cake days

There's a certain calm that falls upon the owlet nest when the scent of a cake baking in the oven wafts through the air... Everything is ok. What it really means is that mama has time and space to stop and bake. Just because. Or maybe for a special occasion, which is a good thing too. Its a sign that all is right with the world... On Wednesday I baked because Huz officially began his long, long break. And because Nannie came to visit and cake is always great for visitors... But this post isn't about Wednesday's's cake at all. Its about passing on the recipes for two cakes I've blogged recently and you've asked for...

Banana and Maple Syrup First Birthday Cake

We've made this cake for Little Owlet and Tiny Owlet for their first birthdays*. A surefire winner.

125g butter
1/2 cup rapadura
drizzle of maple syrup
2 eggs
2 large bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons milk
Maple Cream Icing
1 cup cream
1/4 cup maple syrup, or to taste.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Place butter and rapadura in a bowl and beat until light and creamy. Add eggs and maple syrup and beat well. Mix bananas, flour and milk into the butter mixture. Pour mixture into a greased and lined 20cm cake tin and bake for 40 minutes, or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool in tin.
To make the icing, whip cream until thick and add maple syrup to taste. Spread over cooled cake and decorate with a sprinkling of rapadura, flowers or berries. And maybe a candle.



Apple Berry Spice Cake


We ate this cake when we celebrated Beltane. It's deliciously moist and fruity. Perfect with a cuppa on a late spring/early summer's day.

2 apples cored and sliced
1 cup berries
2 cups wholemeal flour
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2/3 cup honey
1/2 cup melted butter
2 teaspoons baking powder
Drizzly topping
1 tbsp butter
1tsp honey
1tbsp orange juice

Preheat oven to 180°C. Keep a few berries and apple rings aside for decorating the top of the cake. Put apples and berries in a mixing bowl. Add 1/4 cup flour and spices and mix lightly to coat the fruit. In a separate bowl, blend eggs, milk, honey and butter. Add the rest of the flour and baking powder to the apples and berries. Fold egg mixture in gently. Spoon into greased and lined 20cm cake tin. Decorate the top with the remaining berries and apple rings. Bake for 40 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool in tin for 10 mins then turn onto rack and drizzle with drizzly topping. Serve warm or cool, however long you can wait!

* Tiny's other cake was made entirely from fruit. It took 1 watermelon, 1 rockmelon, 1/2 pineapple, 3 punnets strawberries, 3 kiwifruit, 1/2 punnet blueberries, 2 apples and a bag of grapes. I put fruit on bamboo skewers, sliced and stacked. Simple as that!

unschool monday :: colouring

Now we've considered ourselves unschoolers for a while... Let go of the school mindset that held our thoughts on what was educational and kept us focused on that... We've come to regard what we do as living. Learning is just one of the natural benefits of living. So we look for ways to enjoy our time together. Then sometimes we marvel at what we've learnt in the process, just as we marvel when Tiny Owlet acquires a new skill... Sometimes we just marvel at how much fun we've had together, following our owlets ideas and our own.

Over the last few rainy days, we've been colouring. Just for fun. As a way of spending time together. We coloured our favourite colouring book, but then Little Owlet came up with an even better idea. Each of us drew a picture. Then we swapped and coloured in another's picture. The owlets are loving playing with colour and loving that their colouring skills (and patience!) are improving... They loved seeing how each of us has a different drawing style. They loved that we could each take a picture and colour it and the picture they could see in their head may be different to the one now on paper. The transformation when a different person added colour was amazing to us all. Best of all, they loved the respect we had for their artwork as we coloured carefully. And they showed our artwork the same respect, so that we were all artists together. And of course, the conversation flowed on a number of interesting and random topics...

What did we learn? Perhaps patience, tolerance, art appreciation, flexibility to change, colour theory, collaboration... And a million other things related to those random conversations we had along the way...

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama.

ten years...

