Molly's birthday cake. 7 layers for 7 years!

 I made the cake mix (we all have our favourite recipe, any white cake will do) and split it into 7 bowls, there's only 6 shown here because the 7th wasn't matching... And I put some Sugarflair pink food colouring in. You only need the smallest amount of this colouring, in fact the lightest shade of pink was made by just stirring the spoon from one of the darker ones in it.

 

Then I leveled the cooled cakes off and carefully wrapped them in cling film with a piece of greaseproof paper in between each and froze the whole thing. 

It was all too much for me to handle in one day so I decided to frost it the day after and I've always found it easier to frost frozen cake. I made the buttercream frosting with salted butter, vanilla extract and a dash of milk. I don't know the exact measurements but the consistency was like thick mayonnaise.

I made a lot! I figured I had 7 layers to fill and the crumb coat so more is more in this case. I slapped the darkest layer on the board... And started to frost.

I was really pleased with how smooth I got the whole thing!

 I thought of a great idea! I covered my table with greaseproof paper and dusted it with icing sugar and rolled my icing out on that. I had 1kg of icing which I knew deep down wasn't really enough to cover a cake as tall as this one but being a fool I went ahead and rolled it out anyway.

 And this is what happened :(... The icing was far too thin and just stretched and ripped all over. 

I had the idea of covering all the rips with flowers, I made some big ones and stuck them one and realized that then to make the little ones to cover the gaps and continue the pattern all the way around would take me well into the night. So I gave in and went and bought more icing. 1.5kg this time.

I brushed the cake with boiled jam, by boiled I mean put in the microwave for 30 seconds.

And finally, managed to cover the cake with a smooth layer of icing. I cannot tell you how relieved I was at this point!

I used some of the flowers that I made earlier to put on the top and I made a thin icing ribbon to go around the base.

Here's the birthday girl cutting the cake...

And inside turned out just as I imagined. Phew! It was a great success with all the kids and I still have loads left :D

Her party was horrendously hard work, about 40 kids came all full of energy and eager to run about and explore every cupboard of the church where we held it. Molly got a whole heap (mountain) of presents and I got a lot of pats on the back from other parents who treated me like a brave solider home from the war.

I made a cake for lovely Cam's friend today. His birthday is tomorrow and no one's ever made him a cake before! I thought this was super sad and needed remedying. I made the cake and rather foolishly didn't take any photos of it being made :/ I'm a div. He said to make what ever flavour goes best in a cake but there was too many yummy options so I did a 3 layer cake with chocolate at the bottom, cinnamon in the middle and a vanilla layer on the top. I filled and crumb coated it with vanilla frosting and iced it afterwards. I also had a very shaky first attempt at writing with icing. It doesn't look too bad - 

We'll be taking it to him in the morning.
Also our brand spanking new tv arrived today! James (my brother) bought it for us for Christmas, just in time too cause our old one was a bit unreliable. 
So in all the excitement and cake making I completely forgot that we had invited the missionary Sisters of our church around for dinner. I had to dash out to the shop and rustle up a quick pasta dish and some garlic bread. Thank goodness Cam remembered in time!
Lovely Cam is trying to get to grips with the new tv and I'm going to go wrap Molly's birthday presents. 

Tooth fairy :)

Molly's tooth came out (I pulled it out) at tea time yesterday. So we embarked on a mission to make sure the Tooth Fairy would have a comfortable visit to our house. Molly very rightly said that Santa got fed when he was at work so we should feed the Tooth Fairy too.
This is what we made-

Chocolate spread and a jam sandwich, mini carrot sticks and the lid off a miniature mouthwash as a glass. Molly also wrote a note-

To Mr/Mrs Tooth Fairy, 
I hope you like my tooth. Even though I do not think it is sparkling. Please leave a note.
From Molly
p.s. I love you


The tooth fairy left her a shiny (literally, it had glitter on it!) five pound note and a teeny letter in return!

Molly was delighted! She took it to church (we go to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) and very proudly showed it off to anyone who would look at it. 

We went to go feed the ducks at the river today, we haven't done it for months and the second we started I remembered why!

This photo doesn't look that bad. But honestly birds were swooping so close to me and I was terrified. Then Cam (lovely husband) decided to go buy more bread so we could do it all again! 
Molly (silly daughter) decided today that she would like to wear sandals, even though it had rained last night and it's November. It resulted in this...

The socks came off and ended up in my pocket, we'd JUST thrown the bread bag away. And off we went to the park :)
Lovely Cam bought me a surprise icecream. Can you guess the flavour? It took me a while-

Christmas Pudding! And it was great, I feel quite festive now :) And Silly Molly added to her death warmed up look by getting a bubblegum icecream and turning her lips blue.

First Post!

Hopefully this will be the start of some thing great... I've started this blog so I can participate in the great cookie swap -see here

I'm not great at making cookies, they generally turn out too wet and descend into blobs in the oven, cakes are my forte.
I feel sorry for the people that will be receiving mine, photos will follow of the blob making process.