It's my party...

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...



I just love that song - every birthday I think about it.

I am currently planning my birthday festival. I have taken leave next Wednesday and Thursday - and given I have Friday off already - it means I don't go back to work until the following Monday 5 July - yeah!!!

I think on Wednesday Mr S and I will have lunch together in the city at one of my favorite restaurants and go to the latest exhibition at the NGV. Afternoon tea somewhere else with great cakes - maybe Acland Street or Babka in Brunswick Street? Then a 6 o'clock play "Wombat Stew", followed by dinner somewhere nice too...

I think I will make myself a birthday cake on Thursday... something really special!

Perhaps something out of my favorite birthday cake book I think


I have made the four layered chocolate cake on the cover before - it was delicious. So might give that another go?

And on the weekend have dinner with my brothers and their family! Not sure where, but somewhere family friendly.

Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day is a bitter sweet day for me. I think about my mother quite a bit. All the memories - the funny, the sad, the big moments and the everyday. I didn't visit her grave today. I wouldn't have stopped crying if I had. She died a long time ago now, but the pain of loss is still real. I think about her every single day. She walks beside me. I often reflect on how she would react to something or what she might say or think about a particular issue.

But it is too indulgent to only think about such things. So, on a happier note I made a cake for Mr S' grandmother and we went for a visit.


It is a very good Cherry Cake which I have been making since I was a little girl. It is a very good butter cake with chopped glace cherries and a milk icing. Making this cake was entirely intentional. As I made it, I thought about growing up and learning to cook in my mother's kitchen. She was an excellent cook, with many recipe books that I spent hours pouring over as a child. This recipe comes from one of these books. It has stains on some of the pages. It is a good indication of where her popular recipes might be located.

And the cake was delicious!

Basically the recipe is:

Cream together 6oz (175g) of butter and 3/4 cup of caster sugar and then mix in 3 eggs (one at a time). Sift in 3/4 cup of self raising flour, stir in 3 tablespoons of milk and then sift in a further 3/4 cup of plain flour. Lastly stir in 4 oz (125g) of chopped glace cherries. Pour the batter into a ring tin (buttered of course) and cook in a moderate oven for about 30 mins. (cooking time depends on the tin - in a normal round cake tin it will take longer)

The icing is a nob of butter, icing sugar and enough milk to make a stiff paste.

Oh, and this is what my son made me:

I'll make a 'crafty' boy of him yet!!!

More chocolate cake too...

My recent reminiscence about Bill Granger's chocolate cake in 'Simply Bill' led to me hunting out the recipe and making the cake again. It's a good cake. Sound. Probably not the best chocolate cake that I have ever made or eaten, but good. It's easy and quick to make if the butter is really soft. Great icing (chocolate and sour cream).

By way of comparison, the chocolate cake I made for Mr S' birthday was much richer and moister.

Mr S had a great time helping me icing it and sprinkling mini M&Ms over the top. He needs to have more sprinkling practice! Sprinkling very quickly became pushing the M&Ms into the chocolate. Mr S' side of the cake is a bit mucky. But a fun time was had by all.

The Cake

Well together Mr S and I chose a cake.

It was the three layer chocolate cake that is on the cover of Kathryn Kleinman's 'Birthday Cakes' (see post below).

Wow, it's a rich cake. 10oz /375g of butter, 23/4 cups of brown sugar, 11/2 cups of cocoa, 3 eggs... and it tastes wonderful. It's the darkest chocolate cake I have ever made. Almost a devil chocolate cake. The frosting wasn't quite as successful. I don't know what went wrong but I was way too sloppy. And as you might see from the picture, the assembly didn't quite happen as I had imagined. Partly because I was rushing and had to put it together while the cake was still warm, partly because of the frosting and partly because in the rush I broke the middle layer in half when I picked it up - oops!

Still, despite the visual challenge, it was pretty good to eat! I just looked at it and laughed at the slightly askew presentation!

Anyway, birthday cake is about taste and love. Right? There was lots and lots of love that was mixed in to it - so it must have been good.

Oh, and the candles were a hit! The first time Mr S has tried to blow out candles. He was mesmerized.

Party Party Party

I haven't been blogging recently, partly because I'm not in a finishing phase at the moment (I have eight projects going at the moment! Yikes! How did that happen?), and partly 'cause I've just been so amazingly busy.

Work Work Work Toddler Toddler Toddler... doesn't leave much time for me.

I'm not complaining. I enjoy work, and I love my little one dearly. I wouldn't make different choices. But without stretching myself to breaking point, I cannot do everything. So logging on and blogging is just a bridge too far sometimes.

This post isn't about my knitting, it's about my party planning.

Mr S turns two very shortly. Wow! Unbelievable.

I have a party menu... but the big dilemma is the cake! Do I do a novelty cake - maybe a truck or a train, perhaps a panda - or do I just do a really good (read yummy) cake with really good candles??

I'm leaning towards the yummy, rather than the fancy at the moment.

I own a fantastic book "Birthday Cakes - Recipes and Memories from Celebrated Bakers" by Kathryn Kleinman.

It's an absolute pip! So many beautiful pictures, so many yummy recipes.

I'm very tempted to make the chocolate cake on the cover.

But I remembered a really good chocolate cake that I made some time ago - I went back into the archive on this blog and found the post - the cake picture is half way down. It's from Bill Granger's "Simply Bill". The icing was chocolate and sour cream. I put smarties on top. It was delicious.

I also came across another chocolate cake recipe in Tessa Kiros' "Apples for Jam".

It looks pretty good too. The cake uses both chocolate and cocoa. I recently made the cup cake recipe in this book. I can recommend it. I grew up using a Margaret Fulton recipe from the 1968 classic "Margaret Fulton's Cookbook". It's a good recipe, but it requires triple flour sifting! At the moment it falls into the bridge too far category.

I need to make a decision this week. Oh the dilemma! I'll get back to you on what I did...