January 20th: Chirp cake

This one comes a bit late! Kept thinking I should talk about Olivia's birthday. Let's back up.

For Christmas, I received Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. After flipping through it and finding some recipes that didn't look too crazy elaborate, I decided cupcakes would be a good way to go for Olivia's birthday. When I approached her with the idea, however, she had her own thoughts:

"I was thinking I would have a cake with a face on it."

"A face? What kind of face?"

At this point, I am picturing Ariel or Dora. I will have to rent a cakepan from Bulk Barn and try my hand at decorating. Oh no.

"A Chirp face?"

"Chirp! What a great idea!"

What a relief.

Let's back up more. Last September, Chirp magazine celebrated 15 years with a birthday issue, including, amongst other birthday articles, how to make a Chirp cake! Smarty pants Olivia remembered this, and so I made a Chirp cake for her birthday. It was easy to make, easy to decorate, and tasted pretty good too.

Chirp cake

1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla

dried mango slices
2 doughnuts
yellow and blue icing*
1 pretzel

Preheat oven to 350F (180C).

In a small bowl, combine flour and baking powder. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together until thick. Whisk in milk, oil and vanilla, then flour mixture. Whisk until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Pour the mixture into a round, greased baking pan, and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Let the cake cool.

Remove the cake from pan. Spread yellow icing over the top and sides of the cake. Decorate the cake with dried mangoes for the beak, a pretzel for Chirp's feather and doughnuts filled with blue icing for his eyes.

I did end up using Martha's buttercream icing recipe. I thought the directions were a bit over the top, but followed them, and it appears Martha knows what she's about. It was delectable. I made the full recipe, then divided it into two bowls and added food colouring till I had decent blue and yellow icing for decorating as above.

Word to the wise: all the kids wanted eyes, so I ended up making extra eyes on the spot.

BTW. Next year, she might be too old for Chirp. But maybe not. And maybe I'll make Chirp (and Tweet and Squawk) CUPcakes!

Birthday girl, turning 5!

February 14th: chocolate-dipped strawberries

We ordered Valentine's Day dinner for the four of us from The Red Apron. It was, simply put, amazing. And affordable. No idea how they make money by providing so much delicious food for so little. I didn't take any pictures of our 4-course meal. Probably should have.

BUT! I promised Olivia we would make chocolate-dipped strawberries for Valentine's Day. These turned out great. I melted dark chocolate chips in my makeshift double boiler and set Olivia to work dipping. I put the plate in the fridge to harden up the chocolate and the only mistake I made was not putting waxed or parchment paper on the plate; the bottom half of the chocolate stuck on. G&O had no problem picking off the leftover bits to eat though.

February 10th: whole roasted cauliflower

Came across this one on Chatelaine's website and had to give it a go. I love cauliflower, but G&O, not so much. This one, though, they all dug, S too! How to roast a whole cauliflower with 4 ingredients.