New Shoes and Amy's Birthday

One of my favourite children's shoe shops, in Maling Road, Canterbury, was having a really great sale last week.  I picked up a pair of Spanish leather shoes for Tabitha at 50 per cent discount - I favour Spanish shoes for myself, and these seemed to have the same high quality.  She is nearly grown out of her current shoes - stepping up to a giant size 20! - so new shoes are on the shopping list at the moment.

They are a very cheerful shade of pink:

Importantly, they have a buckle - now that she can remove her own shoes with velcro or press studs, I am on the look out for buckle shoes.  Otherwise she removes them every time she is in the car or pram, and sometimes absent-mindedly drops them overboard.  The backs are also nicely padded around the ankle.  Until babies are really confident with their walking and running, it is advised to keep them in soft-sole shoes, so their food and leg muscles can develop properly, and they learn to balance best.  These shoes have a simple soft leather sole.

These are my three favourite pairs of Tabitha's shoes, so far in her thirteen months on this earth.  Left, you see her first pair - little Bobux 'pram shoes' with diamante-centred leather flowers.  In fact, I liked these so much that I bought another pair in a larger size.  Centre, you can see her little Marc Jacobs mousie shoes.  They are completely adorable, and she gets plenty of comments on them.  Right, are her new shoes.  I love them, and keep picking them up to feel their super-supple leather.

It may not be shocking to learn that one of her first words - after mum, dad, cat - was SOOZ, or shoes.  In fact, 'sooz' was also my first word when I was a baby, so it runs in the family.

Here is my little monkey eating her favourite lunch - avocado sandwich.  Accessorised with avocado smear on the chin.  I would say that Tabitha's favourite foods are avocado, fish (all sorts, including sardines, grilled salmon or white fish, tinned tuna etc), cheese, and rice pudding.

On Saturday, my best friend Amy had her birthday lunch at FOG in Prahran.  Tabitha joined our table of a dozen girls (and one honorary male friend) for a long lunch.  She was in a bit of a mood, and was quite cross that she couldn't get down and wriggle all over the floor, but overall she fared okay.

At any rate, it was nice to get together with friends and enjoy a glass of Champagne.  And when we got home in the late afternoon, I handed Tabby to The Daddy and ran myself a nice long, hot bath, by candlelight, to recover from the mild trauma of wrangling a toddler in a relatively chic restaurant!

Here is the birthday girl:

Tabby and Mumma - her hair was crazy fluffy for some reason!

Could you imagine three paler females?  This is one trio you will not spot baking at the beach this Summer.  We will be hiding in one of those sun huts.

Tabitha was handed a small digital camera, which kept her thoroughly amused for quite a while - she enjoyed peering into the screen as she moved it around, watching all the pictures.

I entreat all parents of small babies - please, take your babes out to restaurants as often as you can!  Because once they reach toddlerhood, it sure does get a little more tiresome...

A Special Visitor

Today, Tabitha and I had a visit from a very special friend - why so special, you ask?  Because Miss Kitty-Cat has a baby in her belly!  So we had 1.5 visitors for the price of one!

In honour, I made my most sacred cake - the only one which (sorry) I will not share the recipe for on here, because it was handed on to me from my Godmother, who lives in Connecticut, and is a special family recipe of hers.  It includes walnuts and allspice and the texture is lovely, somewhere between a dense sponge and a traditional chocolate cake.

Miss Kitty-Cat brought us a most fabulous gift - macarons from La Belle Miette, the new Hot Kid on The Block in macarons.

Wow.  Not only are they spectacularly beautiful, they are also just divine to eat - crisp, chewy, so much flavour.

Personally, I think that a jewel-like box of macarons is almost as good as an actual box of jewels.

Chocolate Ripple Cake and Crochet

Near my house is one of my favourite cafes in Melbourne, Porgie and Mr Jones.  Their food is truly divine - worth travelling for, especially their breakfasts, such as the decadent toasted banana bread with creme fraiche, berry compote and pistachios.

Sometimes, after dropping my little sister at school, my mother brings me a McPorgie for breakfast.  A McPorgie is a toasted English muffin (from an excellent local artisan bakery) with Gruyere, free range thick-cut ham and some herbs.  It is a good way to start the day.

I have four friends who are due to have babies towards the end of the year.  I tell you, I am super-busy with wool craft.  Knitting and crochet - it is nice to have at least one project of each on the go, because the movements required are different, so you can have a break and switch to the other if your hands are getting fatigued.

