Tag: children

Holiday Survival and Death By Chocolate!

Greetings, cake lovers!

It’s been a while since our last official Cake Thursday due to school holidays – you just can’t enjoy tea and cake properly with the kids in tow, although we did give it our best shot!  Sister X and I attended a MacMillan fundraiser over the holidays and ate enough for Sister Y as well.  We all survived the holidays – I, in fact, had a smashing six weeks with my kiddiwinkles and was quite sad when it was time for them to don the uniform again – one school run and it’s like they’ve never been away!  Not quite so many lycra clad mums on the playground as last year but I’m sure they will appear in time.  But there’s always Cake and there’s always the Sisters of da Hood although – shocking news – Sister Y has applied for a new job which might mean that she won’t be around for our get togethers anymore – sacrilege!  We have naturally impressed upon her the importance of a weekly dose of cake and gossip and will have no option but to taunt her with WhatsApped photos of cake every week whilst she is chained to her desk.  We aim to be supportive friends . . .

We revisited an old haunt this week so nothing new on the cake or venue front.  However, it was my daughter’s birthday and I made this cake, which is my go-to chocolate recipe.

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Incredibly simple, scrumptious and ridiculously chocolatey, particularly when decorated with ridiculous amounts of mini Boost bites, Fudge pieces, Oreo bites and chocolate covered peanuts … OMG sooo good but goodness knows how many calories each piece contains!  Here’s the recipe:

American Style Chocolate Fudge Cake

  • 1.5 cups self raising flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup oil (I use sunflower)
  • 1/4 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tsp bicarb
  • 2 tsp vinegar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 heaped tbsp. soured cream (optional – just adds a nice moistness)
  1. Place all ingredients in a bowl and beat until well mixed.
  2. Grease and line a 9″ cake tin and pour in mixture (it is quite a wet mix so if using a loose-bottomed tin it’s a good idea to put it on a baking sheet to prevent spillage).
  3. Bake at 180 for about 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
  4. Allow to cool slightly and then cut into two equal halves and allow to cool completely.

For the icing

  • 150g plain chocolate
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • 75g butter
  • 110g icing sugar
  1. Melt the chocolate, butter and milk together over a low heat.
  2. Sieve in the icing sugar and beat until combined.
  3. Allow to cool before sandwiching and spreading over cake.

** for a bit of extra yumminess, spread one half of the cake with chocolate spread/Nutella before sandwiching together with the icing.  Enjoy simply iced or go the whole hog and decorate with any kind of chocolate that takes your fancy!

No. 12 – owls, dead ducklings and a delectable tart!

We tried out a new tea room this week in Terling, a beautiful little village that we used to frequent fairly regularly when we had a mutual friend that lived there.  However, aside from walking from car to her front door and getting lost (as if) when I took the kids on a ‘magical-mystery-house-hunting-jaunt’ one day and having to ask a postman for directions, I had never explored further.  The Owl’s Hill Tea Room is handily located on Owl’s Hill Road so easy peasy for us three navigationally challenged ladies to find.  Having said that, we had agreed to meet at the Village Hall but Sister’s X and Y went rogue and located the tea room independently, leaving me and the littlest sister of the hood sitting on a bench by the village hall wondering where on earth they had got to!  After 10 minutes and thinking that surely both of them couldn’t be late/lost we wandered round to the café to find them already in situ with high chair installed ready for us …. we did chuckle about it …. after, I confess, an initial grumble on my part …. think the cake withdrawal panic had set in!  There is some sort of green space or nature reserve next to the Village Hall which looked like a lovely place to walk and fairly buggyable from brief inspection but it was too cold and a bit drizzly to walk for pleasure this time.

Owl’s Hill is a really lovely, ‘bijou’ tea room – I think only 6 tables or so – with easy access for the buggy and, obviously, a parking area outside so no real need to take the buggy in anyway.  A very posh, very clean, portable high chair (the kind that strap on to an existing chair) was available and a lovely selection of cakes.  Myself and Sister Y both had a Chocolate Coconut Tart which was sooo delicious and rich I think we probably should have gone for a walk to shake off some calories.  Sister X indulged in a little cream tea (she opted for Camomile which she says paired very nicely with her scone) – all served on very beautiful china which was kept well out of the reach of the teeny tot!  £4.75 for my tart and a pot of ‘proper’ tea – with leaves and a strainer and everything – we can’t wait to return and sample more of their wares.

