Fi's Engagement Cake

Fi's Engagement Cake was a chocolate hazelnut swirl mudcake...

"Old-fashioned chocolate layer cake"

This is definitely my most favourite eating cake ever - I made it for Mum's Birthday from a recipe in the Death By Chocolate cookbook by Marcel Desaulniers...I especially love the chocolate frosting - which included 900g of icing sugar! Topped with Cadbury chocolate covered almonds...

Mel's Baby Shower Cupcake Tower

The second time we did a cupcake tower was for Mel's Baby Shower - with choc dipped strawberries and little white choc chip cupcakes and vanilla buttercream frosting with little pink and blue nappy pins and dummies...

Triple layer chocolate brownie cake...

I made this 21st Birthday cake for Fay at work's daughter, Kate...they had a pink and purple theme and love chocolate. This is my usual Death By Chocolate recipe for the triple layer chocolate brownie cake with a rich chocolate ganache...decora
ted with fresh gerberas and chunks of marbled patterned chocolate with a few of my own African violets...

Sarah's 30th Chocolate Orange Cake

Mum made this for my 30th birthday party - a chocolate orange cake with choc orange frosting, decorated with Terry's Chocolate orange segments...

Emmy's First Birthday Cake

This was my first attempt at a white chocolate mudcake - it had a strawberry flavoured pink buttercream between the two layers and underneath the fondant icing. We used a cupcake for the ladybeetle.

Mum's Cream Sponge

Always Dad's favourite cake - Mum usually makes her sponge cake with cream and peaches or cream and jam - it never fails - we always made sure we were quick to get a piece before it went
at church socials and parties when we were kids!!

Granda's 80th Cake...

My usual Death By Chocolate recipe Triple layer brownie cake was made for Granda's 80th birthday - simply decorated with M&Ms...

Jared's Pig Cake...

When Jared turned two he loved pigs - so Nanna made him this cake - this is my favourite sort of cake - a plain butter cake with yummy pink (it has to be pink for some reason) icing - chocolate cakes can be such a disappointment...

Baked chocolate swirl cheesecake

For his 30th birthday Tim wanted a chocolate swirl baked cheesecake - this one was Kraft recipe I found online...

Room Service...dessert...

Room service at the Rydges, Port Macquarie - it was a bit hard to go out with Emmy and Jared so we ordered dessert in - Gingerbread and banana caramel stack with vanilla bean ice-cream and Cinnamon spiced creme brulee...mmm!

Georgia and Joe's Wedding Cake

Georgia and Joe's Wedding Cake...

My fav. version of the DBC cake - triple layer with strawberries...

Made for Mum's birthday...Yum!!!

Dinner at Guillaume, Bennelong Point (The Opera House)

..,

My favourite dinner ever - I could not stop raving about the tuna on my Tapas plate - it was incredible - everything had such an absolutely intense flavour - ont of Sydney's Top 10 restaurants last year!! (Oh - and we went to the Opera too - HMS Pinafore!!)

We decided only to take photos of the entrees and desserts as things were very upmarket....we had a gorgeous window seat view of Sydney harbour.

Okay, so my Entree was a Tapas plate including: Basil infused tuna with mustard seed and soy viniagrette, Chargrilled Moreton Bay bugs with chamoula and couscous, Seared Spring Bay scallop on leek confit with Avruga caviar, Marinated rouget with confit of octopus, In-house smoked salmon on toasted brioche with creme fraiche and caviar. Wow!!! Wow!!! Wow!!!

Oh, and TIm had a proper sized serving of the smoked salmon...

For mains we had: Minute steak of Wagyu beef with Paris mash (!!!!!!) and Bordelaise sauce and Roasted chicken breast with a salad of lentils, speck and spring onion.

The desserts were just fabulous in every way: Nougat glace with hazelnut, almond and strawberry coulis and honeycomb feathers - so fluffy!! Tim had Duo Belgian chocolate mousses (divine!!) with cafe creme Bordelaise and honey tuille.

I think we would have to say that it was definitely worth leaving Emmy with a bottle for the first time - poor baby!!!

Emily's first restaurant experience...

Emmy was only one month old when I turned 29 - I really wanted to go out for dinner - but it had to be quick - so we took both Jared (16 months) and Emmy to The Barn at Campbelltown - sometimes the service can be a little weird but the food is always excellent...Amazingly the kids were perfect - Jared had his first 'kids meal' -

chips and sauce!!

I was extremely please (again) to taste one of my all time favourite desserts - the caramel baked Alaska - with a macadamia nut base, home-made caramel ice-cream and sauce and toffee!! (The mains were good too - duck and chicken, I think).

Chocolate raspberry cake for my birthday...

This was a gorgeous chocolate raspberry cake Mum made for my birthday - decorated with little chocolate hearts she made herself...Mum usually surprises me every year with a new
chocolate cake recipe she wants to try!! Oh, and this one had a really great buttercream!