Family first

After my last post, I sort of suspected my first blog post would be about family but I never thought I would have so much to report.  This past weekend was a long weekend for us.  It was Canada Day on Friday, July 1 so Aamir and everyone else were off from work on Friday.  The sisters-in-law and their respective families came over that day, we had barbecue, played Carrom (google it!), laughed, and had a great time all over.  I baked chocolate chip muffins and they were absolutely divine!!  I'm a sucker for chocolate anyway but these muffins were apparently really good because 24 muffins disappeared within hours of making them.

On Saturday, I allowed Camran to take a break from his usual egg breakfast and made some pancakes.  We added blueberries and chocolate chips to the batter and made them into flower shapes (from a mould).  Once again, these chocolate blueberry pancakes were amazing.  I must have had at least half a dozen pancakes on my own!  Camran had another 3 or 4.

Inspired by the success of the muffins and the pancakes, I looked up some layer-cake recipes.  I found an interesting clown cake recipe on All Recipes and thought it would be a neat idea for Rayan's 1st birthday cake.  Of course, I should preface this by saying that I hate cooking and any form of food creation beyond boiling pasta/rice and the most basic stir fries is loathsome.  Baking a cake, even from cake mix, is SO not my thing.  Still, I have vowed to try and do more family stuff and that, unfortunately, includes cooking for them.

So, this morning, on Rayan's 3-month birthday, we turned a trip to Walmart into family time.  The cake took about 5 hours to prepare with all the cooling and frosting.  I didn't find gel food colouring so I used the regular liquid stuff.  As a result the colours weren't as vibrant as the original recipe.  Still, at the end of the day it turned out really well.  The most important thing is that Aamir and Camran were both sufficiently impressed by my amateur baking skills and I had a ton of fun making it.

All in all, it was a successful weekend as far as family time went.  After the success of these baking experiments, I definitely think there will be more cooking and baking in the books over the summer.  It would appear that my family actually likes my creations.