Christmas Puddings

The time of year is upon us.  Like it or not (and I do), Christmas is coming.  In descending order, these are my favourite parts of Christmas - cooking in advance (cakes and puddings, gingerbread dough to freeze, rumballs), cooking (hams, custards, turkeys etc), gift wrapping and ribbon selection, tree decorating (which includes eggnog drinking and carol CD listening), gift buying and giving, and finally I also enjoy selecting and mailing out Christmas cards, though I could do without the actual writing, which always leaves me sore-handed.

But above all, easily my favourite part of Christmas is pudding making.  Perhaps because it needs to be done in advance, it is the first event which really gets the house feeling and smelling Christmassy.  Of course, you can do your puddings much further in advance (in fact, I also did some earlier, as I had fruit to use up) or indeed you can do puddings later than I (the last Sunday in November, a.k.a. Stir-Up Sunday, is common, and a pudding can, in theory, even be served on the day it is made, with no aging).  I, however, choose to do most of my puddings in October every year, since it is close enough to Christmas to enjoy 'getting in the spirit' but far enough out to a) age your puddings well and b) leave you plenty of time for other festive baking and gift shopping.  Although I do not recommend doing your gift shopping past mid November anyway, because people are far too hostile in the shops - customers and staff alike.

A few notes to start:

All of the dried fruit I use is organic (my mother who is Pudding Fan #1 is allergic to the sulfates found in much dried fruit).  Organic fruit is not always better, however, and some of the ordinary supermarket brands offer lovely plump fruit.  If you want to include candied peel or glace cherries, I really recommend either finding an excellent high-end supplier, making your own, or doing without.  Supermarket peel and cherries can be really, really nasty.

For me, a proper Christmas pudding contains suet.  Not butter.  I'm sure there are some lovely puddings out there made with butter, but I am stubbornly unwavering in my dedication to the suet pudding.  I have compared and tasted, and I find that suet puddings are all-at-once lighter, richer and silkier on the palette.  In fact, I admit, I have become quite boorish on the topic and have no doubt offended people, over the years, with my scorn of the butter pudding.  Never mind, as they say, you can't please everyone so you might as well please yourself.  So suet it is.  NOTE - most butchers only get their suet in from the week after Melbourne Cup weekend, so if you want to make your puddings earlier, give your butcher a week's notice and they will be able to order some in for you.

I think that if you are going to bother making a Christmas pudding - with the required 6 hours of sitting around the house, topping up boiling water as they steam - you might as well make several.  At  least, as many puddings as you have burners on your stove.  You can mix up all the mixture together, and once they are cooking, it is no more effort to top up four or five pots of water than it is to monitor just one.  So I recommend doing a few puddings - you can always have one for Christmas day, and another for Christmas eve / boxing day, or else give them away as (spectacularly appreciated!) gifts.

How do you store a pudding?  If you live in England, you simply keep it 'somewhere cool'.  If you live in Australia, and you celebrate Christmas in December, 'somewhere cool' means the fridge.  I know that it is terribly unromantic, and it sounds so lovely to store a pudding in a nice cool cellar or cupboard, but the reality is that the heat and the humidity in most of Australia means your pudding risks developing mould, due to its dampness.  I have managed to successfully store puddings in a cool part of the house (a dark box in the back of a spare wardrobe), but it's safest and easiest to just wrap them well in clingfilm and foil, and keep them in the fridge.

Because I make steamed puddings (as opposed to boiled cloth puddings, which I have made in the past, however I prefer the dense dampness of a steamed pudding), I use pudding basins.  In fact, you don't need a pudding basin - you can steam puddings in mugs, ramekins or porcelain bowls - but a good ceramic basin is inexpensive, and makes a nicely shaped pudding.  The 'lip' around the top also helps when covering the pudding for cooking.  I recommend the Mason Cash brand pudding bowls - so sturdy and a nice fat shape - but you can buy ceramic basins practically everywhere, and you can also find some gorgeous pastel coloured ones in antique and second hand stores.  I own over 15 pudding basins (it's an addiction!) and the one I use to make the 'big momma' pudding each year (the very largest, which weighs over 3kg and feeds 20+ people) is an incredibly solid, wide 3.5 litre basin.

Here is the recipe.  It is my own recipe.  I originally combined the best features of several recipes I found - 8 years ago now - and over the years have slightly adapted and tweaked it.  This recipe produces an incredibly good, fruit-laden, moist, brandy-rich, spiced and full-flavoured pudding.  Some people prefer a lighter, cakier pudding.  Not me, nor any of my family and friends.  For us, this is it.

