Creating a monster

Dianthus was not pleased that I did most of the piping of the whipped cream onto the Easter lemon-curd pavlova (I thought I was being very clever when I decided that a lemon curd pavolova is just an upside-down crustless lemon meringue pie-- but was not particularly surprised to learn that many others, including Nigella, have already had similar ideas), because he is going to be a competitive child baker, according to him.

So this morning I asked for his help in decorating pies for the elementary school carnival cake walk.  He quickly volunteered and then asked me to get down the pastry bags and tips.  When that fell apart and the chocolate did not temper, he still managed to smoodge some molten chocolate on-to a rose leaf and make a pretty good impression of the veins.  We were decidedly more successful with the powdered sugar star and opted (wisely, I think) to leave the lemon buttermilk pies unadorned.

For those of you following at home:

April 27 Chocolate chess* (2, one for the carnival, one for my students), lemon buttermilk (2, one for the carnival, one for my students) and leftover chocolate (for my family and friend).

April 16  Lemon Curd Pavlova

and Dianthus did knead the hot cross buns and make his grandparents pancakes from scratch as well.

Notice the rose leaves

A boy and his buns

*Chocolate Chess is amazing and I seem to have zero recipes for it, despite owning four rather large pie books, a bunch of dessert cookbooks and a veritable slew of general cookbooks that include at least one pie.  It was a revelation and will be added to the repertoire.  I also used the Magpie crust and it was excellent and the combination of the Martha Stewart and Sweets buttermilk pie worked with duck eggs.

Chooolate Chess and Lemon Buttermilk