Here is something I am working on for one of the babies - I can only show you a snippet, in case the recipient looks at the blog!  Three of the babies who are arriving are girls, and one is 'unknown' at this point.

I had some cream to use up the other night, so I made a chocolate ripple cake.  For any overseas readers, this is an Aussie Classic, similar in principle to many 'icebox pies' of the US, in that it involves softening cookies in the refrigerator.  Chocolate ripple biscuits are fairly rich, dark and crispy cookies.  

You sandwich them together with whipped cream (whip 500ml thickened cream with a tablespoon of vanilla caster sugar or a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla), cover the whole lot in more cream, and then chill overnight (or for at least six hours).  You can then decorate with a dusting of cocoa, some crumbled 'Flake' chocolate bar or some shaved chocolate.  Probably the Flake is the most authentic Aussie Backyard BBQ method.

Note:  Always cover the log with far more cream than you think it needs - because overnight, the biscuits really soak up the cream, so if you don't have a terribly thick covering, you will find brown parts of biscuit soaking through, ruining the pristine effect:

Have you seen the episode of The Simpsons, where Marge had decorated a beautiful cake for a special occasion?  Homer comes in and starts attacking it, picking off the icing letters and dipping his fingers in the frosting.  Marge exclaims, "Homer, no!  I made you a cake to ruin, it's over there!"  This happens in our house - see below, the mini chocolate ripple cake for The Daddy to pick at:

Here you go - this is the cake in the morning.  No nasty brown bits poking through:

To serve, slice the cake on an angle, so you get a striped effect.

Delicious.  And might I say - this is excellent for breakfast, though you didn't hear it from me...

Hiatus

Sorry, I have been a Bad Blogger.  I've been suffering from some fairly major sleep deprivation, with the little Tabitha here going through a particularly restless period over the last couple of weeks - sometimes waking hourly or more overnight!  I'm hoping that it is a developmental stage, as opposed to an ongoing trend...  So anyway, my days last week were spent trying not to walk into walls, rather than writing blog posts.

It sure is lucky that babies and toddlers are so damn cute!  Because it truly does help with the tiredness, when you need to get up yet again, in the middle of the night, to go to your babe - and they are sitting there looking all bleary eyed and puffy and just plain gorgeous.

Incidentally, this is what Tabby often looks like when she's just woken up - crazy bed hair, puffy face, eyes a little wonky.  Makes me want to cover her in kisses:

In other Tabitha updates - she has a fair few words now.  Lizz (for lizard), Dat (for cat), mumma and dadda, Doh (for dog), Ligh (for light), Sooz (for shoes), Es (for yes) and sometimes No (for nose - she doesn't actually say no to mean no, though she does shake her head!).

She can also point to her own, or someone else's, nose when asked.  She often jams her fingers all the way up my nose when demonstrating this.  She can take a few steps, and can stand on her own for quite some time - minutes, I'd say.  Below, she is standing up, holding a shoe, and bouncing and dancing to some music:

But far and away, the thing I am currently most excited about is her ability to safely climb down from things - she turns and backs confidently off a sofa, bed or bench, and then yesterday, we watched in amazement as she backed her way, quite quickly, down a few medium-sized flights of stairs!  I am thrilled that she can safely get down stairs - we are currently building a house with stairs, and we will be moving in at the end of the year.  I've been worried about the stairs, but I am now confident that by 6 months from now, she will be completely safe with them.

On Saturday night, The Daddy, Tabitha and I went along to watch the Victorian Roller Derby League at the Showgrounds.  Tabitha's Godmother Sophie is on one of the teams, so we had great fun watching her.  Here we are enjoying the crowds - over 5,000 people!

Godmother Sophie is below, fourth skater from the left, in the shiny blue shorts:

Look at all the people!  Roller Derby is becoming very popular - rightly so, as it is incredibly fun to watch.  Sadly we had to leave before the final big bout, as Tabby needed to go to bed.

Yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early to make another four-tier chocolate cake (like the one I did for Tabitha's birthday party).  This one was for my mothers' group - we were having a party with all of the mothers, babies and dads, to celebrate all of the babies now being one.  Really just a good excuse for a party!