This is a 'single quantity'.  I generally make a triple recipe, which means over 3kg of fruit, and requires a trough or oversized stock pot to stir up the mixture.  If you aren't up to tackling such ridiculous quantities of mixture, the below recipe will still give you either one enormous 3kg pudding, or 2 medium/large puddings, or several (4 or so) smaller puddings.

• 360g currants
• 360g raisins (cut into currant-sized pieces, 4-8 pieces per raisin)
• 180g sultanas (cut into currant-sized pieces, 2-4 pieces per sultana)
• 100g candied peel, finely chopped (source excellent peel or don't bother, in which case augment the quantity of dried fruit with 100g extra sultanas)
• 80g dates (cut into currant-sized pieces)
• 1 cup blanched, chopped almonds or macadamias (feel free to halve this quantity if you are not as nut-obsessed as I)
• 1/2 cup stout or dark ale
• 200ml brandy (some recipes use less than 20 per cent of this amount.  If you must, halve it to 100ml, but I wouldn't go any lower, and indeed sometimes I sneak in more brandy.)
• 60ml orange juice
• 40ml lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of grated orange zest
• 1 teaspoon of grated lemon zest (try to find unwaxed lemons)
• 1 cooking apple or quince, grated
• 1 small carrot, grated (I forgot this year, and haven't lost any sleep over it)
• 250g fresh suet (ask your butcher to clean and mince it for you.  I did my own cleaning and grating one year.  Never again)
• 220g brown sugar
• 4 large free range eggs
• 200g fresh white breadcrumbs (buy a decent loaf - I use a white sourdough - then slice and leave to go stale-ish.  Then you can grate it or put it in the food processor to make fine breadcrumbs.  Store them in the fridge or the freezer if need be.)
• 200g self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice (not mixed spice)
• 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg, fresh if possible

Begin the preparation a week ahead of the day you want to cook the puddings.  You should to soak the fruit for a week, though a few days will do.

Firstly, pick over the currants and discard any little hard stems.

Now, you will ideally cut the raisins, sultanas and dates into small pieces - when cooking for competition (e.g. the Royal Shows), one of the main judging criteria is that all of the pieces of fruit are the same size.  This makes for a beautiful looking pudding, but also means it will cut well and has the best texture.  Generally, this means raisins are cut into 4-8 pieces, and sultanas into 2-4 pieces.  I find it easiest to sit on the sofa and snip the fruit with sharp kitchen scissors (watching Downton Abbey, if you're curious), however you could also use a very sharp knife.  No lie, this is the hardest part of the pudding - since I do such large quantities, this year I had nearly ten hours of snipping fruit!  I divided it over three days, doing a few hours each day while Tabitha napped and in the evenings.  

Snipped sultanas:

Snipped raisins:

Snipped dates:

If you'd prefer not to martyr yourself for the fruit gods, you could simply snip each sultana and raisin in half.  I've done it that way before, and the pudding is, of course, still brilliant.  While you cut the fruit, discard any woody stalks.

Place the raisins, currants, sultanas, peel, dates and brandy in a large bowl, mix well to separate any clumps of fruit, and cover securely with an air-tight lid or clingfilm.  Leave for a week if possible, giving it a stir every couple of days.  Add a little more brandy if the fruits have soaked it all up, and you like a brandy-rich pudding.

Here is a close-up of the soaked fruit (taken after I added the nuts) - you can see the plump currants, and the other cut-up pieces of fruit are all roughly the same size:

Two days before 'steaming day', add the dark ale, the grated rinds, the lemon and orange juice and the chopped nuts.  Cover again, and leave to sit.

The day or evening prior to cooking, you need to mix up the pudding mixture, and put it in the basins, then seal them up.  The puddings will then sit in the fridge overnight, before being steamed the next day.  By doing this prep work the night before, it allows the breadcrumbs to swell nicely, for a lighter puddings, and also it divides the work over two days - the mixing and fiddly foil-and-paper-and-string coverings on one day, and the many-hour steaming and topping up the following day.  It is very manageable this way, even when working with vast quantities.

So.  The day or evening prior to cooking...

Here is the mis-en-plas (for a triple mixture - over 12kg of ingredients).  Clockwise from top left, the soaked fruits/nuts/rind/ale mixture, the flour and sugar, the breadcrumbs, the eggs, the spices, the suet, and the apples in the middle.

