mins more or until the pastry is biscuity brown.

2. Meanwhile, toss the pears in the sugar and spice, then set aside. To make the topping, tip the oats, flour and ground almonds into a large bowl with the sugar and a pinch of salt, then rub in the butter with your fingertips until you have a soft mixture. Stir in the golden syrup.

3. Increase oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Tip the pears over the base of the tart, then flatten the oaty pastry into a round and place it over the pears - push/spread it with your fingers so the pears are completely covered. Scatter with flaked almonds and an extra sprinkling of sugar, then bake for 30 mins.

White chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies

Lovely, lovely recipe from Great British Bake-Off winner Jo Wheatley in last month's Good Food. Quick, easy and delicious - I have a fan oven and reduced the heat according to the recipe, but they still seemed a bit soft coming out after 10 minutes. For my second batch I reduced the temp but added 2 minutes to the cooking time and this seemed to work a treat.

100g unsalted butter, softened
100g crunchy peanut butter
50g demerara sugar
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
100g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g white chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper. Mix the butter, peanut butter and sugars together with an electric whisk until light and fluffy, then gradually add the egg, whisking constantly, until fully combined. Finally fold in the flour, baking powder, bicarb and chocolate drops/chunks.

2. Using an ice-cream scoop, place dollops of cookie dough onto the baking trays, leaving a generous border around the cookies as they will spread in the oven. (can freeze the raw cookie dough at this stage).

3. Bake for 10 minutes, taking the tray out half-way through and banging sharply on a work surface covered with a couple of tea-towels - this dispels the air, making lovely squidgy cookies.

Life Lesson learned this week - never take your 2-year old with you anywhere you might need to appear even vaguely professional...

I have joined forces with a local recruitment agency in an effort to get myself back into the workplace as a solicitor again. I needed to drop some ID documents and bits off to them so thought I would drop them round in person (rather than post them) and have a chat with the bloke managing me (hee hee!) while I was there. Leo came too.

Lovely conference room - in the middle a big glass table with 4 mirrored legs. Very nice. During my meeting (in preparation for which I had actually taken some books to keep Leo occupied - some hope) Leo started by popping in and out the door a few times. Then when he'd explored that he got under the table and had great fun working out that he could see me through it. Followed this up by licking and kissing the mirrored table legs, trying to bite the corner of the table and then doing a massive poo. Accompanied by grunts and smell. Then him looking at me plaintively through the glass table top and mouthing "I've done a poo."

Great work.

Eccles Cake

Again from Good Food January 2012 - this is a sponge cake with an Eccles cake-type filling. Very tasty and moist. It has apple chunks in the sponge as well which made me think the cake was vastly undercooked when we first cut it open but then I realised I was just looking at chunks of apple!

Sticky Toffee Tarts

Yet another try-out from Good Food mag January 2012. I was a bit concerned that my pastry was too brown after the blind baking, and I had the oven down too low for the last bake so it took another 15 mins on top of the advertised time for them to look done (that is, not wobbly on top!) but yum, yum, yum!!!

Grasshopper Cake

I made a cake for my father-in-law's birthday this week - a saw the recipe in a book Leigh bought me for Christmas. This is a Grasshopper Cake - apparently named after the cocktail. It's a yummy chocolate cake filled and covered with a peppermint butter icing - very, very nice. I have to say I didn't believe the recipe when it said I would be able to cut the cake into thirds - it's only a 2 egg cake, but I guess the bicarb and lemon juice did the trick!!

It's been a productive few days!

After a bit of a baking drought, I've managed to bake a few new (and old!) things over the last few days and I've finally finished my animal alphabet cross stitch!

First was some doughnut muffins from the Good Food magazine - very easy to make and they do seem to taste doughnutty...although that might just be because they're covered in caster sugar after baking!!! I had a little trouble dividing my mix so that the jam was properly covered (I used too much in the bottom layer), but they turned out fine. As I was typing the recipe out I also remembered that this was a recipe the boys helped me with. Leo was in charge of the dry bowl - I turned my back on him to help Zachary with the wet bowl, turned back and saw him spooning flour into his mouth! Nice.



(Good Food Jan 2012)

140g golden caster sugar, plus 200g extra for dusting
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100ml natural yoghurt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
140g butter, melted
12 tsp seedless raspberry jam

1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin tin (or use a silicone one). Put 140g sugar, flour and bicarb in a bowl and mix to combine. In a jug, whisk together the yoghurt, eggs and vanilla. Tip the jug contents and melted butter into the dry ingredients and quickly fold with a metal spoon to combine.

