Lots to Celebrate!

Yay!!! Rob is home, and so is my camera! And just in time for Valentine's Day too. Despite our mutual agreement that we 'don't do gifts' on February 14th in a protest at the gross commercialism of the day, I was of course delighted to receive this little haul of goodies from the American PX in Garmisch:



Those Necco Sweetheart candies are gorgeous! And Valentine's Funfetti!?!?! Just how cool is that?! I had to make it. Immediately.



Rob was gutted not to have realised that you have to buy the frosting and sugar hearts separately - "So it's just a cake with red bits?" he said forlornly... However, upon eating the unadorned cake I realised that I actually prefer it that way. It's moist, sweet and vanilla-ey, and the frosting just pushes the whole confection dangerously close to teeth-rottingly sickly. Not that there's anything wrong with that on occasion, but I'm finding it somehow easier to eat huge chunks of this cake than I did when I made a frosted one. Best not to gild the lily!

The weather was beautiful so we went on a long walk to enjoy the remnants of the snow. A heavy frost and bright sunshine - my favourite kind of winters day.



I hope that you all had a very Happy Valentine's Day, however you celebrated it.

Fun, Fun, Funfetti!

I'm a keen baker. I aim for Domestic-Goddessery. I do not use packet cake mixes. For me, the packet cake mix belongs in some kind of culinary purgatory, inhabited by jars of Dolmio pasta sauce, tinned carrots, and 'Smash' instant mashed potato.


What then has brought me to this? A morning happily spent mixing, baking, icing and finally eating a large slice of a Pillsbury 'Funfetti' cake. Once again I can quite happily blame some of my fellow food enthusiasts who have raved about this cake, and persuaded me to throw aside my prejudices and try it.

I purchased a box of Funfetti cake mix, along with the accompanying tub of Funfetti Frosting (in for a penny, in for a pound...) on my last trip south of the border, adding it to the list of groceries stockpiled in an already full-to-bursting car. Even if I had not previously been primed to purchase this cake the jaunty box and, most importantly, the picture of the vibrantly-coloured cake would have been enough to land it in my trolley. The claim that 'a cup of pudding' was a part of the mix only added to the intrigue. How sweet is that Pillsbury man?! (Mind you, having read the ingredients, I can now only assume that the cute little chap is formed from pure lard). He had been peering at me out of the kitchen cupboard for far too long, so armed with my new sillicone bundt pan, I felt the urge to bite the bullet and bake the cake.






As you can see, the baked sponge looked gorgeous, even to me with my inate distrust of blue food...


I went for the 'artfully casual' style of icing the cake (cake-decorating not being one of my culinary strengths) and had great fun literally throwing the sprinkles at the sides of the cake. I will be finding them on the kitchen floor for weeks I'm sure.

And the proof of the pudding? Well, I actually thought it was quite nice! Teeth-achingly sweet, as Nigella would doubtless say, but deliciously moist, vanilla flavoured and excitingly speckled with colour. I'm not sure I would go out of my way to purchase it again (and considering that I need to drive to a different country to buy it, it would be quite far out of my way) but it has been hugely fun to try.