You can see the spices - the dark allspice, the pale ginger, the cocoa-coloured cinnamon.  In the middle is (part of) a whole nutmeg, ready to be grated with a Microplane.  This is a lot of spice - remember, this is a triple mixture.

To the soaked fruits, add the suet, brown sugar, eggs, breadcrumbs, flour, spices, apple or quince, carrot and a good pinch of salt.  Mix well - I recommend using your clean hands, as it's easier to ensure everything is thoroughly and evenly combined.  If you prefer to use a spoon, make sure it's a sturdy one!  It is traditional to have every member of the household 'have a stir' and make a wish as they do so.  I needed to mix my pudding mixture up in a truly enormous stock pot, but if you are doing a single quantity, a very large mixing bowl should do.

Here is my stock pot full of pudding:

Lightly grease your basins (an extra large, or two medium, or a few small) with butter.  Line the bases with a small circle of baking paper.

Fill the basins with mixture, patting it in firmly, and allowing about 2cm at the top for swelling.  If you wish, you can add a small silver charm or silver coin (check online for which ones are suitable - some coins are toxic).  Luck befalls she who finds the charm in her pudding serving, so the legend goes.  If you forget, you can always just tuck the charm into one of the pudding servings as you are dishing up. 

 

Cover each basin with a layer of baking paper and a layer of foil, with a pleat along the middle to allow for swelling, and with the baking paper side closest to the pudding (for large basins, ordinary foil may not be quite wide enough - you can buy extra wide foil at most supermarkets).  Tie the covering on very firmly with kitchen string - I recommend wetting the string first, which will allow it to stretch, meaning you can get the very tightest fit.  The string needs to be tied firmly enough to prevent any water getting through your paper-and-foil and into your pudding.  I tie two separate strings, to ensure maximum tightness.  Use the ends of your string to tie a handle - you will use this to get your pudding in and out of the boiling pot of water.

Now, tuck your puddings into the fridge overnight.

The next day, your puddings will need a decent amount of cooking time - 6 hours for a large pudding, 4 hours for a medium pudding, 3 hours for a small pudding.  Obviously, you will know for yourself whether it's best to put the puddings on to steam early in the morning, or after lunch, or whatever works for you.  If you are doing a few small puddings, you could certainly steam them together in a large pot - just make sure they aren't touching.

Each pudding will need to sit in a saucepan or stock pot large enough to fit the entire pudding, without touching the sides or the lid.  Sit each pudding on a trivet, or an upturned saucer, or even one of those folding cheap metal veggie steamers.  Add enough boiling water to come 2/3 up the side of the pudding, put on the lid, and keep at a low boil for the required number of hours.  You will need to top up the pot with extra boiling water from time to time (it pays to check them every half hour or so) - so it's best to keep a kettle of boiling water on the go, so you don't suddenly get caught short.  A slice of lemon into each pot will help prevent the pots from becoming discoloured.

 

Never, ever let the pudding boil dry.  I've heard that you can pop a marble or two into the water, and they will start to make a loud rattle if the water gets to low.  I haven't done it myself, but I like the idea of it and I imagine it would work.

This photo is taken after two of my puddings had already been taken off the stove (smaller ones).  There is another pudding in the fridge, waiting to be cooked the next day, as I lacked enough stove space with 'only' a 90cm cooktop (oh, to have an industrial kitchen!).

Once the time is up, turn the heat off, and carefully remove the pudding by lifting it up by its string handle - do take care, because the steam can burn very badly, the puddings are quite heavy, and the string can slip.  Aim to have a wooden board or thick potholder on the bench right next to the stove ready to sit it on, so you don't have to carry the heavy, scalding pudding across the room!

Here is a pudding, removed from the heat, sitting to cool a little:

Leave the pudding to sit and cool for half an hour, then snip the string and remove the foil and paper.  Allow the pudding to cool down to a gentle warmth, then slip a butter knife gently down the sides, to loosen the pudding, if you want - I don't bother.  Turn it upside down onto a rack or plate - because of the suet, the pudding should slide easily out.  I have never had one stick.  The trick is to avoid removing it when it's too hot (since it will be quite breakable) or when it's too cool (in which case the suet won't give the pudding enough slip).

Once the puddings are cool, wrap each pudding in a double layer of cling film, and some foil if you'd like, then store them in the fridge or a very cool, dry place for at least a month.  Up to a year or so is fine - if you wanted to, you could certainly make your puddings in November, and save a pudding for the following year's Christmas!  The Daddy loves pudding, and this year has requested that I set one aside for his 30th 'birthday cake' in April.

