Moomin cake!

Well what else do you make a Moomin-obsessed girl for her sixth birthday? It was appropriately Finnish, as was the trip to Kitee Zoo, where we saw bears, arctic fox, elk, lynx and the cutest woolly pigs (I kid you not) I have ever seen.

Caaake!

Meow!

3 today, hip hip hooray

Following on from last year's Joseph and his multicolour dreamcoat cake, I present this year's birthday offering:


M was determined it was going to be a 'strawberry cake'. It came out pinker than I expected (I think for a true red colour you'd have to use an awful lot of food colouring), but tasted pretty good (it's just Nigella's all-purpose birthday sponge underneath). The rest of the birthday tea vanished fairly quickly too.

How to celebrate your birthday

• Get woken up at 6.30am by overenthusiastic toddler.
• Make exciting breakfast of Shreddies and milk.
• Take a walk to the park, to feed the ducks. Get menaced by starving swans, who turn out to be about 5ft 4in when stood up waving their necks about.
• Eat lunch, while attempting to avoid being smeared with Marmite and toast.
• Go to Sainsburys. Allow toddler to stand in trolley, in direct contravention of about 540 byelaws in order to go round store in less than 5 hours.
• Make tea. Sort out washing.
• Collapse on sofa in front of Home and Away.

I have to say that throwing bread at the assorted swans/ducks/geese was pretty good fun (although a bit scary due to the sheer numbers of huge birds with very pointy beaks who demanded dough with menaces). I quite liked annoying the staff in Sainsburys. And I especially enjoyed the Marmitey kiss.

And I did get to go out to a very fancy restaurant in the evening (Secco, on Pilgrim Street) where I ate my way through the Menu Gastronomico (orichette with squid! tiger prawns baked in sea salt! fig and walnut torte! prosecco!) before collapsing in a rotund heap.

Best birthday for ages, I reckon.