Once upon a time, I woke up next to my love, knowing that a great party, a beautiful long holiday and the rest of our lives together as a family of our own was about to begin...

Ten years, three children and a significant sleep debt later, Huz and I are looking forward to the second long holiday and the rest of our lives with our beautiful family, living in the place we honeymooned.

Something happened that day ten years ago, under that golden sky and the beautiful rainbow...

We were surrounded by well wishes and love and we were truly blessed. Rainbows have followed us ever since...

Happy anniversary, my love. Thank you for the adventures, smiles, children and rainbows and a beautiful beginning to our tale. xxxx

waiting for summer...

In three hours, I'll be picking up Huz from work. We'll be smiling and anticipating tomorrow; when summer begins. One hundred days to be spent sleeping, playing, catching up, gardening, painting, kayaking, sorting, celebrating, wandering, reading, sewing... holding hands. It begins with the anniversary of the day when we promised to do that always... This week has been challenging, long and quiet. Long days and long nights of lost sleep. Anticipating. Waiting. Tomorrow we breathe in again...

unschool monday :: simple lessons

A couple of weeks ago, we were sitting on our favourite hill, having fish and chips for dinner after picking Huz up from work. We were chatting and out of the blue, Big Owlet asked "what's a noun?" We were a bit surprised, because we have no idea where she's even heard of nouns, but there you go... We went on to answer and explain what nouns are and verbs, adverbs and adjectives are too, using examples we could see around us and making up sentences...

She ruminated on it for a couple of weeks, then today we were playing with words on the fridge. As we do from time to time. Big Owlet is teaching Little Owlet how to write words with the single letters and Big Owlet and I play with the words to make sentences. We usually take turns to add words to make the sentence and that's how we rolled today, when Big Owlet said "oh, that's a noun." "Yeah, cool, that's right!" I exclaimed. "Do you remember which is the verb and which is the adjective?" She proceeded to point them out effortlessly and together we pointed out other examples of verbs, nouns and adjectives on the fridge.

Later we picked up Huz, had fish and chips on our favourite hill again, and I told him of our afternoon. Told him of our play with words on the fridge. Marveled at how easily she grasped concepts that I remembered struggling with at school. I remembered reading workbooks and trying to make sense of it all (I can still see the page and me staring at it), and having it only kind of, sort of, stick after weeks of practice... But then today, she showed such a clear understanding after such a short period of time. Really she's been thinking about it every time she reads, but perhaps it stuck so well because she brought the question to us... Another simple lesson for me in trusting her ability to find the questions and our ability to answer them as she needs and that learning really just does fit in with life.

Do have a wander around last week's unschool monday linkups and see life learning happening in other people's nests. I'm still making my way around, but I can see plenty of happy wandering...

Celebrating Tiny :: part two

One year ago today, our happy, gentle little soul arrived into my arms. Every moment has been a delight. The joy she's brought to our nest has made all our hearts swell. Even Big Owlet was a little sad and sentimental that our baby has completed her first trip around the sun. Tiny Owlet began the day poking Huz and saying "Dada", then grinning as he sang her "Happy Birthday". Then she opened presents on the very same spot she entered the earth one year ago...



After honey pikelets, we spent the day with friends at co-op, playing with water and bubbles. And eating cake. Sort of cake. Fruit salad cake, perhaps? I have a friend to thank for the inspiration behind this cake and it was so good to make a cake everyone could eat! It was gone in two minutes. Seriously.



Then it was home to eat and drink bubble tea with friends, before burying Tiny's placenta. We inspected it thoroughly first, marvelling at the size and colour and the little bag that tiny fit in. It seems almost impossible now! A sprinkling of soil and we planted a mulberry tree on top. It should reach it's full height by the time Tiny Owlet reaches hers :)



Then a spot of cake before bed. There's always room for more cake. This is the same cake we cooked for Little Owlet on her first birthday and Little Owlet was very pleased to help me bake it for Tiny.



Banana & maple syrup cake... yum. Happy Birthday tiny one! xx