Cake.

Yesterday was my birthday. Seeing that it was a school/work day I was treated to a fake birthday on Sunday....where I got to eat cake and drink champagne in bed for breakfast:

And then go out for lunch and a long drive in the country with my beautiful family. I couldn't be bothered to make my own cake so I bought it at Sweet Envy. Grittily dense chocolate mud layered with smooth chocolate ganache. It was delicious. In the course of cake experimentation we discovered that it was also really good microwaved and dished up as pudding with cream.

But by yesterday afternoon we had run out of cake and I had an after school park playdate with a friend. Between us we had eight children, so I bought this Berry Cheesecake from the Lipscombe Larder en route:

Seeing that we had already consumed so much chocolate cake, I thought that it was time to get our fruit levels up. Unfortunately, this cake was nowhere near as good as the Sweet Envy cake and my children complained when I packed what was left of it in their school lunchboxes this morning. How decadent is it to sit in the park with a friend, eat cake and drink champagne while your children amuse themselves playing with their friends. I wish it was my birthday everyday:

I will readily admit to a slight obsession with my initial:

So this was my birthday present:

I love birthdays and I love cake. But don't think the weekend was all fun and frivolity down here. On Saturday, I pushed the pram down to Franklin Square to the Ban Live Animal Export Rally:

Where the children and I all signed the petition.

Rx

Cake.

So, this morning, the lady in the grocery shop looked me in the eye and commented on how organised I must be with four children. After I picked myself up off the floor, I wondered how my reputation had preceded me. How on earth did she know that this morning's before school rush hour had been particularly bad.....that my nine year old was wearing nothing other than undies until ten past eight (due at school at half past) as his uniform had to be rescued from the line and finished off in the dryer. I confess, no matter how hard I try, I am hopeless at organisation.

I had awoken in the early hours of this morning......when it was still dark and my husband was out riding his bike.....to the realisation that I hadn't made morning tea for my children's school lunches. Panic. So I got up early and made 'Granny Boyd's Biscuits' from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess:

Who am I kidding? Anyway, in my still sleep befuddled condition I accidentally started creaming the butter and flour so then I thought 'what the hey' and threw everything in together and hoped for the best. Et voila, it worked. So, all you do is combine 150g self raising flour, 125g soft butter and 60g raw sugar and enough Dutch Press cocoa to make it nice and chocolatey and mix it up until it all comes together. Then I bake however many biscuits I need for lunches (150 degrees for 15 minutes) and wrap the rest of the dough in cling wrap and keep it in the fridge. This way the biscuits don't all get scoffed at afternoon tea and you have enough to bake during the hurly burly that will be breakfast time.....tomorrow:

It was a big weekend for baking and cake in our house. In celebration of Mimi's 11th birthday I made not one but two rainbow cakes:

One for home and one for school:

This took most of Sunday and over half a kilo of flour, the same of sugar and of butter and 10 eggs. Held together and iced with even more butter and sugar. As much as I can, I use local products. Although I'm not deluding myself that these really good ingredients made all this cake....healthy. Chemical free wheat grown at Kempton and milled in the historic Callington Mill at Oatlands:

Ashgrove Butter, batch churned on the farm at Elizabeth Town:

And I only ever use free range eggs....I have been to a battery farm and what they do is CRUEL. When we kept our own chooks.....back before we had four children, two beagles and a thousand worms in a worm farm, we used to rescue point of lay birds from a battery farm down the Channel and give them a new life in our garden. They were so grateful.

Luckily my KitchenAid was up to the task:

I still remember how desperately I coveted it for Christmas almost seven years ago. It was at the tail end of our arduous renovation and we had made a pact of no big gifts. But, I couldn't help myself, I wanted a pink KitchenAid to accessorise with my new kitchen.....with every fibre of my being. I hinted. I suggested outright. I cried when the pink one in the shop was sold......when I thanked my husband for buying it, he said that he hadn't. Meanwhile, I kept reminding myself that material possessions don't buy you happiness....even if they do match the glass in the top of your kitchen windows. I had resigned myself to never owning a pink KitchenAid, only to open an envelope on Christmas morning....a sales receipt showing that it had been ordered and would arrive sometime in January. It has earned it's keep.

Recounting this anecdote, I started worrying about my sometimes obsessive behaviour. When I was growing up, my Dad bought himself a new white Victa lawn mower. For some time afterwards he mowed the lawn everyday, cleaned his mower afterwards.....and then wheeled it into the house and next to his side of the bed. Maybe this level of obsession runs in the family.

Cake is such a fundamental ingredient in our family's birthday celebrations. When I had my last birthday I gave serious thought to serving a lunch composed only of cake and pink champagne. My husband talked me into two savoury courses......followed by a cake smorgasbord. This was my cake oriented invite:

'Let us eat cake'.....and we did:

And will again on Sunday when I take Mimi and her friends into town for High Tea. Mercifully, I won't have to bake it all myself. And don't worry, I'm working on racking up 5 - 6 Bikram Yoga classes this week to compensate for the high level of cake consumption.

