Ombre pink cake, IT challenges and a 9th blog anniversary

It is 9 years ago today that I started my blog with a birthday cake I made for E.  Hence my tradition of celebrating my blog anniversary with E's birthday cakes.  You might notice that they get simpler as life gets busier but I am still here blogging after 1763 posts and still love to bake birthday cakes.

I kept things simple for his birthday this year.  For dinner I made nachos.  He would have liked vegetarian haggis on it.  I would have liked the time and energy to make it.  But life is busy and he had plenty of haggis in Scotland.  Instead I made refried beans and guacamole.  I layered tortilla chips, cheese and refried beans.  Baked it for 10 - 15 minutes at 180 C and then topped it with salsa, guacamole and plain yoghurt.  It was delicious.  Sylvia got her own little plate of plainer chips with cheese.

E asked for a sponge cake with buttercream.  It was Sylvia who suggested I make an ombre cake.  She does not know the word ombre but she was obviously impressed with the green ombre cake I made some time ago.  I made this into a simpler version.  Firstly spread buttercream frosting and jam inside the cake like this one.  My preference would have been to stop there.  But I am always up for a challenge.

I spread on a crumb coating first.  Rather than piping rows of dots, I used a ziplock bag to pipe a length of icing around the top (trying to stop the piped icing falling to the ground) and flattened it with a spreader (like a palette knife).  I repeated this with the next two layers and neatened up the bottom.  In retrospect I might have made the top layer a light pink rather than white but generally I was pleased with the result.  Sylvia liked the idea but didn't have time to help me and then she decided it had too much frosting and would not eat any of the cake!  Fickle!

As I reflect on the blog every new year's eve, I will leave the lists of bests and stats til then.  I will remark that it always amazes and pleases me that I find time for blogging in my life, continue to meet lovely people through blogging and cook all the better for it.  An anniversary seems a good time to get my (metaphorical) house in order.  (As you will see above, Sylvia is quite into keeping her dolls house in order lately.  I wish I could say that my house is so neat and minimal.)

Nine years is a long time in the world of technology.  I have seen a lot of change, in particular the rise of social media.  I expect the IT fairies to take care of everything.  Mostly they do.  Some days, though, I think they are lying beside the pool sipping fairy cocktails and laughing at my bemusement.  So here are a few of the odd things happening on my computer lately:

• First and foremost I take too many photos and they take over my computer.  External hard drives help but it is driving me a little batty right now.

• Delicious is going through some growing pains right now.  I really really love Delicious for keeping track of recipes I want to make and have over 4000 bookmarks.  I was really freaking out when I thought I had lost access to my account recently.  While in Scotland last month I could not use my Save-on-Delicious button and then when I got home I was asked for my password but could not get a new one sent to my email.  I finally worked out my old password but it worries me that I am not able to generate a new one.  However I did finally read that Delicious had changed ownership and the new managers were making lots of changes which might explain it.  I hope so as I could not get in today!  [Meanwhile my mum recently lost all her bookmarks on her computer when it died.  Trying to keep track of online bookmarks is hard.]

• Pinterest has also changed.  I am using Pinterest less due to limited time.  Rather than just browsing Pinterest I sometimes visit boards with interesting names when emails alert me to others pinning to them.  Then Pinterest changed from Pins to Saves and for a while were not naming the boards others were saving to.  Then it changed again and now I can see the names of boards.  Hurrah!

• My love hate relationship with Facebook continues.  It is a great way to keep in touch with some people but Facebook annoys me with their badgering ways.  If I am not on for a while they email me snippets to draw me in.  Even worse recently after I had a conversation with someone who had sent a message and finally after to and fro there was nothing more to say.  Facebook painted me as the bad guy for not replying.  They suggested I should turn off messages and told the public I take longer to reply to messages.  It is a bit like dealing with the playground bully sometimes.  Just walk away! 

• Something odd has happened with emails and comments recently.  Since I have been in Scotland, if I comment on a blog I often get an email on Delivery Status Notification (Failure) from Google.  I suspect I need to go and change some settings but it is just annoying at the moment.

• As if this isn't enough, the photo book service I have been using since Sylvia was born has now changed hands.  I find that I have old technology and need to uninstall my photo books software and upload a new one and set it up to prompt me to do regular updates.  I really dislike the constant reminders to install updates! 

• On a more positive note, I really enjoy using Zomato (formerly Urban Spoon) restaurant listings.  So while in Edinburgh I uploaded some reviews to Zomato.  I was amazed at how little it is used compared to Melbourne.  After about a month, I was number 5 blogger in Edinburgh.  (After over 2 years posting in Melbourne I am number 110 blogger).  Seriously I am glad it is used so much in Melbourne as this makes it a much more useful service than in Edinburgh.

While it sounds like a list of complaints, it is a tribute to how useful I find these systems that when they don't work it niggles.  If you have any illumination on the IT challenges I am facing, I would be glad to hear your thoughts.  Meanwhile I have a few more Edinburgh and Paris posts and then I will be done with holiday posts.  You see, the joy of putting holiday snaps on a blog is that sometimes I look back at them and can show others.  It is so much easier than digging out dusty photo albums.

So soon I shall be back to more regular blog posts.  That means that I expect to spend a bit less time on writing blog posts and a bit more time on responding to comments again.  And I will be back soon with E's second birthday cake.  Stay tuned ....