Anyone for cake.

Anyone who knows me knows that we always make birthday cakes in this house. You don't buy a birthday cake you create it with love. That's what my mother always did and that's what we do too. My husband was new to the idea of homemade cake when we had our first 1st birthday, (actually he was in Afghanistan but that's by the by), but now he has come to relish the idea of cake time. He even made the figures for our second's Christening cake himself. We have often been found the night before a birthday or party up in the small hours trying to get the cake finished in time, there was a memorable occasion when he went to the 24hr ASDA at around 2 am for more fondant as we had run out and Thomas the Tank Engine was half bare. We have never been quite that bad since we did run out of green food colouring but I remembered a stash of fondant pre coloured which we bought for a minion in Germany, the boxes of pre coloured were new on the shelve and only came in a box of three colours red, yellow and green. The yellow was all used up but we had about 4 packs of green still. I think that must have been for Mike Radowski (?) not sure on the spelling the small green guy from Monsters Inc. There have been a number of cake tales and I am sure there will be many more. But I thought I would share my two most recent makes with you.

Following on from his Minion theme last year, (Minion bowling), we had a request for Minions on a bouncy castle. I cheated and ordered the figures. He loved it.

Top shot of all the Minions. The party cake went down well. It was banana and chocolate with vanilla pillars. There was a slice left that ended up going to the birds as it had gone a bit hard.

The second cake was for the husband. The people were an added after thought so the size is completely off to the crabs but the original idea was for a rock pool and crabs, we then spent the day out by the coast with friends and had a ball. So I decided to add us.

Three crabs as caught by our sons on the day out and our daughter in a nappy which is how she decided to spend most of the afternoon. She only fell in the sea twice I think. And our boys on the edge of the pool. We were too big to stand on the cake so are propped up next to it.

I made a third cake today because two in two weeks isn't enough. . . As our son's birthday is in the holidays his party was before his birthday which is the first time it's been so far from his birthday so we have made a cake for birthday tea tomorrow too. I will try and remember to add pictures at a later date.

I must say one thing I learnt this time around was if you are going to make figures do them in advance not on the day. ;)

Real Tomato Sauce.

So we were recently sent a bottle of Hellman's Tomato Ketchup to try for free courtesy of Hellman's.  I insisted our small people and the big one come to that finished the old bottle of supermarket's own before we opened the new one amidst rather a lot of grumbling, but it was almost out.

The bottle we were sent is a different shape to the usual squeezy bottles we get and actually this seemed to work as each of our children, 2, 4 and 6 were able to squeeze a reasonable sized amount without making a mess.

There was a slightly out of the ordinary element of excitement perhaps as we had received it for free but after the initial taste test I received verdicts of 'more Mummy', 'yummy' and 'absolutely yummy'. The large person said, 'I like it it tastes more tomatoey than the other one'.

We had burgers and buns for tea tonight and as I was putting sauce in the buns I realised we had run out already. There was just enough for four buns but the other two had to make do with some garlic herb dip I scavenged from the fridge door. I also noticed that the lid was sauce free. None of the usual build of of sticky gunk around the edges.

The final verdict - We would definitely recommend this new ketchup and we will be buying our own bottle now the free one is finished.