September Secret Post Club

There's a group of bloggers from around the world that form the Secret Post Club.  It's a lot of fun to do because you get to know people from around the world through their blogs and cards, and also you get a gift each month :)  Basically, each month everyone picks a name and sends that person a present. 

This month I received a fabulous gift from the lovely lady who writes the blog Cherished By Me.  She's a mother of five with an adorable blog and recent adventures into the world of high fashion.  She sent me the coolest retro style Union Jack tin.  It's already being used around the house, although my husband keeps mentioning that he'd like to steal it to use for his lunch box...  I have no idea where she found it, but you can see it in the picture.  As if that wasn't cool enough, the tin was filled with delicious dark chocolates from Thorntons!  I would have put them in the picture, but they seem to have evaporated (mysteriously the wrappers are still around my desk). 

Thank you so much for my fab gift!





Cake Pops under construction



For September's Secret Post Club, I was lucky enough to draw the name of Deborah.  I'd never seen her blog Messy Mummy before, but it's a good parenting blog.  It made me want to arrange a play date for our kids.  She mentioned that with two little boys, she likes (and doesn't always get) cute and girly types of things.  I wanted to give her something cute and yummy and fun, so I decided to make some cake pops. 

I made two different types: lavender cakes covered in white chocolate and rose cakes covered in dark chocolate. 

To make the lavender cakes, I baked a lavender cake and let it cool.  To get the recipe, click here.  The rose cakes are actually the exact same recipe, only with rose sugar instead of lavender sugar.  If you don't have rose sugar, you can add a few drops of rose water instead.  Just be carefully not to add to much or else it will taste like soap.

After the cakes had cooled, I made a simple butter cream frosting and added a little pink food coloring.  Then I crumbled up the cakes into bowls and added a little bit of the frosting.  They were then easy to roll into balls.  I stuck the popsicle sticks into the balls at this stage.

Then I melted a bowl of dark chocolate and dipped the rose cakes into the chocolate.  After cooling for a few seconds on wax paper, I rolled them in sprinkles.  Then I left them to cool so that the chocolate would harden.  I repeated the process with the lavender cakes in white chocolate.

I'm hoping that Deborah liked them, because I thought they were cute.