Dads Cake

The other day was Father's day. When I asked what my daughter wanted to do for her dad, she said 'Make a cake'. Sooooo we made a cake! A great new recipe that will go into the new cookbook we are working on right now.

We usually try to find what we have in the house, this makes the process go much faster. So... this day we had Mangoes, and started from there.

Willow wanted a marble swirly cheezecake.
So we came up with Mango Chocolate Swirl Cheezecake.
The crust was chocolate too... as she knows how much her dad loves chocolate!

We placed some beautiful feverfew flowers that were growing in the garden on top, added some yellow rose petals and headed out. We needed an umbrella to keep the cake dry, as it started to drizzle on the way over to his house.
As we walked through the path, we found the wind had blown some sweet Garry Oak branches with tiny acorns on them onto the grass. We picked those up to use as decorations too. You can see them in the picture.

Garry Oaks are an endangered species. They only grow in the Southern Gulf Islands and Southern Vancouver Island , they are a protected tree here. In Washington State, they have a different name for the tree, and they are not protected there, but they are just as endangered.

You can see he was a happy daddy that day! While we were making the cake here, he managed to go to the playground with the littlest one, and even drew a very colourful butterfly on her face! Stunning!
They are indeed lucky to have such a great dad!

10 is a big number....

Today was my daughter's 10th birthday. A day to celebrate and have fun! It was tough for her to decide on what to do, perhaps we have too many options these days. Some suggestions for outings were made, and it seemed that none were the right ones. A day at home, with the family, making crafts, hanging out, reading, a ' do nothing ' day was the right fit for her. How fantastic that after all the possibilities she chose the one that was keeping her most 'present'.

It was great to see her just doing her own thing. Real low key . Then her dad came over with presents... and everything changed!

We had planned the presents together, deciding on what would be the best thing, what she would enjoy the most, how she could get the most of the gifts that she did get. She chose to open the gift from her little sister first. ..... and I have to say, it was a great choice...for the girls.
A couple of weeks ago my girls and their dad and opa went to see High School Musical 3. According to them all 'it was fantastic! What a show!!'. So, based upon this wonderful, exciting and unbiased opinion, I thought it would be great for a music-theatre-loving newly-10- year- old to get the soundtrack. Forgetting, in the interm , that the PARENTS have to listen to the soundtrack. Again.. and again.. and again.. while little people dance, sing and insist on us watching ALL the routines!!

I am grateful for these little joys in life. And after a while of listening to the music, even more grateful for the 'off' button! I think it is payback... for all the times I did the same thing to my parents. At least that is what they tell me ( and warned me all my childhood: 'Just wait until YOU become a parent!).

Of course, some of the most important questions of the day were.."what do you want to eat for our special day ?" Cake. Carrot Cake. Pancakes. More Cake. Oh boy. Oh, and Ice Cream. What is a mom to do? I mean, it IS her birthday. So, I thought about it and said SURE!!! If you want Cake, then its cake you shall have!! ( I did not wind up making any ice cream though)

I was sure glad that over the years I have learned how to make a HEALTHY cake. Even MORE grateful that I have learned how to make Raw cakes as they are super healthy, everyone loves them, and it are easy to make.

So, today, my little darling had a TWO cakes .
The first cake made by her 5 year old sister, who wanted to get cake for breakfast. She made a sunflower seed goji coconut cake. Complete with beeswax candles.

As I was editing the photo for this blog, I remembered something very very special little sister did. She said... we have to do something MORE with this cake.. we have to give it LOVE. She insisted we do this together. So we wrapped our arms around the food processor and gave a group hug and lots of love to this cake. It made it so much more special. I talk often of the power of love. And how we need to put it in our food with intention. It is the magical ingredient that makes everything taste so good.



The 'main' cake that she wanted and talked about for days, weeks and months before her big day was a carrot cake. So I made her a suped up version. A Raw Carrot Cheezecake Layered with Whipped Cashew Cream. I made the recipe up as we went along, and it turned out fanastic!
Here is a photo of how it looked! ( and there is one at the top too). I piped some whipped cashew cream on the edges for flowers and the number 10 in the middle.


I made a batch of Goji Berry Pecan Fudge as a birthday gift. Knowing she would love it. She has never had the sugar loaded version that you can buy in stores or craft fairs. This was a HUGE treat. She was speechless when she tried it! How much better can you get than that???

I did make a dinner of non-cake first, before having the main course of cake.. lol. We had this amazing salad with greens, avocado, wakame, cucumber and red pepper, sprinkled with hemp seeds. I actually made two salads, one with wakame and one without. Turned out that everyone wanted the wakame in it , so I put the extra left from soaking into the other salad. It was so tasty, everyone had two servings before cake.

To top off the day, we went to see Madagascar 2. Boy, I don't remember laughing so hard at a movie EVER. It was great!! Better than the first one. There were only 6 people in the theater, including the 4 of us who went. I think we made up for the lack of audience size by laughing hard enough to fill the entire theater!