Beating the weather...

I baked another cake from one of the spunky books this morning (still cooked beans left). She calls it the marble cake - I call it the "tiger cake", we used to have the same when I was little - but my mom made it with conventional ingredients. Never in my life would I have come to think of using beans instead of wheat!!! Crazy! But it works, and it turned out wonderful. Look at this:

 

For lunch we went for a picinic to an island outside Helsinki. Hmmm, lunch at 3 p.m...the family had gone wild on the cake above at lunch time so we had to delay the normal lunch hour a bit. Convenient as then we had time to prepare meatballs from scratch. And as usual this summer, just as we have packed our things and are all ready to go, we see the dark clouds mounting in the horizon... But just as every other time we didn't care. We just took the ferry and left the clouds on mainland. And instead we had an excellent afternoon out in the sun.

Seagulls following us, and the clouds..

The famous postal card view of our city. With the typical summer clouds anno 2012.

Check the thunder clouds, they actually passed right by but not even a drip of water... its good to be in the "archipelago" as it rains inland....

All kids out on the island were either eating icecream or cakes as they ran around in the grass or as they jumped on the ferry. Our kids also wanted something in their hand when they saw what the others ate. I was filled with joy to pass on a "tiger bean cake" that made them happy! Joy joy for healthified treats! :-)


But the cake bonanza didn't end there... In the evening I still baked another one from the spunky recipes. This time zucchini-based. I used Maca powder instead of rise flour and I was sure the kids would hate it because they aren't too found of the smell of maca. Particularly not Kidone. Guess what? She ran back to the kitchen twice to cut herself another piece... That's my sugar sweet gal! And this was on top of dinner, which actually was another funny anecdote of the day.

For dinner I tried mixing up some Thai veggies I have bought in the Thai food store in Hakaniemi during the year. No clue what it is but need to empty the freezer so better get on with it. No clue how to prepare them but I tried wooking... then adding some tamari...some spices...wanted to add lemon but no lemon in the house..added more mild spices, some coconut milk... and hmmm... well.... no... didn't even try to serve it to the kids. Complete disaster. Hubby agreed. Flushed away, quickly... Luckily we still have plenty of meatballs - and some potatoes to go with them!

But here is still a picture of the zucchini-maca cake. Still have some left for tomorrow!... if hubby doesn't get home too hungry from his night out with the boys that is...