Birthday cake

We spent the weekend in Wales with my parents. It was my lovely Mum's birthday.

Made her a cake (one of my day zero project goals is that I a make a cake for each of the 'rents, the boyf and my baby bro). 
Mum loves raspberries + I wanted something that looked festive.

The recipe is from redonline. As mentioned on Friday, it did not seem to be rising in the middle. The boyf, who has never made a cake in his life, said it would be fine...and it was.

The recipe calls for cocoa, I only had drinking chocolate so I used loads less than needed cause it has so much sugar in. The recipe also calls for chocolate swirls. Witness my rubbish attempt. I'm blaming my vegetable peeler not being the right kind. Yeh, a workperson should ALWAYS blame their tools.

As you can see I managed to hack some chips off the white choc block, but as it was Friday night and its not an entry for Great British Bake off, I sacked off the swirls.

How shaming is the melted handle of my potato peeler? I have melted a peeler, a knife and the edges of 2 chopping boards on my gas hob accidentally. So easily done...

Here's the finished article after being transported in the car for over 2 hours around about 76 roundabouts.

The birthday girl loved it. Yay!It was gooood. I was certain I was on to a good thing as it contained cream and white choccie to mask any cake deficiencies. The raspberries seemed to balance the sweetness of the white choc well.

Slice shot. 
More importantly how stunning is Mum's art deco style plate? She was gifted 6 of them from a house clearance and they are a work of art. I'm surprised I was allowed to hold one as I am mildly clumsy.

After burning off the cake calories on a hilly walk in the late afternoon sunshine this raspberry cider went down a treat. This raspberry Stella Artois cidre must be new and is only £1.50 on offer right now. Worth it for the price!

I should have taken the shot at another angle to the right of the empty bottle is a view down the valley. Instead you get the neighbours shed! Photography is an under-rated skill.

Been so busy got loads to catch you up on.

Sunny x