Now, I should mention - if you prefer, you can certainly keep the pudding in the bowl.  That is, simply wrap the entire basin with the pudding inside, in cling film and foil.  I don't, simply because I make a lot and they take up less room without their bowls.  But you can.

Fast forward a couple of months.  How do you reheat your pudding?  You simply need to re-steam it, the way you initially did.  You can certainly microwave it - though I recommend this more for single serves or small puddings.  Every year, I give a large pudding to my parents, and they simply reheat single serves of it for the following week or so, having it after dinner with ice cream.  But for 'The Pudding' on Christmas day, served to your family or guests, you would probably want to re-steam it.  The texture is best, the heat is even, and the cooking will help to further develop the rich flavours.

Lightly grease the basin.  Unwrap the pudding, placing it back into the basin it was originally cooked in (tip - use sticky dots with numbers to match your wrapped puddings to their basins, if you have a lot of basins and worry you will forget which goes with which).  Cover once again with a layer of baking paper and a layer of foil, with a pleat, double tied with string, with a string handle.  Just like the first time.  Using the same method as described above (trivet, large pot with a lid, 2/3 boiling water, check regularly), steam a large or medium pudding for 2 hours, or a small pudding for an hour and a half.

When done, remove the pudding in its basin, and allow to sit somewhere for around 15 minutes.  Then, turn onto a large serving platter to serve.  Gently warm some cognac, brandy or vodka (do not boil, as you don't want to cook off any of the alcohol), then pour over the pudding, and quickly set alight with a match to serve.  The flame business happens very quickly, so to avoid disappointment, have all the lights turned off, and the guests assembled, ready to go before you set your pudding alight!  Note - the whole lighting-up of the pudding really increases the alcoholic flavour.  If you have lots of kids around, or prefer not to knock yourself out, you might prefer to do away with the flame element - or serve the 'edge pieces' to those who like the strength.

If you've gone to the trouble of making your own pudding, you really ought to make proper custard to accompany it - it's not difficult at all, and you can certainly make it the day before, reheating it (slowly and gently) on the day.

For 600ml or so of custard, simply place 250ml full cream milk and 250ml double cream into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Add a vanilla pod, split in half.  Heat, and when it is just about to boil, remove from the heat and leave to sit and infuse for half an hour.  Meanwhile, whisk 5 egg yolks with 40g caster sugar until thick and creamy.  Strain the cream into the yolks, beating while you go (a KitchenAid or standing mixer, or a willing helper, is useful for this).  Now, add the mixture back into the saucepan (rinse and dry it first), then heat over a low-medium heat for around 10  minutes, stirring without stopping until the custard is thickened - that is, if you lift the wooden spoon, you can run your finger across it and leave a clean strip.  Remember - the custard is very hot, and as it cools a little, it will naturally thicken up.

Don't overcook, don't heat too high, or you risk 'splitting' which means that the egg starts to cook and you get nasty grainy bits.  If that happens, immediately sit the saucepan into a sink of icy water, beat like mad, and then strain it into a clean bowl.  It can be saved.

Now, personally, I like to scrape the vanilla beans into the custard when I am about to do the cooking part - I like the black-flecked look.  It is easy enough to double the mixture, though if you wanted even more, I'd probably do two large batches.  If you want to make it in advance, pour into a bowl, and press some cling film over the surface (to prevent a skin forming).  Store in the fridge overnight, and reheat slowly over a low heat when you are ready to serve it.

Other traditional accompaniments include hard sauce (a.k.a. brandy butter) and possibly brandy cream.  Although this pudding is deliciously rich, so I don't tend to find extra brandy sauces necessary.  The custard, and some good vanilla ice cream, works perfectly for me.

This Week's Cooking

I made a giant tray of brownies - it was my Godson's 15th birthday, and I told him that I'd bake him a chocolate cake, but decided that brownies would be infinitely better.

If you are feeling tired or just lazy (or, of course, greedy!) brownies are a winning choice.  Melt and mix, then pour into a tray lined with foil (easier than lining a tray with baking paper!).  The only fiddly bit is chopping the walnuts, but you can use a food processor for that.

You know how good brownies have that cracked, papery, thin layer of shine on the top?  That's because they contain so much sugar...

