I have a salad-eating toddler.  A raw-salad-eating toddler.  Very weird.  I have to gloat because who knows how long this will last before she starts asking for chocolate...MY chocolate!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake...

I think I’m going to have to admit it. 

I’m addicted to eating cake! 

I’ve been eating cake almost non-stop for nearly a month.  At the rate I’m going, I will have to go on a lettuce and water diet for the next 6 months to counter the negative effects of too much sugar and fat.

My daughter wanted a chocolate cake for her birthday cake.  I have never been able to make a decent chocolate cake, one which is moist yet firm enough to carve.  Most of my chocolate cakes turn out relatively dry when they come out of the oven and extra dry by the next day so it almost feels like you’re eating a mouthful of dust! 

After experimenting with at least 4 different recipes (and yes, eating most of the products despite the mouthfuls of dust!), I finally stumbled across the the perfect chocolate cake recipe by Lindy Smith.  Perfect for me anyway.  This recipe came out moist and stayed moist for nearly a week!  Plus it was really easy to make.

I tried adding glycerine (1 teaspoon) to the cake after reading that it can help keep the cake moist for longer on Cake Central somewhere (don’t really know how this works scientifically – too lazy to search), but I found that it didn’t seem to make that much of a difference for me.  Keep in mind that I tried 4 recipes – each recipe twice - once with glycerine and once without.  That’s 8 chocolate cakes!  Ok – maybe I’m a little bit obsessed…just a little.

Anyway, here’s the chocolate cake all prettied up for the party.

The Kitty

After the blood, sweat and tears that I shed over the Penguin, these Hello Kitty cupcakes only required some sweat.  Just a little.

No blood or tears involved at all. 

However I was armed with a secret weapon. 

The penguin

I’m not a talented baker.  I’m not even really a very good baker.  I am however, an obsessive baker.  Once I start, I just can’t stop.  I have to get things right even if it means that I have to make the same chocolate cake over and over again until I get it to a texture and taste that I want.  However this isn’t about chocolate cakes (that will come later).  This is about Peso the penguin.

Peso peso peso.  Why did I make Peso?  Well my 4 year old was sharing a birthday party with one of her little friends.  As I was making a load of Hello Kitty cupcakes for my 4 year old (her favourite character) I felt it was only fair that I made cupcakes for the other little girl as well.  And she chose Peso!

Briefly, this is how I made them. (Ps. excuse the dodgy photos.  I was working late at night under dim kitchen lights).

First things first.  

Sugarpaste.  To buy or not to buy?  I didn’t buy.  I made.  Extra work, but bought ready-made  sugar paste, in my opinion, has a weird smell and aftertaste.  So I had to make my own.  From scratch.

After a long hard search through the internet, I found this recipe.  It’s a bit of work but so worth it!  I ended up with a nice big lump of off-white sugarpaste – roughly 2 kgs of it!  That’s a lot of sugar.

Next thing. 

Black sugarpaste

I tried to colour the off-white sugarpaste black but ended up with a big grey mess and sticky grey hands.  So I made chocolate sugarpaste – also from the same recipe.  I then mixed half of the chocolate sugarpaste with black ready-made sugarpaste that I bought.  This ended up a nice dark nearly black colour with a decent flavour.

Then the easy bit, I rolled the black sugarpaste, cut round circles using a cookie cutter and stretched the circles slightly so they became ovals.

Here’s the hard part.  I then found a Peso face on the internet, printed it and then traced it onto greaseproof paper and cut it out.  I manually cut out 16 (yes, sixteen!) faces…and 32 eyes…and 16 noses…and 16 hats…and rolled 32 eyeballs.

Once all of this was done, I put it all together with some sugar water. 

And voila, there you have it.  16 freaky little Peso faces staring at you.  Just pop them on a few cupcakes and you're ready for a party.

Party time!

…not for me though.  I was up all week making these little cuties.  (The penguin is Peso from the Octonauts and I’m sure everyone is familiar with the other little lady!).

Inspiration deficit

Lack of inspiration L

Off to eat this (it’s a whoopie pie!) in the hope that it comes back.  Wish me luck.

Fish and chips with a hint of spice

My weekly meal plan consists of 1-pot curries.  Curry chicken, curry tofu, curry chickpeas, anything that I can put in a curry and anything that I can cook in 1 pot.  Some days I can see the look in my family’s faces ‘not curry A G A I N’.  Well, my husband and three-year old have the ‘look’.  My 19-month old just throws everything on to the floor.

Hence I’m “branching” out to fish and chips!  Home-made fish and chips.  Healthier than shop-bought but definitely more time-consuming.