Ali bakes a child's birthday cake

I feel like I am heading towards the motherhood blogs with this post, but I actually made a child's birthday cake of sorts on the weekend, so here it is.

Once upon a time, during my high school days, I was actually quite the baking queen. I could whip up sponge cake without a recipe, stir up choux pastry, make unsinkable souffles  ... None of which I think I have attempted since I finished high school.

We actually had this group system, if you will, at my church, where, instead of weekly bible studies, perhaps owing to the large number of families, we had fortnightly Koinonia groups, that met on a Sunday afternoon. These started with lunch together, then there was a bible study, then there was afternoon tea. As a single working mother, who didn't like cooking, my how my mother hated the food-bringing element of these gatherings. (There is a lot of carting food-for-sharing about in country churches, which doesn't fill everyone with glee.) This was the source of a fortnightly weekend stress, as my Mum tried to come up with an alternative to zucchini slice. So I soon figured out that I could do my part, and go some way towards holding up the good repute of our family household in these Sunday bake-offs, by baking up a treat to take along for the afternoon tea. (I'm sure they weren't really competitive events, but when everyone stands around the table exclaiming in delight over someone's dish/cake, how is that not a bake-off?) I think no-one was more surprised than my own mother at what I brought along. (Just writing this post has whetted my appetite for one of my simpler creations: the custard teacake. This had custard powder in the actual cake mix and a layer of custard baked into the middle of the cake. I need to make that again.)

But why did I write all that, when what comes next is now sure to deflate those expectations? (The truth is, these days I hardly ever bake anything at all, because I don't want to eat cakes and slices myself, and don't necessarily want to feed them to other people either, and I think I've lost it.)

I actually had the pleasure of seeing my sister, brother-in-law and nieces and nephew on the weekend. They made a flying visit because my brother-in-law's brother got married here in Sydney. The wedding was on Friday, so they were mine on Saturday. It was also my nephew's 4th birthday. We had planned to go to Luna Park for an outing, but the weather was threatening rain, and after the latest night of the children's little lives, after being flower girl and page boy in the wedding, everyone was not quite in their best form. So they came to my flat, we had cake and presents, then we went to the nearby playground. (My nephew had had a little party up in Queensland with his friends before he came, so I wasn't feeling too much pressure to provide all the celebration.)

But without further ado, here is the cake. All I did was cut a bit off the sides of basic round mud cake, turn that into wings, then use icing and lollies (bananas, marshmallows and M and Ms) to decorate it. He loves penguins, so penguin it was. (And I loved that the kids got all excited and were calling it a baby penguin. It wasn't particularly meant to be a baby, but obviously it had baby proportions). I'm feeling a bit embarrassed about the smears on the plate in this picture, but it was kind of one step forward two steps backward trying to wipe the excess icing off the plate, and I gave up.

And here is the birthday boy, with one of my foot poofs on his head, because that is what little boys do when they come over - they put your furniture on their heads.

He normally refuses to look at cameras, so I am feeling quite successful because I got two photos of the front of his face.

And the way to delight a four-year-old boy is relentless swing-pushing from his Mum.