2. Divide two-thirds of the mixture between muffin holes. Carefully add 1 tsp jam into the centre of each, then cover with the remaining mixture. Bake for 16-18 minutes until risen, golden and springy to the touch.

3. Leave the muffins to cool for 5 minutes before lifting out of the tin and rolling in the extra sugar.

Then this week, Leigh made some lemon marmalade from the February 2012 Good Food and I followed this up with their lemon bakewell tarts as well. The pastry was a bit of a bind to make (interesting, reverse method of making) and cracked a lot while I was trying to roll it out, but it came out of the tins beautifully and there were no soggy bottoms.



(Good Food Magazine Feb 2012)

Sweet Pastry -
85g butter at room temperature
zest 1 lemon
50g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
200g plain flour
Filling -
zest 2 lemons
100g butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar
2 large eggs
85g ground almonds
25g plain flour
6 tbsp homemade lemon marmalade (or lemon curd)
25g flaked almonds
icing sugar, for dusting

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. To make the pastry, place the butter and lemon zest in a food processor and blitz until soft. Sieve in the icing sugar and blitz again until light and creamy. Mix in the egg yolk with 1 tbsp water, then add in the flour until it's just combined.

2. On a lightly floured surface, bring the pastry together into a ball, then wrap in cling film and flatten lightly to form a disc. Chill in the fridge for 30 mins.
3. Roll out the pastry and use to line six 10 x 2 cm loose-bottomed tart tins, trimming off any excess. Put in the fridge while making the filling. If pastry cracks or breaks, patch up with trimmings.

4. To make the filling, beat together the lemon zest, butter and caster sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, including a spoonful of the ground almonds with each addition. When all the egg has been added, mix in the remaining ground almonds and flour.

5. Spread the marmalade or curd over the bases of the tart cases. Spoon over the filling and smooth with a palette knife or spatula. The tarts will be full to the top, which is fine. Scatter over the flaked almonds, sit tarts on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden.

Then yesterday I went a bit mad in the kitchen, making not only the bakewell tarts, but also some mini muffins and a cherry bakewell sponge. Yom.

And finally my completed cross stitch - ready for framing, great!

Outsmarted by my 3 1/2 year old...

I am shamed. The boys had a bubble bath last night and Leigh ran the shower to rinse them down before they got out. He put the shower head back in its stand, leaving Zachary in the bath for me to get him out. I complained that as I was shorter than Leigh, I couldn't reach round the shower to turn it off without soaking my arm. Quick as a flash Zachary told me to just turn the shower off at the wall switch. Which worked. My mental faculties are dull!

Bakewell Cheesecake

The January 2012 edition of the BBC Good Food magazine had a great set of recipes entitled "Your favourites made even better," ie "putting a fresh spin on well-loved classics." I am keen to try the doughnut muffins and the Eccles cake (a big sponge cake rather than the individual pastry ones) but yesterday I made and today we ate, Bakewell cheesecake. It was lovely, and far less rich than I had anticipated after tipping 900g Philadelphia cheese into it!

I was a good girl and followed the recipe closely as to baking and cooling instructions, however forgot to toast the flaked almonds, and didn't buy enough almond biscuits so had to use 50g malted milks to make it up to 200g! Still, turned out nicely. I don't think it will replace my love of Bakewell tarts and cakes, but lovely all the same.




(Good Food Jan 2012)

200g almond biscuits
100g toasted flaked almonds
1/2 tsp almond extract
100g butter, melted
3 x 300g packs full-fat soft cheese
250g caster sugar
4 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
200ml tub soured cream
just over half a jar of cherry jam
icing sugar and cream, to serve

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line the base and sides of a 23cm springform tin with baking parchment. Bash the biscuits and 75g of the flaked almonds to crumbs. Mix with the almond extract and butter, then press int the base of the prepared tin and bake for 10 mins. Set aside to cool while you make the filling.

2. In your largest bowl, whisk the cheese until creamy. Add the sugar and whisk to combine. Whisk in the flour, then the vanilla, the eggs one at a time, and finally the soured cream.

3. Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture into the tin, dotting in tbsps of jam as you go. Smooth the top as gently as you can.

4. Carefully place the tin on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Scatter the remaining almonds. Decrease oven to 110C/90C fan/gas 1/4 and bake for a further 35 mins. Turn off the oven, keep the door closed and leave the cheesecake to cool for 1 hr. Open oven door and leave it ajar for another hour. Cool for a third hour at room temp, then cover and chill overnight.

