Birthday baking

Rohan and Luca turned three today! Its been an extremely happy day, spent at a Kent Hop Farm with their twin friends.

Yesterday, we had a small tea party, and last month there was a joint party for all the tots in the post-natal group. All in all, this birthday has not gone unmarked!

For the boys first birthday we had ordered gorgeous vegan chocolate cakes from this company. They were SO good, really tasted as if made with dairy and we had them decorated with the boys names. Last year I made cupcakes from:
vegan cupcakes take over the world
which turned out dreamily sweet and fluffy.

This year, I thought I would have a go and made a 'Maisy mouse' cake, one of Rohan's favourite characters, and a seemingly straightforward image to sketch! Making the cake was a learning curve. It was totally vegan; the sponge I made was okay, though ever so slightly bitter tasting, although the icing did help balance this a little bit. So next time I'll try to find a more light, fluffy sweet recipe, as that's what toddlers really go for. In terms of the decoration, well, I was very unambitious. Just wanted the boys to recognise it as Maisy Mouse. And they DID, I was disproportionately pleased : )


The baking goes on because I now want to make some cupcakes for the boys' preschool, there's a cake tradition there whenever there's a birthday. I have turned the house upside down looking for my copy of 'Vegan Cupcakes', to no avail, much to my frustration. I was hoping to make basic vanilla ones, they would have been perfect. I've found another cupcake recipe now, so better go and get started soon with the first batch, tomorrow's quite busy and I've got to allow for cooling and icing time.