Monday 24 December 2012

Momma and Mary-Jane - Decorating Our First Christmas Cake Together

A bit of a long day, to be expected really.  And lots and lots of photos of Mary-Jane.  Granma put her tree up last night and her decorations up this morning. Mary-Jane was quite fascinated by these as they had lights on them, moved and made noise (singing etc).  Here she is sat in Grandad's old rocking chair, in Granma's room

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My main Kitchen Task today was to finish decorating the Christmas Cake.  I had help.  Well why not.  Mary-Jane had helped me stir the cake when I was baking it.  It is kinda fitting that she should help decorate it.  I had managed to dye the sugarpaste red before she twigged on that Mommy was baking in the kitchen.  She spotted my small rolling pin and wanted to 'help Mommy roll the pastry out'.  I obligingly sat her in the chair and she rolled out the icing sugar on the table.
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Then she added some trex (white fat) to what she was doing
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Helping Mommy in the kitchen can be hard work, so a bowl of chocolate ice cream is just the thing!
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Then the real help with the cake started.  I wanted to emboss the red icing with snowflakes, then have white snowflakes on top, with a partial white snowflakes around the base, in place of a ribbon.  Mary-Jane saw me embossing.  She wanted to help stamping, so off she went.  With encouragement from Daddy.  In some areas of the cake there was heavy embossing, almost down to the cake itself.  Mary-Jane had fun and it was delightful to decorate our first christmas cake together!  Things don't always turn out as planned.
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As it was coming up to MJ's bed time, Daddy and I encouraged her to leave a plate of mince pies out for Santa, as well as a glass of milk and a carrot for Rudolph, as well as a key for Santa to let himself in with as there are no open fire places in this house.  I showed MJ the carrot, and that was it.  Poor Rudolph wasn't going to get much of a look in.  She has never been particularly fond of carrots in any way, raw or cooked.  She munched her way through 3/4's of it before returning it to the plate.
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It was too much not to expect MJ to taste test Santa's mince pies.  She had a nibble and a bite out of both.  With the cake, I only got to do four white snow flakes.  I did a twisted candy cane style rope.  This seemed to pull the cake together a bit more and give it a bit of lift.
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I'm looking forward to tomorrow and seeing Mary-Jane with all her presents, and her just generally enjoying herself and getting terribly excited!

2 comments:

paula said...

Like the rope on the cake . . and the mince pies look tasty . not to mention Rudolph's carrot :)

CarpeDyem said...

The cake has yet to be cut into, the mince pies and carrot are long since gone - to Santa and Rudolph of course!