Pete's birthday cake

It's Pete's birthday on Thursday and he's actually home for it this year. When I was helping my daughter-in-law with the girls on Monday night, feeding, getting to bed, folding washing, hanging out washing, dishes etc, I told Annika (Miss 4) that it was Grandpa Pete's birthday. Her eyes lit up and she immediately said, "are we going to make him a cake?" I said I'd make the cake and we'd have the birthday tea at her place, since little Tamara goes to bed between 5 and 5.30pm.  Anyway, yesterday we picked Annika up in the morning, went to the supermarket, bought another round cake tin and the pre-made Betty Crocker Chocolate Frosting, M & M's and and candles, the numbers 5 and 6, to make 56.

Home we went and cake making began. I didn't have that much patience cooking with my own kids when they were little, and have even less now, preferring to just get in and get it done. So, I suggested to Miss Annika she may like to watch Finding Nemo, for the 101st time - she thought that was a great idea and so did I. Grandpa Pete kindly offered to watch it with her. I used a Mudcake recipe my sister-in-law always made for her boys birthdays - lovely and moist. It has a cup of strong coffee (not as a nephew discovered, a cup of strong coffee granules, but an actual cup of coffee made strong) in it - so I got Pete to make that as I don't like coffee or really know how to use the coffee machine.

The recipe is as follows:-

Chocolate Mud Cake

2 eggs - lightly beaten
1 cup strong coffee
1/2 cup oil (I use canola)
1 cup milk with 1 tsp vinegar added - it curdles it.
1 tsp vanilla essence

Sift dry ingredients into larger bowl
1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
salt

Add wet ingredients to dry and beat until smooth. This is a very runny mixture. Line a round tin and bake at 180 degrees for approx 1 hr, depending on your oven, I check after 45 mins.

Once cooled, cut the cake in half - spread with jam and cream, or frosting and put other half on top. Frost and decorate however you like.

I made two of these cakes, (we ended up only using one cake as they were quite large) as we decided to make it into a cake with a surprise in the middle and cut a circular hole in the middle of two of the layers, leaving one layer intact. Once three of the layers were frosted together, we filled the hole with M & M's, which then spill out (theoretically) when the cake is cut into.  With the circular piece cut out of the middle, we made Annika a little cake of her own, even with a little hole in the middle, stuffed with M & M's.

The cake was a hit with Miss Annika and we adults weren't too disappointed either. We had Pete's birthday dinner a day early as he and I are off to Cirque du Soleil, Avatar at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on his actual birthday and we are both really looking forward to it.

2 comments Baking, Birthday party, Cooking, family

First Birthday

My littlest granddaughter turned 1 yesterday. We are so blessed to have her in our lives as she was born at 26 weeks and 2 days gestation. She was in NICU for 2.5 months and then the local hospital. Here in Australia we are so lucky to have such advanced medical care for babies born so early. She came home for a few days and then just before Christmas went back in as she wasn't feeding well at all and had to have a feeding tube put in through her nose (which she hated). The best Christmas present ever was that she came home a couple of days beforehand so we had her with us for her first Christmas. She is 5 days old in the photo to the right and for a brief minute, has her cpap machine off while they clean her nose etc.

Her first year has been full of ups and downs, not just for her, but for her big sister and mum and dad. Having such a little baby to care for takes so much time out of your day and places huge stresses on mum and dad and extended family. As Tamara was born down in Brisbane and had to stay there, the family moved in Ronald McDonald House, right next door to the hospital. A real upheaval for Annika, away from home and all that was familiar to her, with a much longed for baby sister who she wasn't allowed to touch, much less hold.

Then once home, such care needs to be taken that no-one who has been sick or could have been in contact with sickness comes to visit, feeding time takes so long and had to be every 3 hours around the clock for several months. And then there were the times she pulled the feeding tube out and it had to be put back in again.

Her progress over the year has been slow but steady. She is still tiny, only 6.4 kg's and has her own "weight" line in her baby book that the nurse checks. She is way under the average for weight, but above for height.


She is crawling now and pulling herself up to stand. She loves her big sister and giggles lots. Her latest big neonatal pediatrician appointment went really well, they are very impressed with her and we were all so pleased to hear that she is in the very small percentage of babies born so early that not to have any damage to there brain or development, although she has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, however it is not known how this will effect her in the future. The Dr's said the best thing for her is having an older sibling making lots of noise around her, dragging her around, putting her in boxes, playing with her and generally doing all the things older siblings do, being outside and exposed to lots of different sensations and having a range of stimuli around. To date, the only thing we, the family have noticed is she is really fussy about textures with her food and if that is all we have to worry about, who cares.

Big Sister Annika  - dress up

She gave us a bit of a fright last week, becoming sick with a nasty cough/cold and then getting a gastro bug. She didn't eat or drink much for 6 days, however the Dr's assured her Mum and Dad she wasn't dehydrated and to just keep up doing what they were. I looked after both the girls on Saturday night while Mum and Dad went out to a family wedding. We thought she had turned the corner, as she actually ate some avocado, chewed on watermelon and drunk 60 mls of a bottle. Unfortunately it all came back up 3 hrs later and again an hour after that.  After that she just wanted to sleep on me for until her tummy settled again.

She spent Sunday at the hospital under observation, but the pediatricians didn't want to keep her there, fearing with her lowered immune system, she would be too at risk of catching something worse.

She is slowly turning the corner now, eating lots better yesterday and loved her first taste of her chocolate birthday muffin, even trying to eat the crumbs off the table.

2 comments Birthday party, family

Birthday Cake Making

It was my granddaughter's 4th birthday on Thursday. She had her party on Saturday and I helped her mum decorate the cake.

We had some pretty big shoes to fill, as my husband, Pete is the cake decorator in our family.  Last year, Annika was really into Peppa Pig, however, we decided that the 'pig in mud' cake was near enough, so Pete made this for her third birthday. Unfortunately he isn't home this time around, so it was left to Bernie and myself - oh dear. Neither of us are particularly arty or creative.

Annika chose the picture out of a very old Woman's Weekly Birthday Cake cookbook - a house. I'm not going to show you what the picture looked like, as ours isn't really anything like it - except for the 'smarties' on the roof. We modernised it - well, that's our excuse and we are sticking to it.



Construction began with
 cutting the loaf tin cake into two then cutting the rounded top off - those two slices made up the roof. We used the cut off rounded piece to prop the roof up. Then skewers were inserted to hold it together.  Then the fun part began - spreading the icing - we cheated and bought pottles of ready made butter icing - much easier and quicker than making it ourselves, and we could guarantee the consistency.  Mini trees were made up 'gluing' icing flowers on top of little chocolate coated finger biscuits and sticking them to the icing around the base. It looked a bit bare, so we made some green icing, put an 'edging' around it with snake lollies and added mini trees and flowers to the garden.

Doors were made from wafer biscuits cut in half and a dab of icing for handles. The chimney is also half a wafer biscuit.

 You may be able to see the 'retaining' wall along the back of the house - wafer biscuits, topped with pineapple lumps and on the outside face, more smarties.  The birthday girl was very happy with her cake - success. We have decided, Grandpa Pete must be home next year!!!

1 comment Birthday party, family