The Lamington that wasn't a cake, and a Dragon that was.

Today is brought to you by the letter "C", for cake.

Except not quite.

Recently, a friend's son was travelling up north with his friend and they came across a dead sheep stuck in mud with a half delivered lamb. Being the tender hearted types, they wanted to help, but didn't know how.

My friend's son called his mum, who is a qualified veterinary nurse. She picked up the call when she was at home with a visitor. Afternoon tea was interrupted by giving her son a crash course in lamb delivery, including gruesome details of where to find the anus/womb etc. The boys succeeded in delivering a healthy female lamb. Sadly the mother sheep was long gone. Next step. What to do with an orphaned lamb and no way of knowing who it belonged to? Take it home to mum of course.

My resourceful friend cleaned it up, found it some appropriate food and got it wrapped up and warm. The family is now feeding it every three hours and it is sleeping happily inside an old tyre stuffed with blankets.

Lambshanks has been dubbed Lamington (she's a pure white little thing covered in coconut flakey wool). I met her this morning and she is as tame as cat and very sociable. My friend will raise it and hopes it will be then adopted out to a local farmer.

Now, the dragon.

Cakes are given the strangest names. Today is my husband's birthday, so I offered to take a cake to work tomorrow. I borrowed a recipe called "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon", so named because it is a cake made with very thin alternating layers of orange and chocolate sponge which makes it look like a tiger. Unfortunately I don't have the right size or shape cake tin to make it like the recipe, so instead made it in an oblong tin, like a marble cake. In fact looking at it, I should probably rename it an earthquake cake due to the cracks!

And finally, the real Crouching Tiger. Ruppin The Terrified Tabby has taken his anxiety to another level with the arrival of the Famous Five chickens from next door. This is him yesterday watching them from a safe distance before he rushed back inside to hide behind the kitchen curtains. A case of the timid Crouching Hidden Tiger.