I have posted the recipe for the cake before, but I will post it again here.  For a four-tier cake, you need to make double the recipe below.  I would recommend doing it in two batches - that is, prepare the recipe as below, baking two cakes, and then while they are in the oven, prepare the mixture for the next two cakes.  Once the first cakes are out of the oven and cooling, you can prep the pans again for the final two cakes.  Unless you happen to have a large oven AND four identical 20cm straight-sided cake tins, in which case you could certainly do it all at once!

For the frosting, the recipe below will be enough - I have doubled the original quantities, so the below will give you plenty of frosting for a four-tier cake.

Old Fashioned Chocolate Birthday Cake 

(taken from Nigella Lawson's 'Feast')

To make the cake, combine in a food processor:  200g plain flour, 200g caster sugar (as usual, I used vanilla caster sugar), 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 40g best-quality cocoa (I use Valhrona), 175g very soft unsalted butter, 2 large eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 150ml sour cream (I also added a generous pinch of salt).  Blitz until completely smooth (it will still be very thick).

Prepare two round 20cm sandwich tins – grease and cocoa them, and line the bottoms with baking paper (see below photos).  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Divide the batter, spreading with a spatula to flatten, between the two tins – I make sure they are evenly divided by weighing them.

Bake for 25 – 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Let the cakes cool in their tins for ten minutes on the bench, then turn out onto a wire cooling rack.  Remove the paper from their bottoms, and sit, top side up, until they are completely cool.

To make the icing, melt together 150g unsalted butter, 350g top quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces.  Set aside to cool a little.

Sift 600g icing sugar into a bowl (or just put it in the food processor and blitz until lump-free)

I've taken a few snap shots to help you with the baking and the frosting...

When preparing the pans, I grease them thoroughly with butter, then line the bottom with a circle of baking paper, then grease the paper, then tap cocoa powder throughout the tin, so that the entire surface is coated with a fine layer of cocoa powder (bang the excess off, down the sink).  I use cocoa powder for chocolate cakes, instead of flour, since it doesn't leave any white residue when the cake is baked:

When the cakes are baked (25 minutes or even just under, in my oven), a skewer will come out clean, and they will be just slightly shrunken back from the edges of the tin.  The tops should be smooth, however if there are bubbles or small cracks, don't stress, as it will all be covered up with frosting.

To frost the cakes, begin by putting a dollop of frosting on the cake stand or platter - this is to help affix the cake firmly to the stand, preventing it from sliding around:

Place the first layer of the cake on the cake plate, and put four strips of baking paper underneath it, along each edge - this is so that you can frost the cake without getting any on the cake plate (you carefully slide the paper out at the end).

If you have any cake layers which are a little 'dodgy' (e.g. a bit of one edge stuck to the tin, or it cracked a little), use those layers in the middle - the top and bottom layers should be your 'best' cakes.  In particular, save the flattest, smoothest and most even layer for the top.

Once your first layer is down, cover it generously with frosting - a 1/3 cup or a little more is about right.  Spread it well over the cake, right to the edges.

Place your second layer over the top of the frosting - here you can see, I have a dodgy layer, where I left it face-down on the cooling rack and  forgot about it for a bit, so it has imprints and a bit of a crack.  This will all be completely hidden by the frosting:

Coat your second layer of cake with more frosting - really, err on the side of more frosting than less, since you need it to fill the gaps around the edge where the cakes slope off:

Repeat with the third layer of cake.  In theory, you could happily do a three-tier cake.  It would still look mighty tall and impressive!  This would be a great option if one of your cake layers didn't turn out, or you wanted to serve a single layer for something else, for example.  Or if you feel that four tiers are just too much...  Not me!  I never shy from going over-the-top.

Place your fourth layer on the top:

Using a small offset spatula (if possible), cover the top and sides with a thin-ish layer of frosting, known as a 'crumb coat', to seal all of the cake.  This layer should be thin enough that you see some dark areas poking through, but you should have covered all of the cake, with no crumbs escaping.  This is your chance to fill any gaps between the layers - you are striving for an even surface at this point:

At the base, stick close to the cake - you don't want fat pools of frosting around the bottom, or removing the paper cleanly later on will be difficult.

On top of this layer, add a whole lot more frosting, and generously coat the entire top and sides with frosting - do not be shy about using a lot, the cake-to-frosting ratio is quite reasonable with this cake.  That said, I don't imagine you'll use all of the frosting by any means!

