After a few ideas (like making a cake model of a Mini!) I decided it was best to keep it simple. I already had a silicone rectangular cake tin, so based on that, I thought a simple sponge with white icing, a 30 in black icing which would be the track and a mini cooper cake topper. How easy…

First of all I needed to find a firm sponge so I tested out a Madeira recipe from a cake decorating book I have. It worked well and Anthony even did a taste test for me under the guise that it had come from my mums work! hehe…

Next, I wanted to make my own icing. So after taking over my mum and dads kitchen and covering it in icing sugar I came to the conclusions I wouldn’t be able to (a) make a piece big enough to cover the cake/roll it out to an even thickness or (b) get it from the worktop to the cake (it was rather sticky!). I decided quite quickly that I’d use a ready rolled fondant icing instead.

Making the cake
I made the madeira sponge 3 days before the big day and the sponge turned out well. After leaving it overnight I turned up at my mum and dads house (our kitchen is too small) ready for some cake decorating… with my mum looking after Elodie I set about triming the sponge (cakes in silicone tins splay out at the sides!). Triming the cake was a time consuming and delicate job as I was scared a huge chunk of cake would come off!

Once I’d managed to make the cake more rectangular I set about splitting it in half and filling it with a thin layer of raspberry jam and buttercream. With a little help from my mum we managed to put the cake back together in one piece.

Next, I covered the cake in a very small amount of warmed marmalade to allow the icing to stick and started to ice it… I have to admit at the point I was rather lucky with the ready roll icing – I could only get a circular one which just fitted over the rectangular cake with a little nip and tuck ;)

I had bought a block of pre-coloured black fondant icing. With some careful rolling out I cut out my 30 and with my mums help again, we transferred the numers to the cake (they were very flimsy!).

It had taken a few hours to get to this point! So I was relieved to put the finishing touches to the cake (white icing for road markings and a black ribbon to hide the bottom of the icing!) and we put it away in a cake tin until his birthday.

Anthony seemed to like his cake but I think he enjoyed the driving experience even more – I thought I was giving him something to pacify his love of Minis when all I seem to have done is make it worse :) Ah well…

Here are some pictures of the cake and one of Anthony enjoying his present…

I also have my eye on this summer spelt recipe from Mostly Eating – keep up the good work Sophie!

The courgette is basted in a dressing of olive oil, sugar and chilli flakes and is then griddled.  The courgettes are then added to a mozzarella, tomato and basil panzanella.

I haven’t much foodieness to write about just now (except the discovery of smoked brie – oh my goodness it tasted soooooooo nice) – so I shall share a few recent pictures including Elodie helping herself to my doughballs in Pizza Express :)

Now, I’ not sure if I’ve missed something but the lentils started to dry out quickly in the pan so I tweaked the recipe slightly, added a little cream and we ended up with this…

Ingredients

• 1 Tin of green lentils
• Coriander
• 1 Clove of garlic
• 1 Small onion
• 1 Teaspoon Ground cumin seeds
• 1 medium chilli finely chopped and de-seeded
• 1 Tablespoon double cream
• 6 Tbsp water
• 2 Tuna Steaks
• 4 Tomatoes

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°c
2. Halve the tomatoes and roast for 30 minutes – start the rest of the cooking after 15 minutes
3. Finely chop the onion, garlic and chilli
4. Put lentils in a a pan with the copped onion, garlic and chilli and the cumin seeds
5. Add 6 tablespoons of water to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes
6. Meanwhile start to griddle the Tuna – ours were well cooked
7. When lentils are cooked, take off heat and stir through the double cream then add the coriander leaves
8. Serve Tuna on top of lentils with roasted tomatoes around the side

But it’s the happy times I wanted to (eventually) share with you all and the reason I have been off my food.  We’ve been baking a little baby :)

The other good news is that I am just about back to eating more ‘normally’ and am even venturing into the kitchen again.  It is the only time I have ever been off my food and Hubby didn’t know what to do with himself when all I could managed for tea was a crumpet!

I’ve held off until today to blog about this as it was our 20 week anomaly scan this morning.  All seems to be ok and it looks like the Little One is going to be a girl – despite us both thinking it would be a blue one!

So in the last 20 weeks, this is what we’ve been baking ;)…

My mum kindly offered my services a few weeks back to bake some cakes for the cake stall at the Zoes Place Summer Fete.

It seemed like a great idea at the time, come Saturday evening post-baking it seemed altogether exhausting.  We arrived to set up our stall very last minute, but despite the rush, it was nothing less than a huge success.

Every year Zoe’s have a cake stall & the local Greggs bakers supply them with numerous freebies to sell so we had a front stall of homemade cakes and a side stall of Greggs baked goodies.  I am pleased to say that the homemade cakes sold out quickly & we were left with lots of Greggs muffins and cookies but by the end of the day everything had been eaten.

Between us, we made:

• 3 sandwich cakes
• tray of rocky road
• tray of mars bar rice crispy bake
• 24 sponge cakes with icing
• 24 rolo cupcakes
• chocolate muffins
• blueberry muffins
• chocolate cornflake cakes

We’re not sure of the final figure but it looks like we made just over £200 which will be doubled by my mum’s work, so it was certainly worth an exhausting days baking.

Ingredients

• 2 Tuna Steaks
• 1 lime
• 1 red chilli
• Olive oil
• Tin of mixed beans (Soya beans, Chick Peas, Pinto Beans, Black Eye Beans, Red Kidney Beans & Aduki Beans)
• Mixed salad leaves – we used rocket, spinach and watercress
• 3 tomatoes

Method

• Rinse Tuna & put in a dish so that they can lie down next to each other
• Squeeze juice of lime & a good glug of olive oil over tuna
• Chop chilli finely & add to tuna – cover dish & pop in fridge for 20 minutes
• Put griddle pan on to heat up
• Drain tin of bean & rinse well
• Put tuna in griddle pan, pour over excess liquid, season with salt and pepper – cook as you like it
• Place a good handful of leaves on a plate, sprinkle over a good handful of beans & place tomatoes around the side
• Place tuna steak on top of salad & serve

Delicous and healthy, even if I do say so myself.