Best Morning Out With My Girls (And Also A Chance To Win For YOU!)

A couple of Saturday’s ago – when it was really rainy and wet in Cape Town, I bundled my kids up into the car and we set out for the SA Chef Academy in Observatory.  The order of the day was to go and bake a cake with my girls…  While competing with 3 other Mommy Bloggers for the prize for Loots 10th Birthday!

*Keep an eye out for a giveaway at the bottom of this post!*

In case you missed it on Facebook and haven’t already seen the video of all the action of the day – go an check it out.  I’m usually behind the scenes so I still can’t get used to seeing myself on camera, but LOVE that they got all the precious moments of the girls destroying the kitchen, um I mean enjoying themselves!

The cake baking was so much fun.  We had a recipe to follow but luckily all the ingredients were already measured out.  We even had a real life chef to help us to know what to do, which is great because following recipes with 2 tots eating all the ingredients was harder than I thought.  We got to make chocolate ganache icing which I have always wanted to try but never been brave enough to – here is the recipe:

Lindt Ganache

Ingredients

500 g Cream
550 g Chocolate
150 g Butter
90 g Glucose

Method:

• Bring the cream and the glucose up to the boil.
• Allow to cool to 85 C, add to blitzed chocolate.
• Blitz until smooth, add the butter, mix until all the butter is incorporated

 (Tip that I didn’t know that Vicky Gurovich taught me, is to take the ganache out of the beater and put it into another bowl to cool – this helps it to thicken – ours was left in the blender and so it was very runny)

 

Having our cake not only viewed, but TASTED by Vicky Gurovich, Head Pastry Chef at The Mount Nelson Hotel was just a little bit daunting, but she was so lovely and really made me feel at ease when she didn’t pull a face when trying our cake.  Although we didn’t win the prize, we really did have a fantastic time making our cake unique to 3 Kids, 2 Dogs and 1 Old House.

As you can see by Loot‘s official release below, our kids were a bit younger than the rest.  But besides eating pretty much all the toppings and leftover batter and biscuits and anything else that was sweet that they could lay their hands on, I think they did a really great job and I am so proud of them for being there to help me!

November 2013: Loot.co.za, a leading South African online retail store, celebrated its 10^th Birthday this year. To commemorate the milestone, Loot invited South Africa’s top food and parenting bloggers to compete in the ultimate birthday bake-off! Moms were asked to bring their own little ‘masterchef’ apprentices aged between 5 – 9 years along, while foodie bloggers went head to head to make a death-by-chocolate ganache.

Cakes were judged by Vicky Gurovich, Head Pastry Chef at The Mount Nelson Hotel, Cape Town. All the resulting blogger baked cakes were shared over candles and the singing of Happy Birthday with the St Anne’s Children’s Home in Woodstock, a haven for destitute, abused and disadvantaged mothers and their children.

Sticky fingers, flour and an abundance of cake toppings were the order of the day!

Because Loot have now opened up a unique new section on their offering – The Kitchen and Dining – they are giving me 3 R100 Vouchers FOR YOU to use this new section.  

To enter LIKE 3 Kids, 2 Dogs and 1 Old House and leave a comment below to let me know what you would get – I know that because I have been inspired to do this kind of thing more often with my kids, I am definitely eyeing out these awesome things.

*Please note your order total needs to exceed the voucher value and is only redeemable in the “Kitchen & Dining” and giveaway entries will close on 30 November – winners announced 1 Dec*

This was our very first ever blogging event.  I’m not going to lie to you – this was a big deal for me.  A huge deal really.  I had no clue what to expect and I honestly felt a bit overwhelmed, I mean we can’t be viewed as on the same level as Becoming You, Se7en or BettyBake!  But I must say that from the moment we arrived we were so well looked after by Loot that I felt totally at ease and getting to meet the bloggers behind the blogs that I follow was a real treat – especially considering how lovely they all are.

So we had a real blast of a day and I really think that someone should do this as a business – offer cooking courses to Moms with kids.  It was a great bonding time with my girls and they are still talking about it now – 3 weeks later!  Let me know if you decide to do it – we will be there!

Also while we were waiting for the cake to cook, we made biscuits.  And then when we were done making biscuits, we made sand castles with all the flour and more mess on the floor, but they seriously LOVED IT.  Their clothes even changed colour halfway because of all the flour!