Sushi for kids

As ever, trying to keep packed lunches/teas interesting is not such an easy task (especially when your darling charges require 3 of them a week). So after asking the advice of a gardener (you'll find I've already exhausted all my nanny friends' ideas) I came up with this. Exceptionally tasty and child-friendly sushi!

Last minute card

Just a quick post here to show how handy it is to have letter stamps around the house. I slightly panicked this morning when I remembered that little C and I had a very important birthday party to attend, and I hadn't bought presents or a card. Oops! Fortunately, thanks to an obsessession with improving my (somewhat lacking) organisational skills - we happened to have a few presents stashed around the house. With five minutes to spare little C and I put our crafty skills to the test to make a card that was both simple enough for a 3 year old to do and pretty enough to keep me happy! Here's the result:

Quite pretty huh? Simple letter stamps, 2 different inks and plenty of space on the inside to create pirate inspired masterpieces - (who am I to say whether these go down well at a princess party or not?!)

CAKE DISASTER!!!

Well today was not my most successful day of baking cakes ever. I decided today to experiment with a new buttercream recipe (swiss meringue to be precise). And I must admit that whilst time consuming this turned out pretty well, very light and tasty really! Note to self however, remember to leave the cake to cool overnight before filling with swiss meringue buttercream - otherwise this happens:

Pancakes!

Who doesn't love pancake day?! 3 very excitable charges today, not least because the day started with pancakes and consequently a shedload of sugar! Although to my slight horror I discovered that these pancakes had been produced from *GASP* ready made batter!  Pancakes are little C's favourite things ever to make, and so that no-one else (Penny O'dwyer) stoops to store-bought pancakes again, here is our twist on scotch pancakes for you. (Variations suggested by C, F and P - they know their flavours!)

Carrot Cupcakes

These are a sound favourite of little C's to make, and a favourite of P and F to eat. These work really well with either cream cheese or vanilla buttercream, but I prefer to leave them plain and let the little ones have them as an after school snack.

Vanilla Cupcakes

No photos to go with this but thought I ought to put up some recipes while I remember. Anyone that works with, or has children, or even just loves to bake should have a simple cupcake recipe and this is one of the easiest. This supposedly makes approx. 15 regular cupcakes, or approx. 7 large (muffin case size) cupcakes.

School Cake Sale

Here are some standard cupcakes that I bring out for the school cake sales. With 3 children in different years, these come around fairly frequently!

Present Cakes and Teddy Cake

Here are a few photos from my eldest charge's most recent birthday. The teddy bear cake was the cake orginally intended for P's party, the present cakes were an addition brought on by P's mum knocking on my door at 8pm asking very politely (and slightly panicked) if I would mind creating a cake for P's other party (at 9 am the next day). I must admit I'm quite proud of the present cakes, although ~I would have liked to spend a little more time making them look perfect. 

Chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and coloured sugarpaste. As you can probably  see from this photo, the stripes are not quite as neat as I would have liked, but the little square shapes make very effective presents.

Dragon Castle Cake and Topsy Turvy Cake

So still attempting to organise my life, and came across some more cake creations, thought I'd stick them up here for you to see and admire (all flattering comments especially welcome). These two were created for a friend's school fair.

Castle Cake

Well hello everyone! There is a first time for everything, and me attempting to be computer literate is one of them. And as such I thought that the first time I blogged, I ought to show you the first really fun cake that I baked. The cake that got me hooked - on decorating, I have to admit I'm not a fan of cake myself, but they sure are good to have fun with!