Party preparation and emergency flower blip...

Backblipped...

It's Esme's first birthday party tomorrow and today was spent making making a pasta dish and Millionaire's shortbread to take as my contribution to the buffet.  And therein lies a tale!

The pasta dish was supposed to be being made by Ele,  Esme's gran, but she is trapped at her holiday house in Spain (with a group of girlfriends from her university days) because of the horrendous flooding they've had over the last few days.  Ele says the storm on Thursday night was unlike anything she's ever seen before.  Sheet lightening for hours and non-stop torrential rain. 

They were supposed to fly back yesterday but all the roads to the airport were cut off (from where her house is you have to go through a tunnel to reach the airport and the tunnel was filled almost to the roof with water!) They have re-booked flights for tomorrow in the hope the road will be open by then.  I really hope it is as she will be so upset if she misses Esme's birthday.

Anyway, the plan was I would make some wraps and the Millionaire's shortbread but as as I know the dish Ele was planning to make, I offered to do that instead of the wraps.

The pasta dish is easy but I've only ever made millionaire's shortbread once, many moons ago, but my mum's was the very best so I didn't bother making it again.  When we were in Northumberland a couple of weekends ago and met up with Lynne (Hunter, the golden retriever's human mum :-) we talked about millionaire's shortbread and she said she had a fantastic recipe for it.  She very kindly sent it to me so Esme's birthday seemed a very good reason to have a go.

Hit the first hurdle when I realised that I needed two cake tins of a certain size but didn't have any.  Our local ironmongers came to the rescue but they only had one.  No problem I thought, I will follow the recipe for two tins, just use the one tin (meaning it's double the thickness) then cut the slices to yield 48 from the tin rather than 24.  Same difference in the end! :-))

The kitchen smelled divine as the shortcake was baking, and even more divine while the caramel was bubbling (stirring molten caramel constantly for 12 minutes is very tiring!  Still I suppose I used up a few calories in the process which would be replaced and then some by a mere sniff of the finished product!!!)


Whilst the caramel was cooling on top of the shortcake I made the pasta dish and when that was done, I melted the chocolate melted and onto the caramel and into the fridge, ready to slice in the morning.  Even got Esme's birthday gifts wrapped.  Not like me to be so organised.

The evening disappeared in a flurry of preparation for our upcoming trip to Harris and Lewis before I settled down to watch, of all things, Kill Bill Volume 2.  I hadn't seen either of the Kill Bill films before and I'm not a fan of Tarantino, but I have to say, to my complete suprise, I quite enjoyed it!

Off to bed far too late again, taking this quite snap in the dark of the lilies on the hall table.

Must. Try. Harder.