For many years our weekends were dedicated to our boys and their sports hobbies. Whether it be football, rugby or cricket - oh and not lets not forget the athletics. That was a good one, not far to travel and no muddy kit! There were more years than I care to remember, with the two of us driving them around from one place to the next. Training session after training session and then the big matches during season time. At the time it was just a natural progression for us to put them into weekend sports. There were only two years between each one of them. It was non-stop and it was far from restful but like a lot of our friends who are now in the same boat, we wouldn't have had it any other way. It was precious family time.

On the other side of the coin, David and I had some tense moments watching from the side line. Witnessing them being on the receiving end of a bad tackle or being whooped by a better team is a very hard thing for a parent to watch and even harder to hold back and not get involved. There were definitely times where I just wanted to scoop them up, put them in the car and take them back home. I also do not miss having to put our washing machine and me through the tough task of getting their sports kit back to something that resembles the team colour ready for the next week. That was of course after they had been soaked in the bath to get the first layer off... plus there was also the task of getting all three boys in the bath as soon as we got in the house, so they didn't spread too much of the dirt around. We had no shower then back then so the whole afternoon was quite labour intensive! 

I now look back on theses times with great fondness and have well and truly forgotten the bad bits. Anything to help keep them away from their PlayStation or Nintendo was a plus. It could have been worse I suppose. Looking back now I feel we were blessed that social media wasn’t part of their childhood and they could just be kids. 

These days the weekends can now be without clock watching if we so wish. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a lovely feeling. We do have a dog to walk but as long as he has his morning wee he can follow suit and go back to sleep for a bit just because we can. Of course there are still things as a family of five you still have to do whilst you're off work, cleaning, cooking , food shopping and so on. But if we want, more importantly there is time for much more pleasant things such as catching up with our now grown up family, seeing friends and sometimes just having a little time out.

In my case that involves fulfilling my challenges and blogging too. Which brings me back what I need to report! I have two more cakes made that I need to add to my list. 

No 13. Banana cake.

I first made this on a Sunday evening a few weeks ago. I was really looking forward to making it as it felt a little more serious.

Again, I followed an Eric Lanlard recipe. I bought the Cake Boy app early on in the year, but didn't have much success with earlier bakes. A mixture of not much experience and not the quite the right ingredients, made the end product unsuccessful. But now with my new found confidence and a little research, I decided to give it another go.

The Cake Boy app on the whole is easy to follow, my only complaint is that the hands free voice activation is a little temperamental. Once you finish one page you say “next “ and it turns the page, but after the third or fourth attempt I gave up and just got the iPad screen mucky by pressing the next button.

The mix itself was nothing too taxing. Especially now I have learnt that putting the skewer in and it coming out wet could mean just that the skewer just touched the fruit and not necessarily because it wasn't cooked. This massively helped me to judge the bake. I must admit watching bake off this year on fruit cake week helped a lot, perfect timing for me.

Unfortnately whilst saving my photograph of the newly baked Banana cake I'd made a mistake. I thought I'd saved it on the Cake Boy app, unfortunately this was not the case.  Whilst searching for it in a panic the next day after half of it had been eaten but my work colleagues it was a fail. I had two options, bake it again so I can photograph it for this post or quickly run to the office kitchen and snap what's left of the cake. As you can see I took option two.  

Still, I learnt a lot and I knew I needed to keep going with the next bake rather than take precious time away to make another one. 

No. 14 Red velvet cake.

I had originally planned to make this for one of the ladies at work for her 40th. I'd managed to get all the ingredients together and had set aside a lot of time to make it - but I wasn't confident enough to present it to her. There was quiet a lot a lot to do for this mix and I welcomed the challenge, but I was a little apprehensive about getting the colour right. 

I also wasn't thinking straight when I realised her birthday was midweek and had to be made on a work night. Fortunately,  with all the family settling for a fish and chip supper I had the all clear. However the cake didn't come out even so I kept it at home for the family to enjoy. She got to enjoy the shop bought one another colleague had bought for her instead so it was a win-win. I was pleased to discover that after tasting both cakes, David and I both liked the frosting on my recipe better so that was a nice compliment.

I'm not too sure if it would be on my top ten to make again as I think there are better cakes out there to make, but I'm really glad i gave it a go. 

I have a fundraising plan for bake number 15, so stay tuned for an update to follow on next blog post!