Some to take to my Godson:

Some to take to the hungry breastfeeding mummas at my local ABA meeting:

And some to eat for lunch, tee hee:

Aaaaand some more for dessert, hot, with ice cream:

I made an enormous batch of paprika chicken, for freezing.  The recipe is HERE, despite being quite messy (browning lots of thighs in oil, red splattery sauce, drippy, gluey spaetzle batter...) it is a simple dish to cook, and both the chicken and the spaetzle / nokedli freeze brilliantly.

A few notes to add to the recipe I posted months ago - yes, it is a lot of onions.  A few people have asked me if I accidentally wrote down too large a quantity.  Nope, three good cups - even a little more is fine!  You'd be surprised, they really cook down and, being white onions, during the long cooking process they almost seem to melt away to nothing.  Make life easy for yourself, and use the slicing disk on your food processor if you have one.

When you add the flour and the paprika, you do need to cook it for a bit, until the flour starts to thicken it up, vaguely like a roux.  Don't worry if it looks like it's darkened quite a bit - you want a decent browning, to make sure the paprika flavours really come out:

Yum.

For the nokedli / spaetzle, I really recommend leaving the batter for a good hour or so - even overnight is fine.  You can beat it in a KitchenAid or similar, as long as you leave it to sit, to relax the gluten.  This week, I actually doubled my spaetzle recipe,  making nearly 2kg of spaetzle, because they freeze so beautifully.  Allow about a cup of cooked spaetzle per person, possibly a little more.  I freeze 2.5 cup bags of the cooked dumplings.  

To reheat, I recommend allowing them to defrost in the fridge, then cooking them in a frying pan of hot butter or bacon drippings, until they are starting to brown a little.  In fact, lately, I do this every time - even after they have just been cooked, I pan-fry the serving we are about to eat.  Trust me.

As you need to cook them in small batches - you don't want more than a single layer of floating spaetzle, really - you just dump them into a great big bowl.  But add a drizzle of olive oil, and toss them with the oil periodically as you cook, to stop them sticking.

After dinner, we had some coconut cupcakes.  Just ordinary cupcakes with a good handful of moist shredded coconut mixed in at the end.  They are deliciously chewy and moist.

Have been making salmon kedgeree a bit lately.  I always thought that it was a total Australian (via Britain via India) classic, but when I first met The Daddy, he had never heard of it!  Now it's one of his favourites - Fry some onions in butter and oil, add a teaspoon or two of curry powder, cook for a minute until smelling gorgeous, add cooked rice (best to cook the night before), peas, a can of drained salmon (or some poached and flaked salmon fillets), some parsley, a good squeeze of lemon, and some chopped hard boiled eggs.  Serve with some extra eggs.  It ain't pretty, but it sure is yummy!

Another fishy meal that I cook a lot is scrambled eggs with spinach and smoked salmon, for Tabitha.  I love this too, and so I am always happy to make double and eat some for my own lunch or a light dinner.  She adores anything with fish - sardines, baked or steamed white fish, teriyaki salmon, tinned tuna, salmon patties, smoked salmon - so this meal is a hit.

You may recall that - like me - Tabitha's first word was shoes.  Or, rather, 'sooz'.  Her passion for shoes continues, and she owns more pairs than me.  Like any toddler, however, she prefers to clop around the house in grown-up shoes - The Daddy's dirty Blunstones and my little MJ mouse flats are her favourites.  Here is Tabby having fun in mumma's mouse shoes:

Remember the Ikea play food we bought last month?  It is still a big hit.  Recently I had a couple of ten-year-olds over, and they played with the food too, so I think it will be popular in our house for a while to come.  Every day when Tabitha naps, and again after she goes to bed at night, I do a quick house tidy, including putting away all of her toys.  Though she is very good at packing up her blocks, it is much easier if I do a speed-clean after she is in bed, or else she UNpacks as quickly as I can pack. 

The Daddy thinks it's funny that I always put away her play food back so neatly in its baskets - but I notice that Tabitha seems much more inclined to play with her toys if they are presented attractively and clearly, rather than all piled up in a heap.  We also rotate her toys as - that is, only keeping a small number of toys out at a time, and swapping them around every week or so - which seems to keep her interested.  Plus, because our home is so small, keeping just a few toys out, and keeping them tidy, ensures relative sanity for myself.

The Show and Birthday Cake

My sister turned 10 this week, and decided that she would like to go to the Royal Melbourne Show on her birthday.  My mother, Tabitha and I took Q and her friend to the show, first thing in the morning, to beat the crowds.  We arrived at 9am, and managed to leave just after noon, fitting in the baby animal nursery, the dogs, cats and poultry, the craft/cooking competition areas, the big food pavilion, and a quick scoot through the showbags and rides area.  It wasn't as hideous as I'd feared - not too crowded so early in the day - and Tabitha seemed to really enjoy seeing all the activity and the animals.

