Chocolate Crackles

It was Matilda's god-sister K's 5th birthday this week, and we went to her birthday party yesterday (which thanks to the CRAZY warm weather for August ended up being a pool party! August! It isn't even Spring yet!!). Our oven's thermostat is broken, and I just had to contribute some kind of sweet offering to the array of delights available, so chocolate crackles were the ideal treat! Chocolate crackles are a uniquely antiopodean delight, and have a very exclusive recipe (on the back of every packet of Rice Bubbles). So I made chocolate crackles, tweeting my progress, and with the odd Facebook update or two. My cooking frenzy inspired some curiosity in friends who are not acquainted with this delightful, sweet treat ... so here is the recipe!

(Recipe card made with CM Storybook Creator Plus 2 software. Photo my own.)
What is copha? (thanks @kmdk!)

End of November ...

It's been two weeks since Matilda's surgery, and she's doing very well. We see the surgeon for a follow-up appointment tomorrow, and we're hoping that will mean ... no more eye drops. It's taken almost two weeks, but Matilda's just realised in the last day or so that if she thrashes around while we're trying to hold her down, the eye drops end up on her face or Daddy's fingers, rather than in her eyes. Little Monkey.
We also discovered just what a party animal she's going to become last Sat night at a wine and cheese (and election results) party with friends. M stayed up until about 9:30pm ... 2 1/2 hours past her usual bedtime!!! As the night wore on, she walked more and more ... oh, and there's some other news, since last Wednesday, M has been walking more and more. She started with a metre or so, and now she can pretty much cross rooms with something in her hand, no worries at all. At about 9:30 she finally hit the wall, and went to bed fairly well without too much objection, and didn't stir much when we left L & R's house. She woke when we were almost home, and it took a lot of cuddles to get her back to sleep. M and I ended up sleeping on the couch for 30 mins or so until she was really asleep. It's certainly much harder to sleep on the couch with a toddler lying on me than it used to be with a newborn all wrapped up in my arms!!
The good news was that M slept in until 8:30am on Sunday ... bliss!