Why I thought having a baby in January was a good idea, I will never know. Nature clearly decided a belated Christmas gift was exactly what I needed. I am only moaning because this year Christmas in our new house on the Island has been a constant stream of guests, food, linen changes and washing up and then precisely 8 days later, it was LOD’s 6th birthday party. This year we had a Beauty and the Beast party.

Don’t get me wrong, part of the move here was about having more space to house more visitors and hold great parties at home but shooweee, it’s been HECTIC! Fun, but HECTIC!

LOD obviously wanted a ‘Belle’ cake and so I took on the challenge. A few years back I made a Barbie-esque cake for LOD’s 3rd birthday using 3 stacked sponges and carving the skirt before inserting a whole Barbie (http://rodslifelondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-new-year-new-challenge.html). This was tricky to ice and so I thought this year I would give baking in a tiffin tin a go.

Luckily in Ryde, we have an awesome cake shop called Iced Inspirations and they hire out tiffin tins for the hefty price of 75p per day. I also discovered that you can buy half Barbie dolls for cakes – who knew these existed? So armed with these two items, I felt sure this was within my baking skill set….

It’s probably important at this point to say that LOD looked at the Barbie and said ‘it doesn’t look like Belle’. Fortuitously, my lovely sister-in-law-to-be-we-hope was staying and she is a genius with a paintbrush and small faces (Polymer People) so she added some life to Belle. I added the ribbon as her dress top.

I did a lot of research on baking in a tiffin tin and followed the following tips:

• fill the tin with water and weigh the water. The use 1 egg for each 500g and that will indicate what quantity of cake batter you need. I needed an 8 egg recipe (doubled the Lorraine Pascale Crouching Tiger Hidden Zebra cake recipe without the cocoa or orange zest)
• Cook low and slow. I set the fan oven to 160C and cooked for 1hr 45mins
• Put a metal skewer in the centre of the batter to get more even heat distribution.

To be fair, when the cake emerged, it looked amazing. It rose over the top, had a lovely golden crusty outside and seemed cooked through. I cut off the bit that rose over the top and turned it upside down to form the skirt. Woohoo! Job done! Hahahahahaha…….. what I couldn’t see was that the inside was hollow and there was a fair bit of cake batter oozing about (I did the skewer test and everything…). Pants. So, we cut out the middle, scraped the uncooked bits away and covered it in yellow butter icing. The results, while both looking and tasting great were not quite as masterful as I had imagined. Tiffin baking is not for amateurs…….

No matter, one small boy at the party came up to me and I said ‘that’s the best cake I have ever seen and tasted!’ And that folks, is all that matters…..well that and no parents have phoned to say their children have food poisoning. EEROD wants an Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) cake in August. I think I shall go back to stacking those sponges.

In other news:

• So, we moved to the Island in August 2015 and have taken to Island life well. Runs on the seafront, pilates and a weekly buggy walk all now feature in my life
• LOD will be 6 tomorrow. EEROD is 3yrs 4months and little ACOD is coming up to 6 months. 2015 flew by!
• I have done some great sewing since moving and each child now has a new princess dress. I hope IoW affords me more time to sew

• ACOD has started solids and shares my love of food! 
• I need to start thinking about what on earth I am going to do work wise…… watch this space. 
• I am going to buy this http://theisleofwighter.com/buy-the-book/ and get out and try new places
• I got two new cookbooks for Christmas (Nigel Slater and JO) and the previous owners of our new house left me (amongst other nice things) a Lorraine Pascale. I think this year, I will tray and do something from each every month. We shall see how that goes. The Belle cake comes from the LP one so 1 down and 35 to go…….