Catrin joins the shoe club

Now Catrin loooves shoes... we all know that... so what

better birthday treat than double chocolate dancing shoe cookies?

You make some chocolate-rich cookie dough, chill it in the

fridge, then roll it out and use a shoe-shaped cookie cutter.

Then you bake them, let them cool, and slather them with
melted chocolate. 85% cocoa if possible...

Then the fun part... who knew you could dye caster sugar

with food colouring? Thanks "Cupcakes Cheesecakes Cookies

By The Australian Women's Weekly". And thanks to Jez &

Tanya who bought me the book for Christmas!

You add some strategically-placed silver and gold balls,

then the coloured sugar... and then... because I'm obsessed

with edible glitter and sparkling vampires and they weren't

quite ridiculous-looking enough... I scattered a whole load of

holographic glitter all over them.

Catrin was very pleased to finally be a part of the shoe club...
And check out those Louboutins!

Thanks to David Reffell for the marvellously surreal pics.
Check out his other work here.

Lily's 1st birthday cupcake party

Scott and I were very excited to receive an invitation to

Lily's 1st birthday celebration... a cupcake party no less.

I went for classic vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream

icing, but loaded each one up with different colourful toppings.

After eating a few savoury snacks, our hostess was keen to get her

chops round a cupcake, so pretty much stuffed one in whole.

Toppings included fruity jelly beans, dolly mixture, mini

marshmallows, jelly tots and lots of glitter, but Lily's favourites

were the glittery foam ice cream cones.

Yum.

The devil eats food cake: Arthur's birthday

Arthur is a big chocolate fan, so a rich devil's food cake was

the perfect choice for her birthday...

You have to cook a huge chocolate cake, whose 'secret' ingredient

is chocolate custard, then leave it to cool... before cutting into

layers. Next, mix up a huge batch of chocolate icing and then

cement it all together...

I wasn't sure if that was quite enough chocolate, so I added

some dark chocolate shavings for good measure.

The cake weighed about 4 stone, but I managed to transport it into

the office intact before it was attacked with Sandra's scary knife.

Most importantly, it went down very well with cake face.