Vegie Smugglers

The grooviest cake in town!

We’re sticking to home these holidays, so it’s time to trawl the web for my round up of good things to suggest to the little lovelies when they mutter ‘I’m bored’. Last October I posted a bunch of good budget ideas, and here’s a few more (with a vague Easter theme)…

If you’ve ever spent ages pondering how to decorate boiled eggs so that they look like scuba divers, then have I found the website for you! Familyfun.go.com has such great Easter craft ideas, bound to keep you busy for ages. There’s a good unisex Egg hunt container to make here and older girls might like to have a go at making this chocolate lip balm. There’s a mix of colouring and educational Easter themed pages here.

On the Youtube disco these holidays, we’re thoroughly enthralled by the Jackon 5’s ‘Can you feel it’ which has enough fire and explosions to keep even Mr Meat & Potatoes dancing. Although he really prefers the 1978 Green Machine commercial. I catch him (with his dad) watching it ALL THE TIME.

And in the kitchen, I’ve introduced the kids to the joys of marble cakes. I like mine bright – there’s no insipid cooking in the VS kitchen. The cake is pretty firm in texture, which transmits the colour well. A nice glossy chocolate icing would be great, but we were too impatient to see the patterns to wait for that. A scattering of icing sugar is a nice understated finish for a pretty outgoing cake.

You'll have a bunch of very eager helpers for this one.

Psychedelic marble cake

200g butter, softened
1 ¼ cups caster sugar
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
Zest & juice of 1 orange
Food colouring of your choice (I used yellow, green and red)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a Kugelhopt cake tin.

Add the diced butter into a large mixing bowl. Use electric beaters to cream the butter for a minute, and then gradually add in the caster sugar. Don’t rush. Take your time until it is all light and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Sift over the flour and baking powder. Fold through. Stir through the zest and juice.

Divide the mixture into quarters. Keep one plain, and then use the food colouring to make the others whatever colour and however vivid you like. Take turns spooning the different colours into the tin. Drag a skewer through to ‘marble’.

Bake for 35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Dust with icing sugar.