Special occasion experimenting

Our friends Jacqueline and Mark recently got engaged, and to celebrate, we baked them a Queen of Sheba cake.

The cake was very French, and was given a warm reception; it doesn't get better than when guests timidly ask if takeaways are allowed! Of course they are! This household encourages it, we love to share our food!



My photography doesn't do it justice. If you look closely, I've piped their initials and lots of little hearts on, in chocolate ganache. I also helped stick on the crushed almonds, but that's it, full credit to my clever man.

Congratulations to Mark and Jacqueline, I'm so thrilled for you both, I hope you don't mind my posting your photo here :)

Thinking about it, hubby is much better at baking than I am. If there's a special occasion, he's quite confident about whipping up a cake...I say confident because 99% of the time it'll be a 'first time' recipe. Meep! Thankfully again, the group agreed that they'd happily guinea pig for all future 'first cakes'. Success!

Going through my hard drive, I've found a few other special occasion experiments.

Pashka, for a Russian flavor on our Easter celebrations, tested out on his parents. Don't worry if you don't have terracota moulds, muslin in picnic cups (with mini holes drilled out of the bottoms) also work.

And here's another one, from the Anzac Day Long Weekend - our dinner catchup with the Douthies and the Caleys. Chocolate pavlova, dark chocolate curls and wild hibiscus flowers. I'm terrified of meringues but they looked like a stroll in the park. The rest of the meal was a flurry of rosemary and a pair of soft roast chooks, and a toast to fallen soldiers. Hubby's grandpa served in the war; a dashing portrait, in uniform, graced the sideboard. Oh yes, rum. Our meal was slightly Anzac themed, so of course the ration rum had to feature somewhere. Try baking layers of sweet pototo in a mixture of brown sugar, rum, allspice and nutmeg.

I digress; my point was to blog about hubby's brilliant special occasion baking. Meep, I really should get the hang of t

his food photography thing, if I'm going to insist on doing it so often!

And speaking of long weekends, hooray for Foundation Day, and hooray for Pyjama Days...unfortunately, we don't have a Foundation Day Cake, but I'm off to persuade hubby that we should...ciao, bunnies!