R

PS My husband has been teasing me that I can't significantly swell the numbers of followers of my blog.....at first I was adamant that I could, yet with only a week to go I am starting to question my ability. Please follow.....there is a prize....you could win the beautiful book Living in History which is an open door to many of Hobart and Tasmania's gorgeous, old homes AND a jar of cumquat compote made by me with fruit from my trees:

Go on, click the box up on the top right....please!

Dressy.

So, this is what we came up with to wear to the 18th birthday party last night:

When you have four children who need to be fed and watered and pyjamed up before you can even think about getting ready in the five minutes that you have left, it pays to choose exactly what you are going to wear in advance.  Otherwise it would no doubt end up being the bathrobe and ugh boots. Not a good look.

When I say that I bought the jacket in Paris it is code and means that it has been in my wardrobe for a while, as I haven't been to Paris for eighteen long months. Sigh. This jacket came from a shop in a street somewhere between Au Printemps and Boulevarde des Capucines and is leather with 3/4 length sleeves and a black satin ribbon that ties in a bow under the collar.

The skirt is ostrich feather By Malene Birger that I bought online from Net - A - Porter earlier in the year to wear to the Glover Prize opening. This is what it looks like close up:

Needless to say it looks seductively tactile, you have to resist the urge to pat it. If you think this is the look you might want, then good news! This skirt has been drastically reduced and is now available online at The Outnet.

No sooner did we get to the party that I started coveting a dress being worn by someone else. It was a ravishing concoction of layers of white tulle, with black velvet bows on the shoulders. And it was being worn by an eighteen month old:

Isn't it utterly gorgeous? When I started raving my praise to whoever would listen, people thought I had designs on it for my own eighteen month old, yet I would like one just like it.....for me.

It was a fab party and I loved every minute of it. Look at the delicious food:

There were even two lads in the kitchen who did all the work:

Now prepare yourselves for the piece de la resistance.......the cake:

Wasn't it absolutely stunning? It was a real Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake, cake.

Thank you to everyone from whom I managed to elicit a comment! Happy days. It would appear that to attract followers I needed to add a link. Oops. Now that it's there (I think) don't hold back!

R

Parties.

This morning, early, I drove Felix into the countryside behind Richmond to go to his friends eighth birthday party at Zoodoo Wildlife Park:

You too can go there if you are overcome by the urge to see Bengal tigers and African Lions on a farm half an hour's drive from Hobart. Zoodoo is a particularly depressing 'zoo' - and I use the term loosely, as don't be fooled into thinking it might be remotely like other places calling themselves a zoo eg Western Plains Zoo or Taronga Zoo - this is Zoo Doo.The whole experience is made even worse by the overwhelming home made atmosphere. And if that's not enough, one of the other mothers damned it with scorn '.....they only have instant coffee'! Quelle horreur!

So if I haven't convinced you, don't go to ZooDoo, rather, donate your entrance fee to Save the Tasmanian Devil and go to the village of Richmond instead. At Richmond you can feed lots of ducks (and geese and today there was a rooster) with the backdrop of Australia's oldest bridge:

Richmond is a country village with beautiful Georgian architecture. There is a decent lolly shop if you go with your children:

And a  pub if you don't:

Now, on the subject of parties, I celebrated a milestone birthday in October with a garden party lunch. A particularly gruelling choice of festivity considering when we returned from France in January you couldn't see much garden beyond the weeds. I would look out of the window with a newborn baby and the garden would reflect the chaos of my life.

After repetitive gardening behaviour and lots and lots of hard slog (day after day, week after week and with much thanks to Allister who laughed when I told him I was planning a party in my garden) we managed to achieve this:

It was about 3 weeks too early for the roses so I compensated with pink Chinese lanterns which I strung along the fence and clustered in different shades and sizes under the umbrellas. I had Tamar Valley Roses

in posies of different pinks, which my mum brought down from Launceston, and pink lillies on the long table set for thirty.

I had a glam Collette Dinnigan dress covered in foxgloves and dressed my whole family in pink for the occasion. The children were then disbursed to carefully prearranged playdates and sleepovers around town - I spent months acruing credit. Tobes was delivered back around 6pm when he had a lovely time wandering around smacking all of the ladies on the bottom. 

My friend Mary, who lives up the road and trained as a pastry chef in New York, did the food. She was worded up that she was working to a pink, floral theme that was to be top heavy with dessert inspired by French patisserie:

Mary has just started up her own business Gourmania Food Tours where she leads you on a taste of Hobart. It is a fabulous way to explore the city as Mary knows all of the provedores, pubs and restaurants and all of the produce. If you are interested in food you will love it!

She did an amazing job doing the food for my party and made vichyssoise garnished with herbs and borage flowers picked from my garden,  pissaladiere, lemon tarts with lemons grown on my tree, religious a la rose inspired by Laduree in Paris, chocolate marquise cake, macarons etc etc etc.

However , the best thing about my party was that I shared it with 30 of the nicest people I know. I had friends from school:

old friends who made the effort to travel vast distances:

and friends who live nearby (one of whom came dressed as Errol Flynn who grew up 2 doors down):

And a merry time was had by all - it was well after midnight when we finally turned the lights out. Did I mention that we also had pink drinks........!

R