Let me just say that this one is TO DIE FOR! Even more than the chocolate lucy cake i made…

Rhubarb short bread… What could be better right? One of my guests compared it to a little bit of a crumb cake without the cake… Im not sure if it is, but whatever the case it is addictive, and i have to warm you that eating copious amounts will not only make you sick on the day, but it will make you feel soo so sick the day after… So maybe keep the dough eating and the bisuit eating to just a few

To begin i thought seeing i was making everything ‘from scratch’ i would give this jam making business a go as well! So this recipe is in two steps, first the rhubarb jam, then the shortbread.

Rhubarb Jam

Stuff you’ll need

• 500 grams rhubarb (i also added some strawberries)
• 500 grams sugar
• 1 lemon

How i did it

Dice the rhubarb into even portions. Use the rind and juice from the lemon and place in the bowl with the fruit and the sugar. Cover and let sit overnight, siring occasionally.  The next day place the saucepan uncovered on the heat and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and let bubble for about 1/2 an hour or until the jam coats the back of a spoon…  Pour into a warm glass jar and let cool before placing in the fridge…

Shortbread Slice

Once again the recipe came from Smitten Kitchen (yes i may just be a little obsessed at the moment)…

Stuff you’ll need

• 450 grams unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 cups plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup of your homemade rhubarb jam, at room temperature (or if you cant be bothered i guess any store bought jam would be ok..)

How i did it

Cream the butter until soft, add the egg yolks and mix well.

Mix the granulated sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add to the butter and egg yolk mixture and mix just until incorporated and the dough starts to come together. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and form into two balls. Wrap each ball in plastic wrap and freeze at least 2 hours or overnight (or as long as a month, if you like).

Heat the oven to 180 degrees cel

Remove one ball of dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it, the place the grated dough into the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking pan (lined of course). Make sure the surface is covered evenly with shreds of dough.

With a piping bag with a wide tip or a zip-lock bag with the corner cut off, squeeze the jam over the surface as evenly as possible, to within 1/2 inch of the edge all the way around. Remove the remaining dough from the freezer and coarsely grate it over the entire surface.

Bake until lightly golden brown and the center no longer wiggles, 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack, then cut in the pan with a serrated knife (I used a bread knife – it worked a treat)

Enjoy… In moderation

It has begun… My baking day for my baby’s first birthday party was the most fun i have had in some time! ( and i might just add consequently from all the tasting that ‘had’ to be done i am now on a 21 day cheat free diet )

Now the most complicated of them all would have to be the Lucy Cake… My precious little one has a doll we call Lucy and when deciding what her first birthday cake should be my step son, georges brother came up with the idea of a Lucy Cake! I dont think i ever would have thought of it if it wasnt for him – thanx josh!!

OK So first things first… I made a chocolate cake – ok thats a lie, i made three different sized chocolate cakes and boy oh boy was there A LOT of chocolate in these cakes!!!

I grabbed the recipe from Smitten Kitchen which you can find here, i used EXACTLY her recipe and i can tell you that the raw batter was to die for… IT WAS TO DIE FOR PEOPLES!!! And not only that once it was baked it was even more scrumptious, and i have to say if you are going to make a rich choclate cake… MAKE THIS ONE!!

Ok so once the cake was made and frozen (i kept it in the freezer for a few days so it stayed fresh while i was baking my other goodies) Anywho, on the day of the party i got the cake from the freezer and using the template i had created i simply cut out the peices while the cakes were still frozen as it made it much easier to cut

Then came the icing i made a simple royal icing by beating 4 egg whites, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and a kilo of icing sugar (pure, not mixture) I split the batter into three and added black to one, yellow to another and left one white.  I got the colours from a specialty shop, they were like a concentrate so the colours came out much richer than the normal (cheaper) colours would have…

I then spent THREE HOURS, yup three whole hours icing and adding licorice hair to this thing!

Then, smarties for the cheeks to finish it off and VWALLA… One AWESOME birthday cake….

So who’s partys next?