Gruffalo cake
The Gruffalo is a big deal in our house. Whether the books or on TV, it’s always a big hit with Maya. So when we needed to celebrate and reward a particular potty training milestone (I won’t go into details here), a gruffalo cake seemed like a great idea.
The idea comes from Gruffalo Crumble and other recipes – The Gruffalo Cookbook, which is a lovely book full of ideas to make food exciting and gruffalo-themed for the kids (and a little bit for the adults too).
Anyone who knows me will know that I have a pretty major sweet tooth. In fact, I’ve pretty much got a mouth full of sweet teeth. Cake, biscuits, sweets, chocolate – I love them all. And I’ve got zero will power so I eat far too much of them. So when I was introduced, recently, to Slattery’s in Manchester I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
A battalion of marshmallow snowmen
Following on from the success of our kids Halloween party, we thought it would be nice to get people together for another little party, this time for Christmas.
It was a family affair this time, except the Keanes from around the corner who just seem to turn up uninvited to everything are like family.
We always try to put on a decent spread for a party and, as usual in our house, I dealt with the savoury while Samana took care of the sweet.
Chocolate peppermint shortbread
I cook the majority of the meals in our house, but baking is definitely Samana’s domain. She made this delicious chocolate peppermint shortbread one evening last week having picked up a recipe card at Waitrose. Eating these brought to mind those chocolates with mint fondant filling that always appear at Christmas, which is no bad thing at all.
Feeding time at the zoo 