Polly was a well behaved little girl and didn't cry at all. But she did want to be fed not long after getting home, which meant I didn't get to finish arranging the food on the table the way I would have liked to and I didn't get to take the photos! Not a big deal I know, but it's a big deal when I knew I wanted to do a blog post about it! You'd think by 3 and a half months she would have learned to time her feeds around my blogging requirements by now :)
G was put on photo duty and he did pretty well anyway...
More bunting, of course. I need to stop making bunting for parties because I never know what I'm going to do with it after the party and I hate throwing things out. These little flags are still up on the veranda at the moment but they're going to have to come down soon, and then what... get shoved into an already overflowing cupboard or drawer in case they can be used for future parties?
There were times on Saturday I didn't know if we were going to make it. I woke up with a cold that my sister's been carrying around for about a week.. revolting cough and feeling yuck. And in the kitchen things weren't going as they should... I made one cake that didn't rise at all, about 3 batches of failed buttercream (it kept splitting). It was not cool. But, we made it in the end and I don't think anyone else noticed.
The cake never got its ruffles, but I'm really happy with the flags. Totally inspired by Nikole's beautiful cakes, actually the whole party was inspired by Nikole's cakes, hence the flags on the invitation.
And I made macaroons! Yay! I had tried making them once before and they were a dismal failure so I was determined to get them right at some point.
I was really happy with the pink (with white chocolate ganache) and white ones (with raspberry puree and white chocolate ganache). But my chocolate ones were still a bit flat and cracked on top, at least they had the right bit of crunch and chewy to eat though. The last time I made them I didn't leave them sit for 30 minutes after I piped them on to the trays and I think that made the difference, and I did use 'stale' egg whites this time too (eww).
Want to know what else we ate? Well, ok.
Cheese + crackers + quince + muscatels
Smoked trout crostini
Moorish chicken skewers with a yoghurt tahini sauce (thanks, masterchef)
Caramelised onion and goats cheese tarts
Raspberry and creme patissiere tart
Chocolate cupcakes with strawberry buttercream
Fresh gingerbread with lemon icing (Nigella)
Chocolate bundt cake with choc butterscotch glaze (Donna Hay)
Coconut Cupcake with dulce de leche buttercream (thanks, Casie)
Shortbread buttons and
the Aldi Pink Lemonade.
And as a little thank you to everyone who helped me with Polly's invitation, I made a generic one that you can download and print onto card and use it for whatever little parties you have coming up. Download it from here. I've made it to fit a C6 sized envelope, the download is for A4 sized paper with 2 invitations on it.
I've never made anything for download before, so I hope it works and I hope you like it! I don't know if I need to say this or not, but obviously.. it's for personal use only. (To get the download, you need to wait about 30 seconds after you've entered the code. Then a download button will appear in the "Free Centre" column in the middle of the page).
Ok, now back to baby cuddling... Polly has my cold now. Poor little thing is not a happy camper.
