We built a house, a rice crispy house

Now that I  notice cake and baking-related things a little bit more than I used to (small understatement there, you understand) I couldn't help but notice all the mentions of gingerbread houses at this time of year.  I felt it was possibly a bit beyond me, what with the working and kids and their activities and so forth, so picked up a box kit for a rice crispy house at a local supermarket.  We waited for a suitable afternoon and all got down to the important business of house-building...

 The kit gave you all the ingredients in the right quantities, so we just followed the instructions.

They didn't mention what a mess the marshmallow made of your pots though - this looks like it's gonna take some serious elbow grease to wash!

After pressing the prepared mix into the mould, and putting it in the fridge for the required time, we had our house components.  A little bit of icing was used as the mortar, and the house was ready to be decorated! Both girls were given a side each, some extra mini Smarties and relevant sized sweets and got to it.

The line sprinkles were meant to look like sparkly snow, but kinda got stuck along the way, and all over the work area.

This was mine and Mini-1's side, fairly neat and straight.  We tried to co-ordinate our colours so they made lines along the roof panel.  It sorta worked, right?

And here is Mini-2's side.  She used some of the other sweets and went for a different pattern with her mini Smarties.  

And here's a lovely line-up of all the treats we had available to eat on Christmas day itself, made by our fair hands...

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!!)

Clandestine Cake Club hits Dundee, again

I haven't written for a while, and intend to remedy that... soon.  And what better reason than to tell you about another meeting of the super-fun Clandestine Cake Club in Dundee?!  The venue this time was the very posh and lovely Hilton Hotel Dundee, and they had been kind enough to set out a fancy glass table on which to display our cakes, along with a long meeting table for us - giving us plenty of room to eat cake, mingle and chat.

This month's theme was 'Like a kid in a Sweet Shop' and there were a plethora of chocolate based cakes on offer.  Chocolate Lime with a lime cream accompaniment, Choc Orange, After-Eight (choc mint), White Chocolate and Orange, Chocolate Jazzie, Coca Cola and Coconut Lime cakes. 

And here's a photo, taken by the lovely @zoevenditozzi from her Twitter feed, of a plateful of deliciousness

 

Which one is mine, you ask?  Oh dear, I kind of wished you hadn't.  I put the oven on before 5pm on Saturday (the day before the meeting) and it short-circuited the entire house!  That's right, all the appliances went off, and the lights upstairs and downstairs.  And to top it off, it was the one day that Mr Becca was away in another city for a stag-do, so couldn't help at all.  I sent him a few text messages, asking for help and advice, but it wasn't until he received the one saying 'eating microwaved 'baked' potatoes by candlelight for dinner' that he replied.  With a phone call.  And an exortation to get power back to our lovely, large American-style fridge freezer, as it contained lots of his home-made 'ready meals' that he cooks on a Friday night. 

I did what I could, but could not move that fridge for love nor money.  A quick knock on the house next door, and my neighbour D came to help.  His knowledge of electrics was better than mine (I did Year 11 physics and, though I really enjoyed it, I wasn't too good at it) and we not only moved the fridge but fixed the problem so it was only the oven that was out of commission.  Woo hoo!

Except that I had no oven in which to bake the Kit Kat cake I had planned to bring along to Cake Club the next evening  :(

So we had one more eater at the meeting - ah well!  All's well that ends well.  (And you'll be pleased to hear that my oven was repaired this morning, although it did mean I missed my weekly Zumba class, and thus didn't work off any of the excess calories ;))

 

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?