Discussion turned to mine and Sister Y’s Easter holiday meet up which Sister X couldn’t make as she was tending her children who had been afflicted by the pox!  We went to one of our old haunts – a big duck pond which the children all love.  There is a little wooded area with a fallen tree to climb which is always shady and damp but which they like to play in.  We have concurred that they are of an age where they can be trusted in there alone, mainly so that we can sit in the sunshine and not get chilled (we are getting on a bit!).  Anyway, when they emerged, there was much talk of a dead duckling.  Apparently my eldest had desperately wanted to perform some kind of burial service but the others had outvoted her, preferring to poke at it with sticks – as you do.  It also transpired that my revolting second daughter had purposely trodden on the poor, deceased creature.  I was actually quite mortified that she had done so and she was duly advised of the necessity to treat all animals, dead or alive, with the same respect and compassion.  We assumed that was the end of it.  However, the following day, when Sister Y’s husband was performing childcare duties, he noticed a big white streak of something covering their eldest’s coat.  When asked about it, Husband Y was informed that it had sprayed onto his coat when the offspring belonging to me had ‘stamped on the dead duck’.  Delightful.  Husband Y responded, quite rightly, that it was disgusting.  He replied,  ‘That’s nothing, it went all up her leggings!’                                        I hang my head in shame …

Until next time, cake lovers xx

Lemon drizzle and a sister MIA

Poor old Sister Y got stuck in a traffic jam this week and ended up having to turn around and go home (I’m sure there’s a song in there somewhere – ‘oh dear, what can the matter be, Sister Y is stuck ….’).  So Sister X came to mine for a cake lunch alone.  She brought the cake with her having been in a baking mood the previous day – bonus!!

Unfortunately, as usual, I forgot to take any photos but it was scrumptious.  She’s also forgotten to give me the recipe so I’m just going to assume it’s the same as mine, with the addition of a lime (why not?), and post that instead.

  • 150g self raising flour
  • 150g caster sugar
  • 100g butter (or flora buttery when you don’t have any!)
  • 4 tbs milk
  • 2 eggs
  • zest and juice of 1 lemon and 1 lime
  • 4 tbs extra sugar

Mix everything, bar the juices and extra sugar, together well.

Turn into a 1lb loaf tin and bake at 180 for about 40 minutes or until springy.

Meanwhile, mix the juices together with the extra sugar.

When it comes out of the oven, poke some holes (about half a dozen) in the cake with a skewer and spoon/drizzle the juice and sugar mixture over the top.

Allow to cool in the tin and then enjoy!

I decided to make one for the purposes of the photos but my children stepped in and insisted that we make it green and yellow for Spring and, as I have recently acquired some super duper gel colours that I hadn’t had much chance to play with, I wasn’t going to refuse!  So Sister X’s offering looked nothing like this peculiar creation (which was actually supposed to be striped but the oven obviously had other ideas) but tasted pretty similar so it’ll do!

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Litter Picking, a picnic and triple choc muffins!

Half Term was upon us yet again and so, given the success of our environmentally friendly Christmas expedition, Sister X made the suggestion of litter picking following a Facebook invitation she had received for an organised event in Chelmsford (I do recall Husband X saying that he didn’t actually need to converse with Sister X but simply had to check Facebook in order to know the family’s exact schedule for any given school holiday by the events she had ‘liked’!!).  So, fresh air, doing good deeds again and also the opportunity for the older children to acquire a green Blue Peter Badge by writing about their experience.  Unfortunately, Husband Y didn’t get the memo about Sisterhood meet ups and only went and took the day off to ‘do something as a family’ – tut, tut – so we were a few short on this Half Term jolly.

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The day was warm (ish) and sunny (ish) and we arrived, after a slightly random sat nav diversion, to a packed out car park at West Park in Chelmsford.  There were so many volunteers marching around purposefully in their hi-viz tabards my children were very concerned that they wouldn’t get their own litter picker!  They need not have worried as the council employees had more than enough to go around.   Off we went with our enormous green recycling bag, four very excited children and one not so excited baby.  To our dismay there wasn’t actually much litter to pick up – obviously a good thing environmentally speaking – well done Chelmsfordians, pat on the back to you – but a bit disappointing from a litter picking perspective!  However, there were plenty of cigarette butts scattered around benches to collect which evoked much disgust from our little people and rightly so, ‘Mum!  Look at all these ‘smokers‘ – ugh!!’ and they had great fun litter picking leaves and, of course, each other!

Hard to believe that, being only February, it was actually warm enough for a proper picnic – how we of the Sisterhood love a picnic.  Shame Sister Y wasn’t with us to enjoy the first one of the season!  We had made some triple chocolate muffins to share, what with it being ‘Cake Thursday’ we wouldn’t want to let the side down!

  • 150g plain chocolate, melted
  • 125g milk chocolate chips
  • 125g white chocolate chips
  • 65g cocoa powder
  • 325g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 125g brown sugar
  • 365ml milk
  • 100ml vegetable oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Sieve cocoa, flour and baking powder together.  Stir in the sugar.

Beat the milk, oil, eggs and vanilla together and stir into the dry ingredients.

