Baking for birthdays

12

Two birthdays this week. For the first, R came over to secretly use our oven so D would not see her surprise cakes. Her bag was full of ingredients and a cookbook by a seemingly sloaney-yummy-mummy-turned-gluten-free-baker called something like Chocolate heartache. This is a book which I would never think to buy or even look at in a shop but in fact is based on an interesting principle that cake baking can be done using vegetables in place of butter. Different vegetables work in different ways, some with more water than others - this woman has experimented to find the perfect combinations. It sounds a bit faddy, but makes for quite fun revelations and it meant I used courgette twice in a week for a cake. This time the recipe was 'LA cupcake - virtually fat free and jogging down the beach' (that is exactly the general vibe of the book - each cake gets its own personality..) It was also the first time I'd used rice flour to bake, and surprisingly the cakes were pretty yummy - and green.

We thought that M turning 21 merited a feast of some sort, and following our friends' 3-week long tradition of alternately home-cooked Sunday brunches, I cooked a Mexican breakfast with huevos rancheros, cornbread and guacamole. That was great but I preferred to eat more of C's profiteroles - so light creamy and chocolatey you would never have known they were half-made secretly on her bedroom floor.

We'll need another hidden kitchen space for covert birthday baking operations. ....