[DanaC]

Read this on my phone when it was first posted and meant to post when i got home.

Anyways: reading the OP I proper choked up. You, Clod, are a superb mum. You remind me of my own mum and the lengths she used to go to to try and make ridiculously restricted diets bend to some sense of 'normal'. Cooking with blends of weird and wonderful non-wheat flours, this and that substitute.

My big thing was jelly. I really, really loved the big colourful wobbly jellies that you got at kids' birthday parties. But food colouring was not allowed and natural options were no where near as widely available as they are now. I think ordinary gelatin might have been off the menu as well, along with regular sugar. She used seaweed and managed to make an impressively green jelly. It wasn't wholly successful. Taste was a little off-kilter, but I only really know that because I found out later :p My brother and cousins all ate it with apparent gusto and much praise, so I just enjoyed it. There were other, far more successful culinary adventures, but the jelly always sticks in my mind. It fulfilled its primary purpose: it was a jelly, and it was manifestly bright green, ergo it was a proper birthday party.

The cake is awesome, Clod. And your little lass looks a picture.