Try and get the covering relatively even, and certainly thick enough that there is no cake poking through:

Next, take a large spatula, run it under very hot water, dry with a cloth and immediately run it carefully around the cake to smooth the sides and top - repeat the heating as required.  The heat helps melt the frosting to create a smoother surface.  Of course, highly skilled cake decorators can produce a perfectly smooth surface, but highly skilled at cake decorating I am not, so I just aim for a vaguely smooth effect:

Now, I wanted to decorate the top with pearl coloured dragees, so I sketched out a number 'one' with a chopstick, to guide me:

I have frightfully shaky hands (hereditary - a mild case of Benign Familial Tremor), so the decorating part of cakes is always tricky for me (as I've mentioned before, it's also cursed me with appalling handwriting).  To make the number one below, I used tweezers and a very slow hand to create the outline, then scattered them within the border.  I used my hand to affix them to the sides of the cake - just randomly.

Here is a photo, taken at the party, of the cake cut up - as you can see, it cuts very easily into clean, tall slices.  Below, there are 16 slices.  Each slice could easily be further separated into two or even four pieces, cutting through the layers, giving you about a gazillion servings, which is useful when making a cake for a crowd:

Here is a slice of the cake - very tall!  This recipe is lovely, Nigella describes it as a 'sort if idealised packet mix chocolate cake' which is quite accurate, in that it is very fine-crumbed, meltingly smooth and quite light:

Here are some photos from the party yesterday evening...

All of the babies wore little party hats while we sung happy birthday:

Tabby wore a cheap-and-cheerful Pumpkin Patch top, some skinny jeans from Gap, her Marc Jacobs mousie shoes, and a gorgeous pink wool 3/4 length coat from Zara, brought back from the UK in December by my best friend Amy.  I wore my MJ mousie shoes too, as well as boring jeans, white t-shirt and one of my very favourite Hermes scarves - this scarf has lots of muted shades of yellow and blue, and was bought for me by The Daddy as a little gift in Paris while on our honeymoon, so I am very fond of it:

We did a 'Kris Kringle' arrangement, where each of us bought a gift for another baby in the group.  Tabitha received a really gorgeous wooden 'rainmaker' type toy, with coloured wooden beads which shake through layers of waxed wood, below, as well as a super cute rubber ducky - a clever one which doesn't let water in, therefore will not get mouldy!

Here is Tabitha unwrapping her beautiful gifts, watched by The Daddy and I:

We had a great time at the party - ate lots of wonderful food (it was a bring a plate affair, and we do have some talented cooks in our group!), drank some great wine and Champagne, and caught up with all of the other beautiful families in our group.

Weekend away.

On the weekend, we managed to escape to Blairgowrie for a couple of days, along with my friend Amy, whose friends' place we were borrowing.  Just a short getaway, but it is always lovely to go somewhere scenic and do - well, not much!

We had fish and chips, we had (really excellent) woodfired pizza, we had delicious veggieburgers with cheese, salad, pickles and caramelized onions.  The Daddy made us blueberry pancakes with bacon and syrup.  We napped, read, walked, watched Tabitha take cautious steps (she can take two steps on her own now).  It was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend the weekend.

There were plenty of new, unexplored toys for Tabitha to dive into at the beach house:

The Daddy is the breakfast cook in our house - it's the only time he cooks, but he is very good at breakfast dishes.  In case you are wondering, the clock on the wall is incorrect - we were not eating breakfast at 5:25am OR pm!

 Tabby sitting in the high chair, patiently waiting for her pancake:

Yum!  These are Amy's though, she didn't have blueberries.  Strange lady!  The bacon is freerange bacon from Fernleigh Farms, who have incredible products from their Wessex Saddleback pigs, which frolic around their expansive, wooded farmland.  The bacon is just incredible.

Below, you can see Tabitha crawling around - she kept herself very well occupied exploring the new space, and kept taking a couple of tentative steps.  I don't think that it will be long now until she is walking properly on her own.

Tabby reclining with her feet on the table while she eats her lunch:

Cramming in lots of peas and corn, her current obsession.  Sorry, this is way too much information, but her last few dirty nappies have looked like a corn explosion.  So much corn.

"Hey, I think you'll find that my bowl is currently empty of peas and corn, mumma!"

Oh never mind, I found some veggieburger within reach...

Now we are back home and trying to avoid going out in the cold.  I am really hating this weather, I must say.  I can't wait for a few nice spring days, to get out there and walk in the sunshine, some blue skies, some pretty flowers.  Sigh, probably at least another month or so...