Gingerbread biscuits

I love to give food as presents - it gives me a reason to experiment in the kitchen again! I tend to use my friends as guinea pigs and I don't think any of them mind! So for a friends birthday I decided to use my biscuit cutters that I have never used. Biscuits seem to be the latest 'send in the post' craze or maybe I just happen to stumble across these websites more than any others. My favourite is biscuiteers and I have sent a couple of biscuit cards to people - normally when I have forgotten their birthdays! So I decided to have a go.... I don't think Biscuiteers should be worried about losing business from me for a while! Not the most beautiful looking ones but for a first attempt I was happy with them and so was my friend.. that is she sounded pleased to get them and has 2 boys who would certainly eat them!

Carrot Cake

I haven't updated in a while so these may not be in the correct order - not that anyone will notice!
This recipe is from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook which I have had for a while but haven't had the opportunity to use, mainly because I live on my own and can't really justify making a big cake as I would just want to eat it all!

I was going to a friends for August Bank Holiday and I knew that there would be a few people there so excellent excuse for this bad boy!!
I haven't made a cake with 3 tins before and thought that it would be a bit fiddly but it was surprisingly easy, I decided to follow the recipe to the letter as I have a habbit of substituting whatever I have to hand and didn't want to get this one wrong. Normally I would use low fat cream cheese for the frosting in an attempt to make it a bit healthy (who am I kidding when there is all that butter and icing sugar in it!) so went for the full fat version! Grating the carrots was a bit time consuming and I was losing the will to live at one point but thought that lumps of carrot wouldn't be that appeasing so battled on and got carrot all over the kitchen by the time I had finised! I am not the tidiest of cooks at the best of times!
There looks like lots of frosting when you make it but there are 2 layers to fill as well as all over the cake - for the decoration I just happened to have a marzipan cat! (I love cats... my Elvis and Rex will feature at some point in this blog.. there is probably a little bit of their fur in things that I make... oh that doesn't sound nice!)
The cake was a success and everyone seemed to love it and I definately will make it again !