Not drowning but waving*

Today was a momentous day – Mish left for the adventure of nesting and subsequent motherhood, I made cupcakes that look like ta tas, we discovered that jelly and cake is not a bad mix, and I found out that if you use cultured unsalted butter to make strawberry flavoured icing, it ends up tasting like strawberries and cream!  

To celebrate our colleague’s last day, and to honour my lost bet to Navonod (for mentioning the word “ta tas” in a professional, work-related telephone conversation), I decided to bake the impressive and much-longed-for-in-childhood swimming pool cake, and some boobalicious cupcakes.

  

tray full of ta tas

                                          soothing booz.

Naturally, I had forgotten that I was also going out for dinner, so I headed home from the shops after an Ethiopian feast with a sack full of strawberries and cream lollies (to represent nipples), jube rings, musk sticks, jelly babies and teevee snacks (malt sticks). I stuck with vanilla and chocolate and strawberry as a classic Neapolitan combo for these cakes – vanilla buttercake with chocolate frosting and blue heaven** jelly and chocolate cupcakes with strawberry icing.

The lilo on the pool is made from snakes joined together with some frosting, the fence is teevee snacks, and the little people are jelly babies. The cake-making, commenced as it was after a big dinner and late at night, went surprisingly smoothly. The cake was even and brown, the cupcakes took longer than expected and were slightly dry but still tasty.

The pool is made by hollowing out the centre of the cake (the instructions said to level the top of the cake and then hack out the innards for the pool hollow – but why the need for 2 steps?). So I dug out the centre of the cake (mmm cake offcuts) and let everything cool down overnight with the intention of decorating the next morning.

I had not, though, remembered that something about these Canberra winters requires me to sleep for a minimum of 18 hours every day, so getting up early to finish the decorating and making it to work in one piece was dicey. I managed though, with the only mishap being the absence of a cocktail umbrella.

Luckily, S and J came to the rescue with a craftily folded piece of paper and a plastic knife (see image). I have to say, that umbrella really completed the scene. The cake looked a bit lacklustre without it and I didn’t want to let Mishy down.

So with the swimming pool and edible ta tas  completed, the only thing left to do was wait for afternoon tea time. It came eventually, of course.

The only thing missing? The presence of our Dear Leader (shoutout: LVV).

Bye Mishy... and to quote someone highly emotional and articulate “Enjoy the kid”

xx Martha

*thanks Stevie Smith

** yes, blue heaven IS a flavour. It doesn't mimic a fruit or something else - it's a stand alone flavour.

PS. From the archives: My 4th birthday

Betty x