Cakes and Flowers

 As I get older, I have decided that I don't much care for birthdays (mine is rapidly approaching) any more.  They just serve to remind me that I haven't really achieved all that much since last year.  However, not wishing to be too much of a misery, there are some nice things about them.  The cakes were made for my colleagues at work and were an experiment using the Russian Roulette Revels cake (or Dis-aaaaaaster cake, if you prefer) mixture, (which I posted about last November) but in cake cases, rather than one big cake.  Well, I can confirm they were a huge success!

 I used chocolate butter cream icing and finished the chocolate theme with two Galaxy counters.  Yum!

 Of course, when given these lovely flowers by my colleague, Leanne, how could I fail to be cheerful?

 A gorgeous mixture of flowers.

 These were from another colleague, Carol.

Lovely pastel creams and pinks.
So, to paraphrase A A Milne, "Nobody can be uncheered with cakes and flowers"!

Yet more dis-aaaarrr-sters!

 Not to be outdone by me and my baking dis-aaaarrrr-sters, Chris decided to have one of his own.  I don't think this was the intention as he announced that he was going to make some cinder toffee (or honeycomb, as I know it).  He used Nigella's recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess and followed it to the letter.  The scent of toffee pervaded the whole house.  However, when I went in to see the finished creation, my first (and probably not very helpful comment) was "You'll never get it out of the tin!"

He had used (as Nigella said) a square tin that I use for flapjack, and although he had buttered it thoroughly, the thickness of the cinder toffee meant that it stuck very well to the tin.  A wooden spatula did managed to dislodge it, but it came off in bits, as you can see from the photos.

It tasted very nice, but as it sat there, it softened and became chewy, when it should have been nice and crunchy.  Another attempt may be made, utilising a different recipe and a flat baking tray...nice to know it isn't just me!
In my next post, I'll write down the chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing recipe for anyone who would like it.