5. Remove from the tin and carefully peel off the parchment. Dust with icing sugar and serve with cream.

Pastry, schmastry

So, following on from making some mini cupcakes for my mother-in-law's drive-in at the golf club, she asked me if I could bake 70 mini mince pies for another do there.

Leigh spotted a 24 hole mini tart tin in Lakeland, so we bought this in preparation and it also comes with a handy dibber tool to press pastry into the right shapes. I tried a sample batch last weekend and despite a bit of dibber sticking to the pastry, they actually came out okay. Not so for the real run last night.

Yesterday afternoon I put a batch of the mince pies in to try and save time in the evening - 24 spaces in the tin, 3 batches should do it. For some reason, I deviated from my previous batch and used spray oil to grease the tin and cooked the pies at a higher temp for a shorter time. They stuck. Not disasterously, but still didn't come out as cleanly as the sample batch.

Still, I thought, should have time to do another 3 batches in the evening. As the pastry was so short, I thought that this might be causing the problem. So tried another pastry recipe with half butter, half lard. Still no real success, and come 10pm I still had a third batch to prep and bake. The second batch had not come out cleanly either, and thinking it might be because I wasn't leaving them long enough to cool, I left them to the next day. Feeling a bit disappointed, I decided to leave them and the final batch to the next day.

So this morning I removed the last half of the second batch from the tin. Really stuck this time! The third batch were prepared and baked, and stuck even more! Out of the 24 little pies, only 7 were even half acceptable!!! Fed up is not the word. But, still short on mince pies, I made a final fifth batch in the afternoon and went back to my original recipe. I greased the tin with butter and used my fingers to really get the tin as covered as fully as I possibly could.

Pastry still delicate but came out much better than before. Fortunately this meant that out of my 5 batches of 24 I did in fact manage to salvage 80 mini mince pies and finish the process feeling a bit less depressed!!! They're not as good as I had hoped, but neither have I had to spend the entire evening tonight as well baking mini mince pies. Which is a relief.

The annoying thing is that all along the pies tasted great even though the pastry collapsed. I think that if they had been burnt or underdone I might not have minded redoing them so much, but I just could not work out what was going wrong! Still, hopefully this recipe will work again next time and I can try and make the pastry better again.




(Oh yes, and please ignore my incredibly rubbish dredging with icing sugar - there are certain things I really should not be allowed to do!)

Added extras

I've added some extra detail to Leo's towel (nuts in the corners and a loop on the hood), and after a few days' trial have made the hood slightly smaller so that it fits better. It even survived its first wash in the machine. Fab.

More crafting!

More hooded towels actually - a robot towel for Leo (still a work in progress - it needs something else on the hood and perhaps some 'hands' on the corners?)






and a Gruffalo towel for my brother-in-law's nephew

Leo is 2

My baby boy is 2 - well...not til Tuesday really, but we had a party for him on Saturday. I can't really believe how quickly the last 2 years have gone and Leo is a tremendous little boy. He's really into robots at the moment, so our creative inputs for this year are a crocheted robot from Leigh (now named Robert!) and I tried to make his birthday cake look like Robert...mostly successful. It took a surprisingly large amount of black food colouring to even get to this shade of grey - given my propensity for heavy-handedness when it comes to somewhat delicate cooking techniques I was very cautious adding the colouring, but it turns out I could have been much more slapdash and reached my desired colour a lot quicker!!!

Crunchy Raspberry Oat Slice

Another delicious recipe from Time to Cook Online – I think it’s quickly become one of Leigh’s favourites! I didn’t have any plain wholemeal at home and refused to buy a 1.5k bag just to try this recipe so we made it with half plain white flour and half wholemeal strong flour. Also we used pear and vanilla butter as filling the first time and damson cheese the second to use up some of our cupboard preserves. Delicious each time!

90g demerera sugar
125g wholemeal flour
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
125g rolled oats
125g butter
250g seedless raspberry jam

1. Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan.
2. Grease a 20cm square cake tin or slice tin and line with baking parchment
3. Put all the ingredients except the jam into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the butter is incorporated and the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs. NB it is better to use the machine in a series of short bursts rather than letting the blades run for a minute or so to avoid over-mixing – you need to keep some texture.
4. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin.
5. Put the jam into a saucepan and warm gently. Pour the warmed jam over the base mixture and spread evenly.
6. Scatter the remaining oat mixture over the top of the jam and press lightly.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until lightly browned.
8. Allow to cool before removing from tin and cutting into bars.

D.I.S.C.O.

How wrong is this - I took my 3-year old son to his first school disco this week! I am getting so old!

