The bunnies bake a chocolate cake

We have a few runner ducks, and every so often the duck-egg situation can get a bit out of control - and there's only so many omelettes a person can eat.

So not long ago, I asked three of the Cottontails Baby bunnies for a bit of help in using up a surplus of eggs - and together we came across the Alice Waters Chocolate Cake recipe. Not only is it a chocolate cake - never a bad thing - but it calls for no less than EIGHT EGGS!

Here are a few photos from our happy baking session...

The bunnies love this book - full of vegetarian delights

Mini Maileg bunny finds the recipe - which calls for EIGHT EGGS!

Sylvain rabbit is already hungry

The bunnies count the EIGHT EGGS!

Sylvain assembles the butter and chocolate...

....and begins to melt them (mind your paws on the hot stove, Sylvain!)

Mmmm... melted chocolate!

Quite a big job to whisk eight egg whites but Sylvain has powerful paws

And the cake is ready to bake

45 minutes later and it's cooked and cooling in it's tin

Maileg Mellow bunny (who frankly hasn't been much use) can't wait to tuck in

Yum yum - the bunnies sit down for a cup of tea and slice of chocolate cake!

Find these three bunnies, along with many more, in the All Our Rabbit Things department at Cottontails Baby  - please note Sylvain's blue jumper is the 'model's own'. And find the wonderful cookery book in all the usual places, or on the author's / chef's own website for Bill's Cafe

Sunday Afternoon in the Snow

It's Snow Day Four here at Cottontails Baby HQ, but it's much milder outside, so this afternoon Sylvain decided to venture outside - and to take baby Maileg bunny for her first ever play in the snow.

Firstly he donned his thick woolly jumper and headed outside to check on the Cottontails Kitchen Garden. Hmmm. Not a lot to see there. (Although rumour has it there are a few of last year's leeks buried under that snow - just in case we run out of food in the store cupboard.)

Satisfied it's not TOO cold, Sylvain wraps up Baby Maileg Bunny in a cosy blanket (thank you to my mum for knitting this!)...

...and Baby Maileg Bunny has his first ever glimpse at the snow

With Baby bunny safely back in the warm, Sylvain checks out the perimeter. It will be another day or so before we can get out, he thinks....

 

... unless he gets the tractor going and uses it to clear the drifts? But he struggles to reach the peddles so decides against this idea.

Then time for a bit of tree climbing before heading back inside for hot chocolates and a toasted teacake...

After a fallow few years.... the Cottontails Kitchen Garden is BACK!

It's been eight years since I first created the Cottontails Kitchen Garden, a little project to market the children's gardening equipment I stocked, and since then much has changed - not least we have moved house so I had to wave goodbye to the original raised beds. But... Moulin Roty have just released a new gardening catalogue, Le Jardin du Moulin, and I've decided -  the time has come to dig again!

So - it's a new year, a new location, a great new space to work with not far from my back door, and plans are afoot to once again enlist the help of the fabric animals to grow veg, fruit, herbs and flowers and then come summer / autumn we'll be harvesting and cooking with our haul.

Before I begin, I thought you might want to revisit what I did before - and looking back I feel so proud - I really GREW THINGS! And believe me, I am no natural gardener. So here is a link to a few of the posts I wrote back in 2010, the first time round, and a few of the pictures from back then too...

 

 

This time round I have decided it would be wise to enlist a bit of help - and given his superior digging skills and general affinity with any and every veg patch, there's only one man rabbit for that role. Introducing Head Gardener, Sylvain Rabbit. 

Here he is this very morning, with his new domain in the background behind him... and it seems we have the perfect soil for snowdrops.

 

Over the coming weeks Sylvain and I will be making plans, planting seeds, digging, raking, scratching our heads, grumbling about the soil and all the usual stuff. We'll also be taking delivery of the beautiful new Moulin Roty gardening and wild activities range and having a go at everything - pressing flowers, catching minibeasts, the lot. 

In the meantime, here he is in his natty gardener's jumper checking out the new Moulin Roty gardening catalogue.  With a cup of tea and a carrot, of course.
 

 

So 2018 is going to be a wonderful year of gardening and cookery for Cottontails. I am so excited!