For those of you who don't know, I am on hiatus aka, shipped my operations to Tokyo, Japan. No seriously, apologies in advance but I will not be taking any orders until August 2016.

This was another special birthday - my old man's 60th. 

And we had a BIG party (it's said that the organisers of the party never enjoy themselves. I can see where this statement comes from as the stress and the planning is quite a challenge. However, I'd like to think that I did enjoy myself).

I was so excited as we were having enough guests to warrant a dessert table. I've always wanted to do one but I also knew that it would just go to waste and usually guests will be too full to want to pick at the sweets. I'd decided long ago we were going all out - and on top of the gazillion other things I was overseeing, I did a small dessert table with a strawberry & ferrero tree, flowers, cake pops, chocolates, jelly shots, macarons and of course the CAKE!!!

An impressive 6 layers of chocolate cake soaked in kirsch with coconut, glace cherries and spiked ganache. It was so moist and yummy! We had a lot of cake leftover.... but everyone wanted to take some home! Yay, it didn't go to waste.

The day was hot too so I had to pick items that could stay out without melting or deteriorating. Not such an easy feat.

We also had a pig on the spit. It was delicious. The kids loved the balloons and the bubble machine (so did our crazy welsh corgi). So tiring but so worth it. Happy Birthday Dad!

We're on the cusp of the end of berry season but there were these delicious strawberries at the grocer's the other day that complimented this huge marble mud cake sooo well. It smelt delicious.

It's hard to think of things to do for a guy's birthday. Especially when it's not a themed party and they don't have any particular interests that they want shared on a cake. I thought this was nice and safe and very appropriate for a 3 course restaurant setting.

The cake was served with ice cream, berries, coulis and cream so it would have been just perfect.

Hooray, quarter-end madness is over and we can bake at regular hours again! ;) No more midnight cakes and early morning frostings.

Raspberries as sooooo in season right now and they are mouth-watering. We had a few punnets in the fridge and had to guard them fiercely to make this White Chocolate & Raspberry Baked Cheesecake. Chocolate in a cheesecake takes it to a whole 'nother level. And just because, we topped in with a layer of raspberry cream before covering with fresh berries.

It was really really good. I kid you not.

YES WE CAN!

Berries, the not-so-new wonder fruit. Low in sugar content and therefore perfect for the diabetic.

We made this baked cheesecake through some tweaking of our recipes and with Splenda. Sugar substitutes do not bake well in cakes. Ever. But looks like there may be some exceptions to those rules. More or less, the texture was like a normal baked cheesecake (dense, smooth and creamy and in this case, loaded with fruit) and 4 out of 5 people would say that the flavour is all there and if you hadn't told them it was sugarfree, they wouldn't have given it a second thought. Good news there!

So if you've got a friend of a family member who can't have too much sugar and a special occasion coming up, give this sugarfree cheesecake a thought or two!

Look forward to hearing from you :-)