cupcakes

For a very special person in my life, a copy of a really simple, completely flop proof cupcake recipe.

Vanilla Cup Cakes

125g butter
150g sugar
3 eggs (room temperature)
5ml vanilla essence
280g cake flour
15ml baking powder
2ml salt
125ml milk

1. Beat butter and sugar together. Add eggs and beat until light and creamy. Add vanilla essence

2. sift flour, baking powder adn salt and add, with milk to the egg mixture.
Mix well. Fill paper cups or patty pan tins to two-thirds full.

3. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees C for 13 minutes

Makes about 24.

Doggie Parlour

OOHHH Look Daddy, I am now nice and clean.

Gran generously decided to pay for the dogs to go to the parlour to be washed, trimmed and nails clipped.

Great excitement for Splash and Kelly to be able to jump in the car, Scamp on the other hand ran for the hills, after finally getting her into the car, it was off to school with the boys, with the dogs steaming up the back windows.

I thought it had all gone really well until when I went to fetch them and they jumped in the car, did we realise that one of them [probably Scamp] had in fact gotten sick in the car, so trying to keep them from standing in it, whilst making sure they didn't jump out the car into the road, was great fun. but we did it and now they are home again, with bows and ribbons in their hair to prove it.

Christmas decorations

Had to share my latest 2 Christmas decorations I bought at the local supermarket.

Unfortunately we don't have Christmas stores here, I think if we did, we would probably have shares in it though.

Aren't they cute?

You know when you get one of those recipes that is just too good to be true, well this is one of them, the easiest to do and so impressive looking.

Have fun.

CHOCOLATE ECLAIRS

250ml (1Cup) water 4 eggs

115g butter 250 ml cream stiffly whipped (use Orley Whip)

250ml cake flour 100g chocolate

pinch of salt

Oven 200ºC. Grease a large baking sheet

Bring water and butter to the boil in a medium sized pot. Immediately add the flour and salt in one go, stirring with a wooden spoon until mixture forms a paste and no longer sticks to the sides of the pot.

Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.

The mixture should form a stiff, glistening paste. You may not need to use all the eggs. Let the paste cool.

Drop teaspoons of the mixture on the greased baking sheet, spacing the rounds about 4 cm apart.

This mixture can also be piped onto the baking sheet.

Sprinkle with a little water to create steam.

Bake at 200º for 10 min. Reduce heat to 180º for another 15minutes

Allow them to cool.

Cut into each puff from one side and open just wide enough to insert nozzle of a piping bag. Fill puffs with the stiffly beaten cream and dip in melted chocolate.

Allow the chocolate to harden

Halloween

Its that time of the year and I am so pleased that my neighbours have young kids, as our kids are too old and too cool to go trick or treating.

Just spent the evening with Sam and Nicole and Shelly, planning what we want to do on Saturday night. Should be good fun, blocking off the road, putting wine barrels and fire pits in the road and just chilling out in the street.

We have a small note we are sending out to our neighbours to invite them to attendand if no one comes, we will just party by ourselves.

Yay!!

TEENAGERS

Well last night was an interesting evening, after carting 9 kids in the car, they all went off to a party. The latest trend with the teenagers is that someone books a venue, provides music and bouncers and publishes it on facebook, then ALL the kids arrive, pay their R40 - R50 cover charge and party the night away.

The problem with these parties are all the looser older kids 20+ that arrive and want to be cool, so they come with drinks and offer it to the younger kids.

Last night when I went to pick the kids up, they climbed in the car and I could smell straight away that one of them had been drinking, but 5 large 16year olds in a small Yaris, I couldn't work out who it was.

Well it didn't take me long as by the time we got home, one of them leaned out the window as we pulled into the garage and proceeded to throw up - LOVELY!!

He then stumbled into the house and passed out on the bed - now I was in a dilemma, has the child got alcohol poisoning, do I phone his folks to come fetch him? Rob was out on patrol so called him and he came home, managed to get the guy awake and outside to drink water. 4 glasses later the guy stumbled back to bed and passed out - this morning he came through rather sheepishly and apologised - but truthfully I don't think he learnt his lesson and will be doing it again.

Claims he can't remember what he drank, or how much - hmmmmmm . . . .

