Six months on

For most people, six months means very little. For parents, it is huge. At the beginning you start by counting the days, then the weeks and slowly that progresses into months. Today marks six months since our little girl was born. That is one half of one whole year!!! In one way, it seems likes days and in others, it seems like eternity.

Elena stole my heart, the moment I first heard her heartbeat. I will never be sad when I think of her, only when I think of what we lost, a life time full of the joy from the love of my life.

I listen to my friends telling me about their children’s first steps, first words, first day of school. I look quietly at the pictures they show me and the world of their babies wearing alphabet baby grows, colourful striped gay pride outfits and the videos of them saying dada for the first time. I go to their christenings and first birthday parties and watch them blow out the candles on the cake. But all the time, I am thinking to myself how we won’t get those chances to celebrate and share.

Today is probably one of the hardest that I have had to face in the last five or so months since our Daughter Elena’s funeral. Today Elena would be six months old. Of course, in my eyes she is six months old, but without her here to cuddle and play with and show her off, it is very difficult to express to others what this day means.

On the first of every month, I bake something to mark the day. Each month I think, how would our daughter sound, how much she would have grown and would she look more like me or Damian. I try to imagine her smile and her mumbles. She would be sitting up by now and modeling her six to nine month old baby grows and outfits that I had bought. But when I looked in her wardrobe this morning, I realised that of all the little clothes I bought her, I never went further than the six to nine month age bracket. This is it, I have run out of little dresses,  trousers, tops and little hats that will fit for what seemed like forever. I never got to continue buying her special outfits and never got to prepare for her growing up passed this age.

I will always wonder what Elena would be like and what she should be doing and saying. But as time passes, it does get easier live with and easier to face the world. But in some ways I just think, it gets easier to lie. Instead of being a mother to a living child, I am now a statistic.

To mark this first six months, I give you six of my favourite Kitchen Feasts cakes.

BLACKBERRY, DARK CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE

This has been one of my most popular cakes. It is really light but with so much flavour. If you don’t like blackberries or dark chocolate or simply don’t have any, change them for raspberry and white chocolate, both winning combinations. For the recipe click here

VICTORIA SPONGE

This is the first cake I think I ever made when I was a kid. So quick and simple and can be jazzed up in many ways. Always a popular summer cake. For the recipe click here

COCONUT AND RASPBERRY CAKE

I adore coconut. I actually can’t get enough of the stuff. I even recently started using a coconut cream shower gel, my addiction has gotten that bad. But I feel this is really a summery cake. So go get all the ingredients and make this cake immediately! For the recipe click here

MY MOTHER’S DAY CAKE

I made my first mother’s day cake myself and for obvious reasons, I rate this as one of my favourite cakes. It’s actually a victoria sponge mix but just spruced up a little.It’s pink, it’s got sprinkles and it’s topped off with my yummy french almond macarons, what’s not to love. For the recipe click here

PEACH AND BLACKBERRY MACAROON TART

I have made this about seven times this year. I rank it on par with our blackberry, dark chocolate and almond cake. We recently made a few of these for one of our fans for his birthday, and I think it went down well. For the recipe click here

 

RASPBERRY AND VANILLA CUPCAKES

Last but not least, these are Elena’s special cakes. I made these for her after she was born and I will continue to make them until the day we meet again. For the recipe click here