Spiderman birthday cake for my Princess

Princess, despite her name, and despite loving all things pink and sparkly, is a tomboy at heart. So when I asked her what birthday cake she wanted for her 4th birthday, she said she wanted spiderman. (Actually she did say pink spiderman but I couldn't find any of those, is that gender stereotyping?!) So here is is, her spiderman cake!

The recipe I used can be found here, I have an 8 inch square cake tin and have used this for the last few years, with great results every time. It's really easy.

Ingredients
340g self raising flour
280g caster sugar
280g butter
5 eggs
3 tablespoons milk

Pit all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with an electric mixer (although this is the first year I have actually had a mixer, it can be done by hand but, wow a mixer makes it easier!)

Pour into an 8 inch cake tin(greased and floured) and put in in the oven (150 degrees) for an hour and 15- 30 mins. Easy!

When it was cool I cut it in half and put jam and buttercream in the middle.

For the icing I used ready to roll royal icing, rolling it out until it was about half a centimetre thick. I'm no expert at this sort of thing, but it turned out ok, I just cut bits off and tucked bits in to make it fit and look neater.

Then for the exciting bit. I bought some Spiderman cake toppers off ebay, they were not expensive and they made producing a spiderman cake out of thin air a lot easier for a novice cake maker. I'm a big fan of cake toppers, I've used them for the last few birthday cakes I've made, and you can even get them with photo's on. I got one big spiderman face and lots of small ones, and I applied them with a bit of buttercream spread on the back.

And that's it! I'm sure that there are a lot fancier Spiderman cakes out there but Princess was pretty pleased with hers, especially as she helped make it!

Chocolate Sparklers and Fireworks

Today was bonfire night and we had some friends round for some dinner and Fireworks. My partner and I both associate fireworks night with hotdogs from our childhoods, so that's what we made for dinner for everyone. And Princess and I made something extra special for dessert, chocolate sparklers!

They were really easy and fun to make and were very popular, especially with Princess! We started with some chocolate fingers, some melted chocolate and some crunchy chocolate sprinkles. We dipped the chocolate fingers into the melted chocolate, then dipped them into the sparkes and let them set. Easy and delicious!

Then we had some fireworks. Grapie didn't like the fireworks so I watched from inside the patuo doors with her where she felt safer. But Princess, who can sometimes be a bit sensitive to noise, watched them outside with her ear defenders on and loved it. I love this picture of her watching the fireworks

Yummy oaty biscuits (and sugar free too!)

Today we made some yummy oaty biscuits for the girls, which are packed full of energy boosting ingredients, are sugar free and suitable for baby led weaning. The recipe is loosely based on one I saw in a BLW book I borrowed from the library, but I couldn't remember it properly, so I made it up.

Ingredients
50g butter
75g porridge oats
25g raisins
5 dried apricots (chopped)
Orange juice

Method
Put the dried fruit in a saucepan and put enough orange juice in to just cover the fruit. Cook on a low heat for about 5 minutes, until the fruit goes all squishy and has absorbed most of the orange juice.

Give the fruit a bit of a mash with a fork then add the butter and stir until melted. Remove from the heat and stir in the oats.

Allow the mixture to cool slightly before forming into balls. Flatten the balls of mixture down and place on a baking tray. Pop them into the oven (preheated to 180) for 15 minutes or until they turn golden.

Allow to cool and enjoy!