Sweet and salty Christmas treat

I love making this traybake.  A few times The Team have even requested I make a double batch, so we can keep one, ha ha.  It really is that good.  Such a taste sensation of salty nuts and sweet chocolate....  Mmmm. A friend's sister is pregnant at the moment, and had fallen in love with a photo from my Facebook page of another traybake and had been craving it.  But I hadn't managed to locate any Reese's pieces for a reasonable price (£1.50 per 50g bag was a tad ridiculous I felt) so the friend chose this one for her.  I delivered it in one piece, and I believe it was cut and placed in a gorgeous Santa tin, to be given as a Christmas gift.  Oooh, what a lucky girl!

My blog made an order!

There's a new family that have moved into our area, and one of the children has joined Mini-1's class.  They get along well, and we've walked home from school together a few times.  I was chatting with the Mum one day to arrange a playdate after school for the girls, and gave her one of my business cards so she had my contact details. 

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that she'd spent the following morning reading my blog!  She says she really enjoyed it, and was very keen to taste the Sweet and Salty traybake.  A great choice, as it's very more-ish.  I had a busy week and weekend coming up, so she decided to have it for today, as it was her 19th wedding anniversary.

The cut one is an extra tray I made for us.  I mean, this stuff is so good that it's hard to give away.  (although I was good, and cut it into about 60 little bite-size pieces and thus shared them with the girls' school teacher, who loved them too!!)

Customer service matters. As does great cake...

As the school's here went back half-way through last week, all the toddler groups and extra-curricular activities resumed this week.  So we went back to Mini-1's sports classes and Mini-2's playgroups.  Friday morning's is my favourite, because I've met so many lovely mums there and enjoy catching up with them most weeks.  However, at about age 4 Mini-1 kind of outgrew it, as the 4yr olds tend to get morning nursery places in that area and both Mini-1 and Mini-2 had/have afternoon places.  Thus there is a predominance of 1, 2 and young 3 year olds so less kids for Mini-2 to play with.  As such, we may not go there so much from now on :(

But on to the point of this post - two mums spoke with me about cake (how exciting) at Friday's group, and I was able to help them both.  One wanted an Octonauts cake that I felt was a bit beyond my current capabilities, and the other wanted a traybake for guests coming over on Sunday.  I was able to help the first lady by suggesting other local bakers, more proficient at sugarcraft than I, and thrill the other lady with a golden sparkly Sweet & Salty Crunch Slice at short notice - so everyone was happy!

It doesn't look like much in the tray, but it sure does taste good!!

Heidi's birthday traybake

One of the toddler group helpers/ex-mums (i.e her youngest child is at school now) had her birthday the day after mine, and was planning birthday drinks at hers the week after.  And couldn't decide between little pink mini cupcakes to go with the Prosecco, or wee tidbits of traybake to go with coffee at the end.  Independently we came to the conclusion that the latter would work better, and after some deliberation she chose our Sweet & Salty Crunch Nut slice with pink sparkle.  I find it hard to take an attractive photo of an entire traybake, but hopefully you get the idea.

It went down a storm too, if the comments on our Facebook page are anything to go by!

Traybakes on order

Okay, so you probably can't tell properly from the photo, but this is two sparkly golden trays of Rocky Road and Sweet & Salty Nut Crunch Slice, made to order for Deb's fundraising coffee afternoon last week.  She was planning to cut them up, bag them and sell them as part of the afternoon's plans and I believe the whole thing went well for her. 

Sorry Rich, sweet & salty crunch nut slice

We caught up with an old friend today, Rich, meeting at Stirling Castle (about halfway between our cities).  He is an avid follower of our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/beccabakes2) and so knows that we bake often.  Thus he was most disappointed when we arrived empty-handed.  I was secretly pleased, because I didn't think he'd mind.  So, as a way to ensure I don't disappoint anyone else this week, I whipped up a Sweet & Salty Crunch Nut Slice for our picnic lunch at Falkland Palace tomorrow (yet again, about halfway between us and tomorrow's friends).  We're seeing different friends on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'm not yet sure what we'll do for that.  Cupcakes are the best bet, because a batch goes a long way... But we've done them a lot lately, so perhaps something new?  Or at least different.  Any ideas?