MIL's Birthday

We had a birthday celebration for my MIL on Tues night this week and part of my present for her, I decided to give myself a challenge and bake a nice cake for her. I have been thinking of something like that since last year but my inexperience did not give me the confidence I needed then. I ended up baking Hummingbird cupcakes (a combination of coconut, pineapple and banana cupcakes) with cream cheese icing that did not turn out the way it supposed to be. So anyways, that was last year and I took note to give myself lots of time to research, prepare and do the thing. Well, its always hard to buy prezzies for MIL and the best thing anyone can do to impress her is to make something personally.

I planned to start my research and readings 1 week in advance. However after living with a procrastinator (but he can be really with it for somethings that really matters i.e our relationship) for coming to 3 years, I only started thinking to play with ideas of what to make 2 days before the birthday dinner. Its a good thing that with Josh's way of procrastinating, the limited amount of time given always seemed to squeeze up some creative juices. And I was thankful for that. =)

To the cake that I decided to bake, I thought I would bake a chocolate cake since the gurls (who always love anything that has chocolate) haven't had a chocolate cake for ages. With a handful of printed recipes in mind, I made up this raspberry double chocolate cake with Baileys dark chocolate ganache cake which is moist and chocolate-y but not too rich, a slight tangy taste from the raspberry and a touch of creaminess added by the splash of Baileys.

This cake which is my first in cake decorating did caused a bit of stress as I am still learning to work around Tasha with fiddly stuff like this which I just don't want to mess up. Its moments like these that I can't stand myself being such a perfectionist. I devoted the whole day just praying and making sure that each step goes right and that Tasha don't go around my kitchen sticking her fingers in chocolate, sugar, flour or worse....Baileys..*on second thought, that could have been a great idea to put her to sleep for a longer nap* just kidding lah...

To cut the long story short, the cake was finally baked, cooled, assembled, iced and decorated all with 2 hours to spare for chilling in the fridge before the birthday dinner. And I even manged to squeezed in vacuuming, changing the bedspreads, putting Tashy to sleep (without Baileys of cos!), steal some lavender from my neighbor's garden in between the baking and cooling times.

It turned out that the gurls also baked a chocolate cake and brownies for mum!! lolz! guess everyone felt chocolate deprived. Dinner went well and everyone loved the cakes. I'm already thinking of what to bake for T's 2nd birthday!I should quit talking now...here are some pictures.


The naked truth


Dressed for the party!


Family fav : Lamb roast n veg


Tasha luuuuvvv it too!!! Prob 'cos i don't make such meals at home.


Meg looked like she is about to devour all the chocolate stuff on the table!!!


T was upset cos she wanted one of the white chocolate butterflies.


Hours of hard work gone in a few minutes!!!

As long as it made MIL's happy, thats all it matter....we will be heading to Gold Coast tml for 1 week!! Can't wait!!! Would update soon.....Ta ta!!