It really took me back though and it was great. Zachary had a fab time and is quite the groover if I may say so myself - he even won a disco game they played (a bit like musical chairs but with mats). I didn't realise how competitive I was for him...it started off easily with about 40 children playing so I wasn't too bothered the first few rounds. But as the number dwindled and then became less than 10 I began thinking he might just win it and got really nervous and competitive for him. And he won it! Amazing.

What I liked most though was watching 3,4 and 5 year olds dance without a care about who was looking or how cool they danced. The main dance move seemed to be jumping up and down - on your own or holding hands with a friend, male or female, no discrimination or embarassment here. A few boys were also trying a bit of break dancing (well...bending over, touching the floor and then attempting to spin round in a circle!) and the whole thing was actually rather lovely. It did bring home to me how fast Zachary is growing up though, and while that is a little sad, it's also exciting to think about what brilliant things (staying positive here!) lie in store for him over the next few years.

Men in tights...

Those of you with a nervous disposition (well about men in tutus anyway!) should look away now!

Leigh Mum is to be Lady Captain at her golf club for 2012 and Wednesday was her Drive-In event where she is welcomed as the Lady Captain after making a bit of an entrance and she makes the first tee-off from the first tee. Then there's general drinking, bit of golf and buffet later. Annie's chosen charity for her year in office is Breast Cancer Research and she thought that as her 'entrance' she'd do a Race for Life-type thing, running up from behind the tee with her entourage who were all to be men dressed as ladies (because Race for Life is a lady only thing). Cue much buying of pink costumes for all concerned and some rather tasty "ladies" joining in the Race. I helped out by making 100 mini muffins (to my surprise, only needed 5-egg mix to make this many!) decorated with the pink ribbon symbol. Here are some of the highlights

Kransekake

This is one of Leigh's bakes but it's so great I had to post about it! Leigh spotted a Kransekake pan for sale in Lakeland at the bargainous price of £9.99 and the cake itself looked a bit of a challenge to make but impressive so we thought we'd have a go. Kransekake is a traditional Norwegian cake made of rings stacked in a tower.

Leigh reports that the cake itself is actually quite easy to make - you make one lot of dough and then use that to make all the layers. The pan does a lot of the work because it works out all the sizes you need for the layers! But that's not to take anything away from Leigh - it is delicious!!!

So here we have...Leigh rolling out the dough to sausage shapes and fitting them in the pan



Handy helper number 1 who was greasing and flouring (well, semolinaing) the pans



More dough in pans



Handy helper number 2 who's main contribution was sitting nice and quietly eating a biscuit while all the work went on!



Dough ready to bake



Completed Kransekake!



Recipe :
1 lb / 454g ground almonds
4 egg whites (slightly beaten)
1 lb/ 454g icing sugar
plain flour/semolina for dusting

1. Add the ground almonds to a large bowl and then add 1 egg white to form a thick dough.

2. Sift in the icing sugar and add the remaining egg whites and mix.

3. Place the mixture in a pan and using a gentle heat warm the dough. Stir continually. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and store in a fridge until the next day.

4. Pre-heat the oven to 205C/Gas 6. Roll the dough into the thickness of fingers long enough to fill the tins. Thoroughly grease the forms with cake release (we used spray oil) and dust with flour or semolina.

5. Fill the rings with the dough, then butt and pinch the edges to form a perfect circle.

6. Place the forms onto a baking try and bake for 10 minutes.

7. Allow to cool completely and then remove the Kransekake from the forms.

To build the cake :
On a platter drizzle some icing and then place the largest ring onto the icing. Pipe icing in scallops (using a small round tip) onto the ring. Place the next largest ring on top of the icing and decorate in the same way. Continue to stack the rings in this way. The icing will help to hold the rings in place but to ensure that they are thoroughly secured, slide toothpicks between the layers.

Can decorate further with more icing sugar, glitter, sprinkles...

Hide and Seek

We were planning to put Leo into a big boy bed at around his second birthday (about 3 weeks away), however due to a small incident where I witnessed him climbing successfully onto the top of his cot, we brought it forward to last weekend!

Leo is having a little difficulty adjusting to the fact that he can now wander around at night in the bedroom, but we think we're making some progress getting him settled at night.

Picture the scene this morning though. Half 5, Zachary starts calling. He's had a bit of a cough all night so I decide to give him some medicine and go into the boys' bedroom to get it. I look over to Leo's bed, it's empty. He's not in Zachary's bed and I can't see him on the floor between the beds. Stop, listen. Okay, I can hear him breathing and follow the sound to find...Leo curled up fast asleep under Zachary's bed!!! He wasn't there when Leigh checked them at 10 last night....how?....why? I think some mysteries may never be solved!!