Martha's Marvellous Munchies

When I saw that Maltesers was donating £5 to Comic Relief for every cake made in their #bakeamillion challenge, it seemed like a better than usual reason to make a chocolate cake!  The devil's food cake I'd tried for Theo's birthday was so good that I didn't need much persuasion to bake it again.  The original recipe made a BIG cake.  So in the interests of all our waistlines, I halved the quantities this time.  And of course, adorned it with Maltesers. Devil's Food Cake Recipe adapted from Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes .  Apart from halving it, I reduced the amount of sugar and avoided mixing the cocoa with the cold water.  In my experience, all this does is give you a brown sludge which is hard to get out of the measuring jug.  I don't see how that improves the quality of the cake. 175g plain flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda pinch of salt 50g cocoa powder 200ml cold water 125g margarine or shortening 200g sugar

Day 1: We stopped at Rufford Old Hall for a lunch break on the drive up.  We enjoyed the drifts of snowdrops, the very friendly volunteers, and the binoculars!  When we arrived at Grange-over-Sands, we went for an evening walk along the promenade. Day 2: We went on the Windermere Lake Cruise, starting off on the top deck and retreating to underneath the seats, and ultimately the covered lower deck when it began to rain. Day 3: We spent the morning at the very well-stocked Lakeland Motor Museum, packed with cars, bikes, motorbikes, toy cars and much more.  Then we drove up to Skelwith Bridge for lunch (the cafe we had hoped to go to was packed out, so we had a picnic instead) and walked along the River Brathay.  There was a small but fierce waterfall, and the boys enthusiastically dissected a rotting tree. It took so long to drive back down the M6 that we were forced to stop at McDonalds for tea.

Most of the photos this month were either of Theo's birthday or our short break in the Lake District, which I will tell you about soon, I promise.  We also went for a walk up Streatley Hill with my parents (last time we did that, Toby was in a baby sling!) and ate both British and American pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.  And finally, the spring flowers are starting to appear!  My favourite time of year. Toby - has become very interested in big numbers, especially googolplex .  He wanted to know whether googolplex was larger than infinity. - is getting quite good at an app called Cute Munchies, a logic puzzle where you navigate small creatures round a kind of maze. - enjoyed looking at VERY EXPENSIVE cars with Graham, on a recent visit to my parents'.  (No, we haven't suddenly got rich.) - can ride one-handed on his bike. - found the biggest tyre ever at Lakeland Motor Museum. Theo - is getting going on his balance bike pretty well - calls fri