Sunday 12th August

Well, I'm writing this very late at night, waiting to see if a customised listing works on Ebay - it's all very complex!
I've recovered from the gastro, thank god. It's a nasty experience.. I finally made it over back home too - we had a really nice time.
But.. the big news on the home front is that we've decided to have a party for Mum's 84th birthday in a couple of weeks. This is a big deal for us - and I'm making the birthday cake. This has to be just super nice, she doesn't get to have this sort of thing very often, and I want a really nice cake to be the centre piece of the spread. I've been looking at cakes, and cake recipes - consulting on Flickr for ideas, design wise, and various recipe sites for recipes - although I have to admit, basically I think it's going to be a genoise. It makes a good base for whatever sort of fillings you want to put into it - and I haven't made up my mind as to what sort of filling to put in it yet. It's summer, and I think summer fruits would be nice, but I want this to be a sort of ultra glam cake, which fruit doesn't lend itself to. I've been experimenting today, with making leaves. I have this sort of image in my head, of a floral top piece, with leaves and petals cascading down - so I've gathered some real leaves, given them a good wash and made up a royal icing in a green. I then 'painted' the leaves with the icing, and I'm waiting for them to dry out, so I can try peeling the leaves off the back. I've done this with chocolate a good many times in the past, and it works really well with them, but I have no idea if it works with royal icing. I strongly suspect at the moment that it won't, but nothing's dry enough to really find out yet!

If this doesn't work (and as I said, I suspect it won't) then it's back to the old standby that I used when I made a wedding cake for my sister. With this, you need a template - a template of pretty much anything, but for sake of argument, let's say a leaf. You need to fix this to a smooth movable surface, and tape down a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top. You then ice directly on to the greaseproof, and leave that to dry. You can then peel away the paper from the back of your iced motif, and they store really well in a sealed container. For Jo's old wedding cake I also made some iced net butterfly's - you tape a piece of fine net over the top of the greaseproof, and ice onto the net - it makes a fine net wing, but you have to be careful as you cut around the wing edges with scissors. I may go for butterfly's with this cake as well, because they make such a pretty display. And whilst Jo's were all in white, for this one I could add little dots and patterns in colours. But then I'm very taken with the wonderful designs I've seen where people are making motif's out of chocolate, and applying them to a white cake. They look very beautiful.

But then I've also got this idea that a lovely big sponge cake with cream and say strawberries would be lovely. Not a Strawberry shortcake - I have done that in the past, but it's not exactly a birthday cake is it? It's more desert. Some of these recipe sites have fantastic recipe's on them though - I'm very tempted by what the Americans seem to call Yellow Cake. This appears to be a very egg yolk rich cake, which maybe isn't the greatest idea, as this cake will have to keep for a day or so. Which rules out things like Angel Food Cake.

You may wonder why I'm thinking so American in this. Mum's had a very interesting life, and spent a good deal of her childhood living in South America and Canada. So an American cake may actually trigger memories for her of her childhood. I do appreciate that South America isn't exactly the home of say, Angel Food Cake, or even 'Yellow' Cake, but I feel it's somehow more in that direction than say a Victoria Sponge! Actually writing this is making me think I should consult my aunt - my mother's sister, who would probably know a great deal more about what sort of cakes they had as kids than I do. Mum made some wonderful cakes for us as kids.

At least I remember huge construction jobs going on in the kitchen - I know Martin, my younger brother, had a fantastic chocolate train cake at one point! Whether Jo and I had such things I don't know, I rather suspect maybe not! We did have a remarkable birthday - I can't remember if it was Xmas, or a birthday, or which of us actually had the birthday if it was that, but I have very clear memories of what followed. Mum had tied up our/my/her presents with string, and hidden them all over the house. We had to follow this incredible maze all over the place to discover parcels hidden under cushions on the sofa, behind plant pots etc - if I remember rightly, we'd woken up terribly early, found the string and literally almost demolished the house before Mum & Dad had even woken up. It was the most exciting thing you can imagine, all that following the trail, and ripping open of packages - I highly recommend it to anyone with a child. But if I were you, I'd confine it to one room!!! And perhaps downstairs, so that you can prevent any early morning wakings, and the downfall of your careful plan by waking to discover a house full of discarded string attached to torn open wrapping paper!

Anyhow, my big present this year is that I'm going to be having a new chair for the computer. Since my present one is this rather awful Argos thing, and the new chair is going to be just like the one Martin has, I know it'll be ultra comfortable and come on wheels. Jo bought me some really fab soaps in lovely tins, and I got some really cool Amazon vouchers - enough to be waiting for some fantastic books to be arriving at some point over the next week or so. Don't you just hate Amazon's 'this book is available for immediate delivery' and then you get through to the payment page, and they tell you they won't be delivering your stuff for at least three weeks? It's a real swizz if you ask me. I was talking to Jane, a friend at work, about it, and she was saying she always orders from the used section because of this, and normally I would too, but these are medieval history books, and they don't always have used one's available. I think they get delayed because they have to print them off. Medieval history books often don't have a large print run to start off, they advertise them and wait to see how many orders they get for 'em. Alas but it's the way of the world, and at least it does give you the opportunity to buy some medieval books you otherwise wouldn't get. Anyhow, I've bought a history of the Neville family, a history of the Woodvilles, a biography of Anne Neville, a biography of Elizabeth Woodville, and a crime book. It's the Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, but I can't remember who's written it, but it might be good. It's had good reviews.

One should try something new every now and again - I would never have found and enjoyed the Jasper Fforde books if you don't just every now and again go with a new writer. And I bought the first Laurie R King book after reading a good review, and I love those. There will be those of you who will draw in a sharp intake of breath when I tell you that these are books about a crime solving heroine who is the wife of Sherlock Holmes - yes I know, it should be ghastly, but trust me on this, they are very well written, and excellently plotted crime books set around the turn of the 19/20th centuries - lord, I was going to write the turn of the last century there, but heaven's that's only seven years ago now. Anyway, if you look past the Sherlock Holmes thing (if you're a dedicated Holmesian) (Holmeist?? Whatever.) They're very enjoyable.

I've also read HP and the Deathly Hallows. It's an excellent book. No doubt I'll write about it in detail at some point, but I'll leave it for a while, because a) it's good that these things simmer in the brain for a little while, and b) I don't want to bust anybody's bubble, so we'll give it a while longer. I know it's all over the net etc, but what the hell - this is turning into the post from Marathon anyway. If I kick in on the Deathly Hallows now, I'll be here for the rest of the night.
Speaking of which I should be heading for bed! It's 1:58, and I'd like some sleep tonight...!!!