Chocolate and orange cupcakes- approach with speed

Here are my most recent batch of cupcakes, baked for a grown up birthday.  Who can resist the combination of chocolate and orange zest.  Positively yummy.  I took them along to a tea party Darling boy and Little brother were having with some local friends, and the cakes nearly all got snaffled before the  grown-up birthday boy arrived, the cupcake version of 'you snooze, you lose' I guess.  Luckily we dived in and rescued the last cupcake from sticky fingers.  Speed is of the essence where chocolate is concerned.

Going global, transatlantic love

I have had my first order from overseas- how exciting, I'm now an international business woman.  The customer lived in America and her husband lived in Devon.  She wanted to send him a valentines gift and this is where I come in.

6 Valentines carrot cake cupcakes later, the husband was genuinely touched and delighted with his surprise, and I got to feel warm and fuzzy in helping bring two loves separated by thousands of miles closer together on Valentines Day.

Ahh, love and cake- life's natural partners.

It's a cupcake, but it's healthy...almost

Darling boy's school had a party and I was more than happy to bring along some cupcakes (for the grownups, the kids had more than enough cake!)

Wanting to do something different from the usual treat of chocolate and the crowd pleaser of vanilla, and feeling spicy, I went with carrot cake.  These are topped with a cinnamon buttercream which keeps it cakey, but the cake itself is a low fat recipe and of course the carrots in the cake make them healthy, innit.

How to become an accidental husband poisoner

Imagine the scene, you are due to visit a new friends house (these lovely people with their own fantastic farm and wonderful rare breed products) and then some more friends the following day.  Baking is needed and something chocolately.  Mums are always in need of chocolate.

Step 1. Begin one of your favourite recipes - Rocky Road- without fully checking you have all the required ingredients

Step 2. Get to the bit where you add the crushed biscuits and find you haven't enough. Get in a flap and say rude words (both boys are in bed, so I quite enjoy having a jolly old swear apres bedtime)

Step 3.  Feel relieved and smug when you find a stash of amaretti biscuits at the back of the cupboard. Add the almondy biscuits, complete the recipe, put in the fridge to set and toddle off to bed.

Here comes the crucial bit...

Step 4. The next day, dust with icing sugar, slice and box up in 2 batches and then, go out for the evening without thinking to mention to Handsome husband about the unusual addition of the amaretti biscuits...

The following morning Handsome husband mentions that he really doesn't feel very well at all.  I ask him what he ate (as I was out for the evening he was self catering)  The food he lists all seems pretty normal, apart from 'oh and two of those chocolately things in the cupboard'

Oops. Handsome husband has a nut allergy.  Two visits to the emergency out of hours doctors and a prescription of mega ultra antihistamines, an unbearable rash, constant nausea, nearly a week off work and an aching restricted throat, Handsome husband has just about forgiven me.  Though not without checking e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g I now offer him is nut free.

And, by the way, if you were wondering, the addition of the amaretti biscuits to the Rocky Road was actually very tasty, just the teeniest bit toxic to those who are anti-nut!

Exciting news about a new arrival

Well, I haven't been posting much since christmas not because I haven't had anything to say, but because what I have had to say is so exciting, but has also been top secret until recently... It's been hard to think about much else really.

Close friends had guessed it and family are delighted.  Can you guess what it is?

Baby number 3 is on the way!  All things being well our third baby will be due in early August.  Little brother is very excited and is quite keen on having a sister.  Little brother I think vaguely gets it- though he saw the scan and said 'doggie' so perhaps not.

We aren't any closer to the barn conversion being completed, or even started and although we were planning to wait on being in the barn before trying for a third baby, quite frankly we got bored of waiting.    We needed to get on with our lives, and what better way to get on with you life, than creating a new one!



nb, the photo is obviously not baby number 3's fingers, but little brothers- though you get the idea.

Chestnut christmas cake

Here is our christmas cake from this year (well, last year to be technical about it)  I went with the Nigella chestnut puree one, and it sure is lovely.  Very tasty, moist, fruity and nutty without being too boring and grownup (fruit cake always strikes me as something of an old lady of the cake world)

Rather than being marzipanned and royally iced (as Handsome husband can't eat the marzipan and no-one likes the royal icing (apart from Darling bout who will eat the entire cakes worth of it if left unchecked) This beauty is glazed in jam and covered in glade cherries.  Yum.

Perfect with a hot cuppa.  Quite fancy a slice now actually, shame its all gone.

Volcanos on the school run

Questions from Darling boy this morning on the school run included; what is a volcano? what is an earthquake? what is inside a dinosaur? what is inside concrete?  He is 3 1/2 years old.


All these tricksy questions meant I took a wrong turn on the school route- which I have driven 4 times a week for a year, so taxed was my brain.


I searched a long way back to my geography lessons and came up with an answer to the volcano one which involved the words 'magma' and 'lava' and me describing it like a mountain with a big straw in the middle which goes into the centre of the earth, where it is so hot, the rock has turned to liquid. I hope this is right. My answer to the one about earthquakes involved the word 'tectonic plates' which I said were like jigsaw pieces- though I got a bit vague on why they rubbed together and got wobbly. I really couldn't remember why they do this.


I said dinosaurs had organs inside them just like we do, i.e. heart and lungs and livers and stomachs- I hope this is right too, I'm not sure.  As soon as I said it I had my doubts.  By this point, I was hoping to dodge the concrete question, but Darling boy wasn't so easily put off and really wanted to know.  I came up with 'sand and special glue'.  


I told marvellous dad all about these questions.  He laughed and said he could tell Darling boy all about concrete when we go there for christmas- and I just know Darling boy will be hanging off his every word.