Bumping along.......

I posted a bump timeline a little while back.  There has definitely been further expansion since then!

Here is the updated to 34 weeks version......

As you can see it's coming along nicely. I wonder how big it will be by the end! I guess that depends on when the end is...... Miss Astrid didn't make her way out until 41 weeks so there is quite a bit of time and growing to do before then.

Here is a comparison shots with the Astrid belly at 34 weeks.

They aren't the same angle exactly but they do look significantly different. Here are some recent shots from a different angle. This baby is definitely all out the front......

 32 Weeks

  

 34 Weeks

Spring has sprung........

After a few miserable weeks of weather here the last week of Winter proved to be glorious (only it seems to be totally outdone by the first week of Spring, which has been magical!).  Despite some yucky and not warm days it hadn't been that cold overnight for awhile so the garden was out in all it's Spring glory well and truly by the end of August.

I love the garden at this time of year. The bulbs are just starting to poke their heads up and brighten up all the previously empty beds and all the bare branches on the trees start to fill with flowers.

Here are a few pics taken in the last week of Winter from our yard........

The Crocus

The Daffodils and Jonquils

The Magnolias

The Manchurian Pear

The Cherry Blossom

The Tale of the Chocolate Birthday Cake

I asked Anto what cake he wanted made for his birthday. I knew he'd pick something chocolate, since he loves chocolate. He chose this cake: Ultimate Chocolate Cake.  I'm normally not too bad at cakes but this one just never worked well from the start!

Astrid was excited about helping with Daddy's birthday cake.  She is a fan of helping bake and now she has her helper stool it's even more fun!

The details of the recipe are in the above link, if anyone wants to give it a go, but we started out melting the butter and dark chocolate and preparing the espresso (the recipe wanted instant coffee, but that is a travesty in this house, so espresso it was!).

Then Astrid helped with the mixing of the dry ingredients - Muscavado sugar and dark cocoa taste good apparently!

Then it was time to add the eggs, buttermilk and chocolate/butter mixture......... Astrid again verified it tasted good!

Into the oven the cake went. The recipe notes that it is supposed to sink in the middle a little. Well ours sunk in the middle quite a lot!  Aside from the sinking issue the cake cooked fine and smelt pretty good. We trimmed the higher edge portions off and kept them to 'taste test'.  At this point it appeared that our cake hadn't risen quite enough to be chopped into 3 layers as per the recipe instructions.  I had used a slightly bigger tin than specified and it didn't rise evenly so both those factors were probably to blame! We just decided to go for 2 layers instead.

Once the cake was cooled and cut it was time to make the ganache and the chocolate curls.  Again, Astrid was a willing participant! A layer of ganache went between the cake layers and plenty was poured over the top.

Once the ganache was set we decorated with chocolate truffles and chocolate curls.  It didn't look anywhere near as pretty as the recipe picture.  Our cake didn't go back together quite evenly and the ganache was a little messier than it should have been. It still looked plenty chocolatey though!

Due to a lack of people to consume the chocolate concoction on Anto's birthday we had decided to take it into his work the next day.  Astrid was more than happy to blow out the candles for Dad and happily ate about as much cake as all the adults! I think most of us were lucky to escape from a sugar coma after eating some. It didn't taste too bad. Not my best effort by a long shot but plenty of sugar and chocolate made it edible .........you just didn't want too big of a bit! Astrid did run around like a mad thing for the rest of the afternoon but she survived unscathed.  She declared the cake to be yummy and would have eaten more if we had of let her!