A day of cooking for a special event! 🥰

Hey, hey, hey! How are you doing today? 💗 Lets take it back to last weekend! Saturday the 9th of August was my dad’s birthday and I was really in the mood to cook so I decided to do something he wouldn’t expect at all….unless he walked through the kitchen and saw me like he did 😶‍🌫️🤣. Ti’s okay 🥲. I just kept quiet on what it all was exactly and he averted his eyes from the cookbooks! I got so excited the evening before thinking of all the things I could make and going through cookbooks, it felt so fun 😁. I love my dad with all of my heart and I wanted to make this day special for him because he’s always there for me even if he does talk about The Beatles a lot 🤣.

The theme for his birthday was America/Trump as dad’s always on about politics. He’s not a fan, dad’s just someone who always goes on about the news so I thought it would be funny. Yep, even in Ireland you can’t escape it 😅🤣. I got a trump latex facemask and everything to shock him with and it worked…although I couldn’t really see his reaction as my glasses wouldn’t fit underneath it 🤣. Our dogs hate the mask!! They bark like mad whenever someone puts it on 😂.

The first thing I made was a chilli and garlic loaf but it didn’t rise at all (maybe because the yeast was like a year old…it’s all we had 😅) but the flavour was there and it was super fun to make and I was just happy to fill up a space on the table tbh 🤣.

In no particular order (as I cannot for the life of me remember what I did next, I was on a roll!), I then made a hot chocolate custard cake. My dad loves custard and this was a pretty simple bake. Perhaps I should have said earlier but the majority of these recipes were from Nadiya Hussain, two were from a bakeoff cookbook and the other two were from a website. The hot chocolate custard cake looked like it burnt but it didn’t, I was so shocked! It tasted amazing and was a hit with the family 🥰. Not too sweet either and I liked the idea of putting coffee and milk powder in the custard to accentuate the chocolate flavour, I’ve never done that before!

Next up I made a peanut butter and jelly traybake and let me tell you this, it was a real treat! I really enjoyed swirling in the jelly and peanut butter, it’s the little things in life isn’t it? 🤣.

Onwards and upwards, I made egg fried rice! Normally I make my own from a recipe I created but this one from Nadiya Hussain had curry powder in it and butter. It tasted very nice and my dad loved it too but I don’t know if I’ll make it again because I don’t think it was very healthy or as simple to make as my recipe, sorry dad! (He can’t have the one I normally make as it has seafood sticks and he’s allergic so no more egg fried rice on the horizon for him!).

Moving on, I made mini carbonara quiches from this recipe as my dad went through a phase where he was eating carbonara a lot so I thought it would be cool and I also liked the fact that the recipe didnt ask for pastry because despite being in a baking mood, I didn’t feel up to the task of making my own pastry! 😂 This recipe was super quick for what you get and it smelled sooo good! I reckon that last part was down to the cheese and because I didn’t want to risk getting a headache I couldn’t have them but my dad absolutely adored them and saved 2 for dinner the next day, so result! 🥳 I’m thinking about making more for him as I liked how easy it was to see results (they turned golden basically 🤣). It was so strange cooking pasta and then putting into a cupcake tray but it just worked!

Last but by no means least I made a butternut squash crumble because why the hell not? (Here is the recipe). We had 2 butternut squashes as I had been thinking of roasting them but this was way better! I don’t think I’ve ever made a savoury crumble before and it tasted really wholesome! It wanted me to add fresh herbs but we didnt have those particular ones, only dried but they worked just as well.

All served with iced ginger ale with fresh mint & orange zest! Check out this video of all the finished meals on the birthday table:

---

I’m very pleased with how the days baking turned out! I truly got the cooking bug out of my system 😂. Dad had a good day and thats all I wanted…as well as to get in the kitchen myself as you can tell!! 🤣

What was the last thing you cooked? I really want to know! Is there anything up above that you’ve got your eye on? Let me know in the comments below!

I’ve gotta go now but I really enjoyed documenting a side of this very special day and I hope you got some joy out of it too! Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you again next Saturday for a very unexpected post if all goes to plan! 👀✨️ Take care, stay safe and buh-bye! 💗