Stir in the melted dark chocolate and fold in the chocolate chips.

Spoon into a prepared muffin tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180 c for 20 minutes.  Yum!!

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best warm from the oven!

A Big Bird Feed at Danbury Country Park

Happy New Year all!  We haven’t managed to get to any new tea rooms yet this year so I thought I’d write a recommendation for the above instead.  We had a lovely get together with all the children just before Christmas at Danbury Country Park where we often go for picnics in the summer, once memorably involving one of our little poppets who was potty training at the time pooping themselves and then somehow managing to stand in it.  After we’d all stopped laughing/gagging, the poor little mite was of course cleaned up, as was the surrounding area where he’d managed to spread it (wiping poo off grass with baby wipes is surprisingly difficult).  Needless to say, the location of the picnic was hastily moved ….. Anyway, back to the more recent past.

We wanted to do something where they could be free and blow off some steam as, my, were they hyper on the build up to the school holidays!  I think we all felt a little stressed with the pre-Christmas hype and so we decided that the Big Bird Feed would be perfect – outdoors, not a Grotto or candy cane in sight – just running around the Country Park like maniacs with a bag of wild bird seed, tipping it into hundreds of socks and stockings that had been strung from trees in order to provide all the birds with plenty of food over winter.  Fun with a good deed at the heart of it – the perfect Christmas activity.

Sister Y and I failed miserably in the fairly obvious task of dressing the children in suitable attire – i.e. wellies.  Sister X on the other hand, who had also brought Husband X along for some pre-Christmas mayhem, looked like she’d come from a Horse & Hound magazine photo shoot.  They all looked extremely stylish – fully kitted out in wellies and waterproofs, backpacks and walking poles (okay, they didn’t really have walking poles).  I’m just jealous ….. sigh!

It’s so lovely when they all get together, they really enjoy each other’s company.  They all go to different schools and only see each other in the holidays or the odd special occasion and it’s heart warming to see them ‘click’ back in where they left off the last time they were together.   They duly ran around the trail like maniacs, totally overexcited at the prospect of being allowed to carry their own pots of bird food, and proceeded to tip it all over themselves, the ground – I should think the official receptacles probably got about 30% of what they started out with!

We knew it was time to head back to the fire pit for hot chocolate and marshmallows when a few of them decided it was more fun to empty the stockings back into their own pots … !!

The Country Park employees had their hands full making hot chocolate for an amazing amount of people – it was so well attended.  The children then found twigs to stick their marshmallows on and toasted them in the fire pit, managing to eat them without injury to themselves or anyone else which was quite a feat with so many people around to potentially stab/scald.

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I’m not sure whether this is a once a year event but there is always something going on – they do “Wild Wednesdays” – all the info can be found at http://www.visitparks.co.uk.  This was a free event, you brought along your own bird seed and your own mugs and marshmallows – they provided the hot chocolate.  Parking charges apply for the car park.

We hope to be back eating cakes – purely for research purposes – very soon …. x

Last Minute Christmas Fudge

You know when you suddenly realise there are only a few days left until Christmas and it dawns on you that you don’t have gifts for aunts/uncles/neighbours that you’ll be seeing over the festive period?  This fudge is a perfect present – delicious, easy to make and it has that homemade personal touch.  I used it for all my children’s teachers this year (and last year come to that).

You will need:

A 397g tin of condensed milk

420g sugar – the recipe calls for Demerara but I have used regular soft brown sugar in the past which works fine.

115g butter (flora buttery or similar works perfectly well if you don’t have butter)

150ml milk – I use semi skimmed

A handful or two of dried, chopped cranberries (raisins can be used but cranberries look more Christmassy!)

A good amount of mixed spice or cinnamon/nutmeg (2 teaspoons ish)

  • Put everything into a pan over a low heat and let the butter melt and the sugar dissolve.
  • Bring to the boil and stir constantly for about 10 minutes until it’s the right consistency* – don’t let children do this as it does get really hot and can spit it bit.  *what you want is for a little drop of the mixture to form a soft ball when dropped into a cup very cold water*
  • Remove from the heat and add the fruit and spices
  • Beat for about 10-15 minutes until the fudge is starting to set and come away from the edges of the pan (this is a great workout for the bingo wings).
  • Pour/scoop it into a lined tin and leave to cool.  Voila!  Perfect, yummy fudge!

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Chocolate Orange is a great alternative for those who don’t like the traditional Christmas flavours.  This year we tried a batch with the grated zest of two clementines and about 50g of dark chocolate (I’m not great at weighing ‘stick it in and see’ ingredients!).  When it had cooled down in the tin a bit I studded the fudge with more dark chocolate chips which added a little something extra!

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Quite a lot of this one got eaten before it was out of the tin – the children were a bit partial!