We passed!

Well this is just a very quick little note (as I'm supposed to be ironing and preparing to make 80 cupcakes) to say that we did it! Bracken is now the proud owner of a little green & white rosette which shows that she has achieved her Kennel Club Good Citizen Bronze Award. What a clever pup!
Back to the grindstone.........

Spanish Water Dogs

I have to admit that I have become obsessed with Spanish Water Dogs. Bracken of course started the whole thing off, but while I thought that she was very cute and I loved her dearly, I never really believed that the SWD would replace the Border Collie in my heart as my dog of choice. Now that we have had her for eight months it has finally happened - "Spanish Water Dog Obsession". I find myself trawling the web to read more about them and cooing over the pictures of these gorgeous dogs at every available moment......... is there a cure? I sincerely hope so, otherwise you might just see me wandering around the village wearing a SWD embroidered sweatshirt with matching gilet :-)



Anyway our little pup is off tomorrow evening to take her Kennel Club Bronze Good Citizen Award. This of course means that she is going to have to listen to me for a full hour and that I am going to have to take a pocket stuffed with training treats to get her to pay attention. Chances of achieving the award are fair to middling I would say, obviously there is plenty of room for handler error and hopefully any amorous advances from Milo the Labradoodle won't freak her out too much. Wish me luck............

Now, in my search for cupcake cases I have found some very nice brightly coloured Swedish paper ones. I am going to try them out this week and will report back on quality, reliability etc later on. Here's hoping that they work well as I have 80 cakes to bake for an event and I don't want to have to do any repeats (Brian gets to eat any duff ones and his waistline could do without any extra help).

I'm off now to finish cooking tea for the boys and referee the fight over whose turn it is to lie down on the sofa.

Domestic bliss........

Well I never thought that the day would come when I'd be looking forward to a Monday morning, but having baked 2 trays of flapjacks, 3 traybakes (ginger, chocolate and coffee & walnut), 100 cupcakes (iced of course) and a birthday cake (with Snow White on the top) I can honestly say that I was relishing the thought of a day of domestic chores. That was a week ago and today I find myself again quite happy with a day of domesticity after one extremely late night and another very late one creating cakes. Those "early hours" bedtimes used to be acceptable when I was in my 20's with no 6am wake up calls but these days I need two days and a couple of large glasses of red to recover:-)

Of course, today, as with all best laid plans, my day of tidying, cleaning and ironing has been disrupted by having no.1 son at home from school recovering from a nasty cough and cold. Last night he seemed very poorly and mummy being the softy that she is decided a day's rest would be the best medicine. Things started off well, with resting and drinking lots of fruit juice whilst watching "Bug's Life", however by one o'clock he was dressed as a pirate, ready to go out in the garden and "mine" for ice. Now, I wanted to finish tidying the study and get the ironing done so that I could snuggle down in front of the fire tonight, but I ended up supervising wayward boys in the garden and cleaning up muddy paw prints after Bracken had a funny five minutes. When Brian gets home this evening the question will of course be - what have you been doing today dear? - shall I start screaming now? The positive thing is that the cough finally seems to be going, so back to school tomorrow!

Cupcake cases - I think that I have found the reason for my cupcake cases pulling away from the cakes. It is all to do with humidity in the kitchen, making sure that the cakes are removed from the tin as soon as they come out of the oven and completely cooled before decorating. Touch wood, since trying not to get the kitchen too steamy when I cook and cooling my cakes properly I have not had the same problems. Hooray - I can carry on using the pretty spotty cases - I am the self appointed cupcake queen of Inkpen!!