My sister and her friend had pony rides:

I didn't give Tabitha a pony ride - she's too small to reliably hang on by herself - but she enjoyed waving to the ponies as they walked past:

My mother and Tabby cuddled a bantam chook.  Tabby thought it was a rooster, I think, and said "cockalocolocoloco" when she saw them, which is her very cute way of saying cockadoodaldoo.  She buried her hands into the feathers, and the chooks were all beautifully patient and calm:

Pointing out its red comb:

My mother helped Tabitha pat the lambs 'very gently':

Tabby was mildly alarmed by the sweet cow, who tried to lick her toes.  She did say moooo back to the cow, though, which was polite of her:

Patting the fluffy baby duckling very gently:

This little feller was only hours old.  So wobbly on his little legs!

Don't you want to just curl up amongst the baby lambs?!

I have a real weak spot for a orange-and-black pig.  Here is a whole pile of piglets:

I know they say that dogs look like their owners - how about cats?

This rabbit is a rex.  This means, essentially, that his fur coat is literally the softest thing in the world.  Softer than any chinchilla or mink I've touched.  It's what I imagine beds are made of in heaven.  I took a card from the breeder - I am trying to convince The Daddy that it would be a fantastic idea to have a couple of rex rabbit pets.  Once Tabitha is older, I can teach her to ask, "please can I have a rex rabbit, daddy?"  Surely he can't say no to her...

Tabithe enjoyed the big food hall immensely.  She ate samples of Jalna yoghurt, some spinach and beef golzeme, some seafood laksa, a little of Jock's award-winning chocolate ice cream, some chewey pretzel and she tried some honey fresh from the comb:

I love checking out the entrants in the cooking competitions.  This 'Amy Winehouse tribute cake' took out a prize in the decorated cakes section.  The attention to detail was incredible:

Check out the dizzying height of this blue ribbon winning sponge cake:

I always say that the best scones are never the prettiest - the things which make a scone 'pretty' tend to prevent it from being a good scone (over-mixing, over-kneeding, less liquid, too thoroughly rubbed in butter).  These first-place scones look satisfyingly ugly.  This is how you can tell they must have tasted fabulous:

An entrant in the children's decorated cupcakes section - third price to a Miss Tabitha!  I hope one day my Tabitha also enjoys decorating cupcakes.

For many years, I mocked the Dagwood Dog a.k.a. Corn Dog.  "How disgusting!" I would sneer.  The Daddy made me try one a few years ago, and I now concede that when they are fresh (e.g. the batter is hot and crispy), they can be pretty tasty:

Tabby loves pinwheels, so I bought her this fancy foil one.  She doesn't have the lung capacity to blow them properly, but she has learnt how to hold them out in the pram as we walk, so the wind gets all the wheels turning.  Here she is examining her newest pinwheel:

I also bought her a 'dolly on a stick', with layers of pink glitter tulle skirts and a glitter-and-feather headpiece.  Ostensibly, the dolly is for Tabitha - and she does love it - but I do love them myself, too:

We managed to escape without being too laden down with colourful cr@p:

When we got home, Tabitha chased Possum the cat around with her dolly.  He then chased the dolly around, trying to chew off her feather headpiece.

Of course, Q and her friend bought a couple of show bags each, and had a wonderful time unpacking them once we got home:

I bought a small 'Wizz Fizz' showbag for my best friend Amy, and a Bertie Beetle showbag for The Daddy.  He tells me that it contains 15 Bertie Beetles, and a nifty beetle toy that creeps and flips down a wall.

Naturally, the cats hid inside the showbags as soon as the girls emptied them.  Strange creatures!

After a morning of show food - including a treat of some chocolate ice cream! - Tabitha had a nice healthy lunch of steamed veggies and baked meatballs:

While Tabitha napped, I quickly whipped up a chocolate cake for after dinner, for my sister's birthday.  I used the same recipe I used for Tabby's first birthday cake, only with two tiers instead of four...

Such an easy recipe - just throw everything into the food processor...

The chocolate cake batter, with brilliant Valhrona cocoa and sour cream, is the most delicious batter I've ever tasted.

Q was most thrilled with her cake, however did manage to bite down hard on one of the dragees with her 'wobbly tooth', which apparently hurt quite a bit.  So warning, if you are serving to other 10-year-olds!