If you're going to celebrate a royal occasion, be it a wedding, a birth or a jubilee then whatever you do, it has to involve cake. For the royal wedding last year I made patriotic flap jack, but this weekend it was all cup cakes.
Joseph was rather unmoved by the whole thing, but seemed quite happy to be strapped into the back of our new car and be taken to Grandmas and Grandpas house. He likes going there, there's a big garden to run around with and toys to play with and two more people to wrap round his chubby little fingers.
We had a barbecue and Joseph mangled a sausage bun, ate some chicken and some burger and choked on some lemonade that I put in his straw cup. I think it was the bubbles, he's just not used to them.
We had bunting up of course, it was left over from the royal wedding last year as indeed were the napkins. Waste not want not! I also made some paper chains and with all that up in the garden we looked sufficiently patriotic. At least no silly hats were involved.
Now, having eaten our way through a garlic stuffed mackerel each, two sausages, a burger and a chicken kebab we prepared ourselves for the most important part of the day.
The cake, oh yes indeed. Had I actually managed to persuade anyone outside of immediate family to come I would have made a big sponge, but everyone was busy or couldn't be faffed to respond. Nil desperandum, the party was changed from Tuesday (now threatening to be a wet day) to today (which was nice and dry) and we had funky cup cakes instead.
Now, when I say we had cup cakes, I'm sure some will be thinking of the dull pallid little things that you find on a sad looking supermarket shelf that taste dry and have lurid but sickly icing. Oh no, such a thing would not do for this occasion. Indeed, all of yesterday I was busy in the baking. All right, not all of yesterday but for a good hour in the afternoon and it wiped me right out as I appear to be suffering quite badly with a viral throat infection.
There were strawberry, white chocolate and vanilla, lemon and proper chocolate flavour. I made six of each and that meant the fun prospect of a good four cakes each plus spares. We'd even managed to find some patriotic cup cake cases and a patriotic cup cake stand. Lovely!
This morning I was mixing and piping icing, artfully placing chinks of strawberry and orange and lemon slice. I was also making little flowers out of marzipan. There would have been some fondant flowers too, but the piece I had had left over from a previous cake had gone rock hard and was no good. There were sprinkles and there was edible glitter. I don't do things by halves, if I'm going to bake and ice a cake it has to be something quite spectacular.
Ah, the cakes! Joseph had eaten of the barbecued meat very well, but he seemed keen when the cakes arrived. Oh my treacherous stomach! I had only managed a strawberry cake and a chocolate and it was telling me that I was full! I tried in vain to eat a lemon cake but I could not do it. I had to share it with Joseph and he was flagging. At one point, whilst playing with a bit, he decided to pat himself on the head and got a great big icing-y hand print on the top of his head. It's a good job my Mums garden isn't full of wasps.
He did eat a whole white chocolate and vanilla cake. There's nothing like the sight of a little boy with his cheeks bulging totally stuffed and creaking at the seams with cake. There was some threatening to make its way back out of his mouth, but he was determined to finish it. As we shared a lemon cake between us I half expected to see yellow icing come squirting back out of his ears and nose!
You'd think it would stop him, or at least slow him down. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.
No indeed, despite being weighed down by quite a bit of meat and an industrial quantity of cake, as soon as he was free he was running around and he didn't stop till we got home and put him to bed.
I felt full like a python, it felt as if my belly was distended to a gross degree and I wanted to sleep for three days to digest it all!
On second thoughts, the weariness might have been as a result of three glasses of pimms - something else that's a must for a royal occasion! Anyway, something with that much fruit in it must be healthy!
No comments:
Post a Comment