Running off the birthday cake

So I survived another birthday yesterday.  And even managed to get myself up and out for a nice easy 4km jog.  I was lucky I got myself out of bed before 7am, as it started raining about 7.30am and continued steadily all day.  I have another day off tomorrow, but not sure if I'll run - I've got a few aches and pains so I'll take Daves advice - I should dust off the stationary bike that is sitting taunting me from the corner of the living room.

I think I just need to find a new winter exercise routine.  Maybe mix it up a bit, a few days on the exercise bike, at least one or two runs and some yoga should do it.  And I need to restart the 100 push ups program too.  I'm a little disappointed with myself for not getting back into it after my holiday to Aussie.

Now on to more fun things - my uber-geeky birthday cake.  I mentioned that I'd never had a Star Wars themed cake as a child (my mum did do some neat cakes, but never a Star Wars cake) and it was decided that you're never too old to have a Han Solo frozen in Carbonite birthday cake.  I didn't have to do the boring bits (bake the cake or make the buttercream and frosting) but was responsible for creative direction and sculpting.  It was the first time either of us had attempted fondant icing, or anything this "creative" for a cake.  And after all the work I was rather impressed with our efforts. 

The cake itself was one of my mum's recipes for Chocolate cake - I wanted a chocolate/orange flavour, so we substituted orange essence for the vanilla the recipe asked for.  It's a really nice moist dark chocolatey cake - I don't know if it's because it's made using buttermilk, but it tastes REALLY good.  The buttercream filling (and layer of "crumb coat" under the fondant) was orange flavoured, and a very bright orange colour.  The fondant was a recipe I found on the internet for Marshmallow Fondant, it doesn't taste too bad, but it's a bit sugary, but that might be because I used a budget bag of marshmallows.  Next time I'd splash out and buy Pascals instead of Home Brand.