I’m finally relaxing after 24 hours of baking pita bread pizzas, chicken nibbles, iced cup-cakes, choc-chip cookies, citrus slice and of course, birthday cake. This was no ordinary cake, it was a Pinata cake and totally not healthy. Oh well, it was my son’s 8th birthday and I don’t think he and his 12 friends would have appreciated carrot sticks and egg sandwiches!

Back to the Pinata cake: it’s a basic round cake with a hollow cut in the centre. You ice the whole thing with decadent chocolate butter icing and pile up rainbow choc-chips and gold chocolate coins in the centre. Then you melt a pack of chocolate melts and swirl the chocolate around a metal basin until it sets. I left it in the freezer overnight then this morning placed it over the cake, loosening the chocolate shell from the basin with my hair blow-dryer. Then I melted even more chocolate to stick M&M’s all over the shell. If you want the full recipe, it’s in the Australian Women’s Weekly ‘kids’ birthday cakes’ recipe book.

What more could a bunch of hyped 8-year-old boys want than a cake filled with chocolate and lollies that you get to smash open!

Oh, I did have one token to healthy eating: a basket of mandarins. They looked great on the table and I think someone even ate one!