Everybody’s starry eyed

This Sunday was the dedication service for my friends’ baby boy, and they had a big celebration.  Of course honorary Auntie Kate offered to make a cake!  Multicoloured stars were requested so multicoloured stars were provided, along with three tiers of sponge and my first ever wire cake topper (verdict: could do better, wire is fiddly, must practice).  In spite of the crazy heat (good news for ice cream eaters, bad news for fondant) all was well and the cake got great reviews!  And I must admit to being pretty pleased with it, mainly thanks to my brilliant new mixer and a different madeira cake recipe – check out the recipe and a whole host of helpful tips here.

Lovely links

Everybody loves a dog in a party hat, right?  For more pictures of birthday Bodhi, click over to elephantine.  Rachel takes lots of lovely pictures these days.

A long, long list of things that make people happy makes me happy.  Check it out on a Cup of Jo.

I like this herb garden in a box on you are my fave a lot.

Hannah of Sparrow + Spark! commented here a couple of weeks ago and I have been loving her blog ever since, especially those Happy Sundays.

So, happy Sunday!

Forgotten things

Things have been so busy lately (and there was so much to tell you about America) that I’ve not been keeping on top of my blogging.  Here are some of the lovely things that never quite made it in to a post:

1.  My wall of bunting, which makes me smile every single day.  Inspired by Hannah’s garland wall and making use of this free printable.

2.  Dunfermline Abbey in the sunshine.  There was crazy golf that day too, it was fun.

3.  My new favourite necklace, from this etsy shop.

4.  A happy trip to Inchcolm Abbey.

5.  An amazing shop of ice cream, cakes and pretty things in Stonehaven.

6.  A delicious dinner of Heston style roast chicken, crispy roast potatoes and cauliflower.

7.  Blossom, in my garden.

Chocolate + cheesecake + ice cream = bliss

I made this ages ago and my mouth is watering at the memory of it.  It was the end of a manic week, one of those where you’re out every night and hardly have time to catch your breath, and I needed to throw together a fancy Saturday dinner with no time to think about it and only the afternoon to play with.  What to do?  I threw a chicken in the oven (I find the smell of a roast chicken alone can distract from all manner of hastily cobbled together side dishes) and for some reason decided to have my first ever attempt at making ice cream.  The recipe did promise it would be “super easy to make”, and it was pretty straightforward!  We did have to wait a while for dessert as it was slow to set, but boy was it worth the wait.

Chocolate cheesecake ice cream (slightly adapted from delicious magazine)

1.  Melt 200g plain chocolate with a 500g tub fresh vanilla custard in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until smooth.

2.  Put 400g light cream cheese and 100g sifted icing sugar in another bowl and gradually whisk in the chocolate custard.  Whisk in 100g chilled milk then put in the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

3.  Pour the mixture into a large, shallow plastic tub and put on the lid or cover with clingfilm and put in the freezer for 2 hours until almost frozen.  I found this part took a lot longer than 2 hours (more like 3 or 4) but this might be because I only have the teeny rubbishy freezer section in the top of my fridge, rather than a proper freezer.

4.  Take the tub out of the freezer and give it a good stir up.  If you like, stir in 100g chocolate chips as you do so, but I wouldn’t bother; they really aren’t necessary.  Pop it back in the freezer for another 2 hours until completely frozen.  It’s best eaten the same day – the longer it’s in the freezer the more icey it gets.  Just make sure you have a few friends round to help you eat it, it’s completely delicious but incredibly rich and chocolatey and cheesecakey.  Now I want to invite friends over just so I have an excuse to make it again!

Memory lane

We like photographs in my family. I love seeing me and my sisters as little ones, my parents looking so young and stylish and lovely. Lately there has been an extra layer of joy as we see flashes of my nieces in pictures of their mums as babies, play spot the family resemblance and exclaim over it every time. There is also much hilarity to be had in our hair styles and outfits, the size of my parents’ glasses, my bright red curls and chubby cheeks, and pictures like that candyfloss one are classics!

My dad has always been a keen photographer and there are albums upon albums at my parents’, our whole lives recorded on film, all numbered and organised so if you start at number 1 you can work your way up through our family history. There are also special albums, the best of each year, the weddings, a picture for every year of my mum’s life. So for their fortieth anniversary we had to do something with photos but an album just wasn’t going to cut it. Enter personalised playing cards dot com!  Handily there are four suits in a pack of cards so we picked 12 photos from each decade of their marriage, and the back of each card has one of their wedding pictures.  The website is not the easiest to use (the photo uploader is a bit faffy) but it was worth persevering and the cards look great.  The only problem is that a game of cards now takes forever as we’re so busy looking at the pictures!

Fun and games

There was a family celebration, so of course there was cake!  I’ve long wanted to make a Scrabble cake and it seemed perfect for my parents’ anniversary as I get my love of the game from them.  It is a wee bit wobbly and there are things I would do differently next time, but they were very happy with it.  And it was the perfect accompaniment to our evening of speed Scrabble!

Forest of fun

So last weekend we went to Center Parcs to celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. We had never been before but as there are two under-threes in our family it seemed sensible to go somewhere geared up for little ones.  I’m not sure quite what I expected, but I definitely didn’t expect it to feel so peaceful, so natural, so foresty, so un-resorty. We did lots of cycling (and no falling off!), swimming, playing, eating and laughing. We played mini golf and speed Scrabble (a mix of Scrabble and speed dating, involving seven people, three Scrabble sets and a stopwatch, obviously) we had a family photo shoot and a go on a pedalo, we saw ducklings and pheasants and red squirrels, and we generally had a brilliant time. I would highly recommend it!