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!!