Chocolate cake, pizza, salmon dog biscuits

Welcome to my new followers, and thank you for the lovely comments.

Yesterday's cakes - the mincemeat one has already been sliced and frozen.  This morning I'm going to put a chocolate orange topping on the choccy one - just a bar of chocolate melted in the microwave, with some finely grated orange zest stirred in, then poured over the top of the cake.  When making the cake yesterday (it was just a bog standard sponge cake batter, with 1 oz of the flour substituted with 1 oz cocoa powder - oh, and sorry, I always use the old type measurements with my Victoria sponge mixtures, as that's the way I've been doing it since before metric measurements came in!), I added in about 2 tbsp. thick cut orange marmalade, so it should have a nice orangey chocolatey taste.  I'll try and remember to take photos today, I always forget.

Husband, under my direction, made pizza dough about a month ago, frozen in 2 lumps....one we've already had couple of weeks ago.  I got the dough out yesterday, I'm going to top it with chilli which I made last week, I made enough for 4 extra portions to freeze plus a smaller bit in a tub specifically for the pizza topping.  Will add some frozen sliced peppers and buffalo mozzarella balls (got them yesterday reduced to half price when I popped into the shop for carrots and milk) and a sprinkle of Cheddar.  I'll make coleslaw to have with the pizza.

The salmon dog biscuits are dead easy and not nearly as posh as they sound....it's simply pastry - flour and butter with a jar of salmon fish paste substituted for half of the butter, and a splash of water.  I whizz it up in seconds in the food processor.  The first couple of times I made it, I rolled the pastry out and spent ages cutting out tiny shapes, but then thought don't be daft, Betty doesn't care what shapes the biscuits are, she wolfs them down in seconds.  So now I just roll it out to a rough oblong on a sheet of baking paper, transfer it to a baking tray and bake till golden.  It's so much easier to quickly cut it into squares with a big knife when it's baked.

Think we're going to have a veggie dinner tomorrow, I saw a recipe for smashed potatoes which sounds good, and have some parsnips and Brussels that need using up.