My babiest baby turned 21 at the end of December.

I can’t quite believe it either! Such an old lady!

tiny baby bessie

Despite my attempts to provide non-gendered childhood environment, she was having none of it:

focussed fairy princess bessie

more fairy princess bessie

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As has been our practice this year, rather than going out to hideously expensive restaurants we’re celebrating birthdays at home with dinner of the birthday-ee choice. For her meal Bessie chose Duck breast with celery, apples and pecans from Marie Claire: Fresh and Fast.

On the day of the dinner I decided that the table-scape was not very festive or celebratory, so in the spirit of using what I had to hand, I dragged out what I could to represent Bessie’s favourite things – bugs fabric (from the stash) to use as a table-cloth and Sydney swans napkins. Completely hideously mismatched – but we embraced it.

Two photos of food because I couldn’t decide which was better.

Don outdid himself – this was spectacularly good!

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Bessie requested cheesecake for dessert – which is not something I’m terribly well versed at. Clarissifer often brings an utterly genius cheesecake to work, so I hit her up for her recipe (and was surprised at the source).

In keeping with the theme I thought I’d decorate the cake per my memory of her 4th birthday cake (loves those ladybugs).

yeah, that black and white film wasn’t quite the thing for capturing the cake

Memory sort of got it right, I’d forgotten about those flowers – oh well, updated for the modern age.

Cooking notes: chocolate ladybugs absolutely should not be eaten with the cake; the recipe calls for way too much cinnamon for the base; served raspberries on the side rather than stirring through. It was incredibly rich and amazingly good. A+++ would cook again.

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I’m planning to kick the whole decorating the table for birthdays thing to the next level in 2017.