My Mom came to visit!

The last 3 weeks have been so very special as my Mom came to visit. We had half term, A’s birthday and snow! I’ve done lots of cooking and baking in those 3 weeks but not blogging… so where to start? Well the major event over this time was A’s birthday and I decided to tackle a piñata cake and I am so glad I did as the look on his face said it all! He’s now asked if he could have a piñata cake every year :-). It was a 4 layer cake (2 vanilla and 2 chocolate) with chocolate buttons and sweets in the middle and more for decorations.

I did make a mistake on the vanilla layers – don’t ever put in the wrong raising agent!! I accidentally grabbed the Bicarb instead of Baking Powder (the containers are the same size and shape to my defence) and they cooked but had a slight bicarb flavour. Fortunately the chocolate layers were fine and there was more than enough cake to last us all week. I also made cupcakes which the children decorated. That’s still a skill I need to practice – icing and decorating a cake – mine still have the homemade look! It was such fun preparing for the big day!

The challenge with half term (and the extra few days they had off due to the snow!) is that the children are at home and needing feeding on a very regular basis. There were a fair few peanut butter sandwiches consumed by A… But my mom helped entertain them too!

I did make another variety of baked granola bars with honey and chocolate spread. Delicious!

Oat, honey and chocolate spread flapjacks (courtesy of allrecipes online, but adapted by me!)

• 50g porridge oats

• 55g soft brown sugar (reduced from the original amount)

• 5 tablespoons melted butter

• 4 tablespoons honey

• 3 tablespoons chocolate spread (we used a white and milk duo one we have at the moment)

• 1 to 2 handfuls dried ingredients, such as chopped nuts or sultanas (optional - I didn't add anything into ours this time)

Mix the oats and sugar in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until combines. Bake at 180C in a small tin for about 15 minutes. The advice from allrecipe website was to take them out slightly soft and leave them to cool and harden which I did - and this worked perfectly!