Oh dear, so behind on my blogging! I've gone from hectic moving house brain, to hectic Christening brain, with quite a lot of ohmygoodnesstryingtoadjusttonewhousenewroutinebabygrowingupweaningetcgaaaah brain thrown in, needless to say, not so organised, bad bad keeping up with posts.
Anyway, here I am now and hopefully back something near on-track!
Last Sunday we celebrated Mathilda's Christening! I have been looking forward to getting her Christened for such a long time, and what with all our moving house dramas and changes of dates, it is rather later than we had originally planned. I have therefore had ages to fiddle with planning the menu and mulling over what to bake, which is of course, the best part of a party. Pride of place, I decided to make a croquembouche, which after a bit of maths and guest calculations came to 126 choux and 33 egg yolks-worth of creme pattissiere. No biggy...
It wasn't actually as complicated as I had anticipated - I baked the choux buns a couple of days in advance and shoved them in the freezer, and made the creme pattissiere the night before. The only slightly stressful bit was filling all the buns and making gallons of caramel the next morning when I had really quite a lot of other things to do too! Luckily I had lovely helpers to hold everything while I scurried between, covered in quite a lot of creme pattissiere and bits of molten caramel.
I went for a solid cone in the end, as I was slightly nervous that if I built a hollow one I could well end up with something that was a)ridiculously tall, and b)ridiculously fallen down by the time we got back from Church. I got the thing up and decorated in the nick of time, and suddenly realised we had about 15 minutes spare to get dressed; I really could have done with slightly more time to squeeze Mathilda's chubby arms into the family Christening robes!
The service was perfect; with lovely readings and hymns and full of the joy that comes with welcoming someone new to the Christian family. Mathilda handled the whole thing very well considering it was right in the middle of nap-time, only expressing mild displeasure at suddenly being turned upside down and covered in water and then frowning through all the photographs.
We couldn't even cheer her up with a photo with the lovely girls!
Grumpy photos done, we raced home and put Mathilda down for some much needed sleep and got stuck in to all the last minute preparations for lunch - laying everything out, making and dressing the salads and assembling the must-not-be-soggy bits.
We ate: slices of baguette spread with smoked salmon pate and with black olive tapenade, apple and thyme sausage rolls, apple pea and black pudding vol-au-vents, quiche Lorraine and a caramelised onion quiche, cold roast chicken, potato salad, green salad, celeriac apple and bacon salad, rosemary focaccia and cheese and pickles, with prosecco and homemade fizzy elderflower to drink.
Then for pudding we had the croquembouche and a fruit salad.
Slightly traumatic dishing it up!
We also had sugared almonds and tiny chocolate-drizzled M-shaped peppermint creams with coffee, which I served in my gorgeous vintage china cups - proof that it's worth having such a large collection!
I brought Mathilda down to join the party halfway through lunch, and after a bit of a serious start while she woke up, she then had a fabulous time being passed around the family!
She spent the whole afternoon laughing at everyone and generally having a very jolly party! Here she is in her new hat knitted by my aunt - another one to add to the collection of excellent headwear she is amassing!
Then with all our guests gone and baby in bed, we settled down to a fab supper of bread and cheese and leftovers and the last few caramel-y vestiges of the croquembouche, washed down with tea and prosecco, a perfect end to such a gorgeous day!
