Citrus Night, Holy Fizz

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!



I love Christmas.  It really is my favourite time of the year.  I love the Christmas tree (I strung popcorn this year, it looks pretty cool), I love the giving and everyone's friendly to one another (unless you're reaching for the last "Princess Charm School" Barbie in Toys R Us that I happen to also be reaching for at exactly the same time then I'm sorry, its handbags at dawn, shoulders down, get out of my way, you are not my friend b***h.  Hell, I promised!).  Most importantly, Le Pose is now 3 and is at the age where she is able to enjoy the innocence and magic of Christmas.  Tonight, for example, is Christmas Eve so we happily sprinkled magic reindeer dust on the patio (I've no idea what that is or how it ended up in my house), put the "Welcome Santa" sign out in the garden and then wrote Santa a welcome note and put the special Christmas Cookies (I have been baking 3 days straight....), milk and carrot out for Santa and his reindeer*.  She is so excited she wouldn't sleep and finally fell asleep somewhere around 10pm.  I remember that excitement and I love seeing her begin to experience it.

Of course as soon as she was in bed we began our own Christmas cheer.

Of course I mean booze.

One of the cookie recipe's (this one) required the zest of 2 lemons and an orange and so I had 3 naked citrus fruits being offensive in the kitchen.  Something had to be done....

So I made a cocktail.

The recipe - Citrus Night, Holy Fizz (by ME!)

Juice of 2 medium sized lemons

Juice of 1 medium sized orange

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 tsp mixed spice (I use my own mix which you can find the recipe for here)

Sparkling wine (prosecco or cava is fine)

1. Put everything (not the fizz) into a sauce pan and place over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves (keep stirring).  Keep the mixture bubbling (simmering) for between 5-10 minutes.  Pour into a heatproof dish to cool.

2. Once cool, put about a teaspoon of the syrup (which should have thickened nicely by now) into the bottom of a wine glass/champagne flute (I didn't want to use my crystal champagne flutes - I randomly don't have any others! - so used a wine glass) and top up with fizz.  Give it a bit of a stir and drink!

Nicely aromatic and fizzy, its a great little change to our usual Christmas Mimosa and yes, this one's all out of my own little head.

xx Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! xx

*She has also learned all about the nativity at nursery and we have also been talking about the important baby born at Christmas.

A birthday cake fit for a Princess!

So yes...it's been a while...

A thousand apologies and I really have no better excuse than simply life got in the way. When I started this blog I was embarking on my client secondment to work with a great bunch of people. This year has simply flown by - I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. Work got really busy, home life seemed to all be piling on top of us and I kept downloading damn viruses on my laptop so couldn't write the posts (I am attempting to write this post on the Blogger app on my iPad....). Plus on top of that, my secondment has finished and I am back into the thick of it with work and 2am finishes are all too frequent. I guess I should be relieved that they aren't all nighters! So again, I apologise...

I NEVER APOLOGISE.

Ask my husband.

So moving very swiftly on. My little one turned 3 on Tuesday!! It's all going so fast - how can she be 3 already?! She really wanted a party so we thought we'd oblige, plus she also recently started nursery 2 mornings a week and has a couple of little friends now. We asked her what kind of a party she wanted and despite our attempts to steer it in certain directions, she was adamant she wanted a princess party (we are currently Disney princess obsessed). So...challenge for me then was a princess themed cake. I eventually settled on a castle cake. Cos that's easy right?!

Having discussed it in depth with my Ma and having looked on the Internet for ideas I knew what I wanted to do and what it would entail....and so instantly started panicking. On top of that, I was then told that I had to go to Prague on business the 3 days immediately before her party. Great. Nothing was going to plan. Eventually I ended up baking 3 square 8x8in cakes the weekend before and stored them in my parents freezer....

Fast forward to Friday and T-1 to party day I arrived back from Prague and, once travel presents were doled out, cuddles were given and Pose's were in bed I set about constructing the cake. Unfortunately I was so pushed for time I didn't take any photos of the actual process however it involved:

>> covering the base cake in white rolled icing (I'm sorry to admit I cheated and bought ready rolled sheets of white icing, I just couldn't afford mistakes and so far I have a meh track record with rolled icing) and inserting lollipop sticks into the centre to provide support for the next layer;

>> cutting the next cake to 4x4in square and covering that with more icing (my corners were sooooo clean!! Well chuffed!!) then butchering a plastic cutting board to sit the little cake on to then put on top of the base cake;

>> taking a small tin can that contained coconut cream, dumping that out, washing and thoroughly drying it and cutting the rim off with a can opener, then using that to cut 4 cakes out of the last big square cake and covering those in rolled icing and attaching them to the base cake;

>> with the assistance of the husband, trimming down 4 wafer ice cream cones, covering one with rolled icing then spraying them with edible blue glittery spray paint (I don't know if paint is the right word but...) and once dried attached to the top of the "turrets";

>> brushing edible gold glitter all over the cake;

>> putting mini-marshmallows all around for ramparts;

>> adding mini-bunting (my mum's contribution) to the top and some other flags, gold balls....

I was really proud of it, especially given how little time I had to get it all done. Pose seemed to really like it and the actual cake tasted pretty good - light and moist (yes, moist, I hate that word).