Was very pleased though that Chris wasn't part of this, although he does claim he was offered drinks as well. Oh the joys!!!

ENGLAND 2011

So finally after who knows how long, it's time to update my blog. No dogs. Cats, pool, house or other worries, time to just sit and relax. A glass of beer, the fire is on, dinner on the go and time all to myself.

After a long flight, we landed at Heathrow and had our usual wait for the taxi to shuttle us to the car hire company. When we got there, they had upgraded our car (thank goodness) because we have quite a lot of luggage, and plan to fill it with loads more once we hit the shops. We arrived at Martin and Anne-Marie's place in Blackheath and met gorgeous little Harry, their latest addition to the family – what a cute baby and so good! Don't envy them though, we were chatting about 'nursery' costs for them when they send Harry, and it's going to cost around GBP1100 per month, that's roughly R12 200 per month, HECTIC!!!!!

Had a lovely time walking around the village, had lunch at the local pub and spending the evening chatting and catching up. This morning we hit the road and drove down to Newquay in Cornwell. We stopped along the way to see "Stonehenge" which Rob had always told us was just a bunch of rocks, well it pretty much is, but now we can say we have done that. Cannot believe how busy it was there with all the tour buses.

We also bought ourselves an annual 'heritage pass' which allows us unlimited visits to all the heritage sites around England, and just 3 visits already pays for the card, so money well spent.

We arrived at our timeshare which is very nice and then hit the shops for some groceries. We cannot believe how cheap things are here, we bought a trolley load of stuff including a braai, big thermos flask, cooler bags, beer, cheese and biscuits, food, simple groceries from salt and pepper etc etc and the total bill was GBP149, I can tell you now that it would have been well over R2500 for the same trolley load in Cape Town. An example is Boursin Cheese which in Woolworths costs R55+ here costs GBP1 – GO FIGURE!!! A bottle of spray on olive oil – GBP1.99,We took a stroll around the town and cannot believe the number of 'stag' and 'hen' parties going on, appears to be quite the party town.

The braai is on, veg in the oven and boys playing cards after having played ball games for around an hour. Tomorrow we are off to either Lands End or Tintagel, we'll see how we feel in the morning.

Lands End

Can you believe today we got SUNBURNT!! It's only 22 degrees here today and we managed to get sunburnt, so we will need to make stop tomorrow and buy some sunscreen. At least we fit in with all the Brits now, they are all walking around like bright red tomato's.

This morning after a late sleep in, we worked our way down to St Ives where we wondered around the town and the boys got ice-creams. St Ives is a lovely little village on the coast and FULL of people wondering around. We then continued on to Lands End where we had our customary photograph taken and will have them posted back to Cape Town. I loved this sign on the building . . . Next stop was Marazion – St Michaels Mount where we again scratched around the fishing village after a walk on the beach. Found some lovely ring stands here and had our scones and jam and clotted cream. It was quite amazing driving around the countryside here, it is so similar to the Western Cape when you go up the garden route. We are home now and about to start another BBQ, the sun is still shining brightly, feels like it's about 3.30, when it's actually 7pm. After dinner we are going to wonder down to the beach here at the resort and take some photo's of the stunning sunset.

Boys Waterpolo

Podering

Some days as I sit in the school traffic I wish we had a system like they do in America where there are school buses that the kids can catch to school.

I just look at my road and the roads surrounding it and know of so many kids all heading off to the same schools, yet we don't have lift clubs like I did when I was at school, because we are all just to busy and self absorbed to be bothered to try and co-ordinate it.

I must also say this is the one time I do have my 2 teenage boys as a captive audience and find out interesting things from them in the car - if the music isn't at top volume and we aren't all bopping along in the traffic to it.

I was talking to one of my clients yesterday and we got onto the topic of the kids calling out 'shotgun the front' when they want to sit in front instead of their sibling - who would have guessed that it stems from the good old fashioned days of horse and carriage and when there used to be 'armed guards' with their shotgun that sat up front next to the driver. Sometime we just forget to stop and smell the roses, as a friend said our lives are like a treadmill that keep running, hopping off every now and then to fetch kids, cook dinner, go to work - we need to climb off and take a break.