Enchanted Kitchen

I'm Having a Makeover - Yay!

2011-08-04T22:12:00.001+10:00

Okay, not me personally although I won't lie, I've needed a makeover for ages now but the makeover is a happening here! This site is all over the place at the moment but hopefully the install will be complete within the month and then it'll all be great. I'll be able to get stuck into posting yummy cupcakes, edible crafts and fun kitchen crafts. Can't wait!

Christmas Bear Cupcakes

2011-05-20T18:28:00.001+10:00

I made these a few years ago now for a Relief Society christmas activity. These almost didn't make it as we didn't have an air-conditioner and it was sooo hot, heat and ganache don't go together. I had to make the ganache twice! I was told that some took the cupcakes home just for the bears and didn't eat the cupcakes. I know one lady kept the bear on top of her tv, haha.

In love. This guy bear is holding mistletoe and is wearing his heart on his sleeve. He just loves the little girlie bear with the cherries in her hair.

Christmas Pudding

Those pink things are supposed to be earmuffs

Wrapped in lights

Ribbon around the cake board

Birthday Cakes

2011-03-29T12:45:00.002+10:00

Birthday cakes for my kids last year were very simple. I didn't have much time considering the twins were 1 month old when I made my son's cake and 2 months old when I made these cupcakes for my daughter. But, either way they turned out nicely and the kids loved their cakes (what kid wouldn't!)

May Clee-Cadman (Maisie Fantasie) inspired cupcakes

Butterflies with luster dust to make them all sparkly and pretty

A simple cake. Two ring cakes cut and carved and shaped into a 3. Covered in buttercream with licorice outline around the cake, fondant road and tic tacs as the white markers - too easy!. New cars for the top of the cake act as a second present. Did you notice the flag right in front of the white ice-cream van? My darling boy did that. I told him he could stick a flag on the cake wherever he liked haha:)

Fondant Clown and Bow Cupcakes

2011-03-14T16:44:00.003+10:00

Early last year we hosted a family gathering (we have them every month) so that gave me reason to make something. I had seen fondant clowns on flickr so decided i'd give them ago. Unfortunately I can't find the original flickr clowns but they were absolutely fantastic, I think there were about 5 clowns doing different things. I'll keep looking for them but if you happen to come across them please let me know so i can give credit.

How could anyone be scared of this playful clown, he's too cute!

Not a very good pic but I think you get the idea - this cake was HUGE. It had five layers, all different colours, covered with a sourcream chocolate icing.

My second attempt at the Planet Cake bow cupcakes. They turned out really well despite 'glazing' the bows with water which made the fondant a bit soggy and didn't harden up, don't know what I was thinking! Don't worry, I'm now the proud owner of proper glaze and for my next attempt I think I'll try a different colour scheme

Labyrinth Cake

2011-03-08T14:40:00.000+10:00

One of my nephews asked me if I could make a cake for him for his Labyrinth themed party. I was excitied that someone actually wanted me to make a cake for them - my first request - yay! Labyrinth is one of his favourite movies, it's the ~~weird~~ 80's movie with David Bowie in it. I remember seeing this movie after my first daughter was born and it was just horrible. It wasn't a good movie for me to watch just after having a baby. I cried and went and sat next to her for ages while she slept.

The book on the cake board had lines from 'You Remind Me Of The Babe' which David Bowie sings in the movie

Hoggle climbing out of the Oubliette

This is Sarah or as I call her Singing Sarah. Doesn't she look like she's singing! Sarah is supposed to be looking like she's realised there's only one hour left to rescue her baby brother.

The Worm

Door Knockers

Baby Cupcakes and Flower Cupcakes

2010-10-11T13:27:00.002+10:00

When the twins where around 3 months old we had their baby blessings. There were three baby blessing that day and I still chuckle when I think two of those were mine! Ahhh, I promise the whole talking about twins will stop (eventually) lol. After church we headed over to my in-laws for dinner and of course I couldn't resist the opportunity to make these adorable baby cupcakes. They're not my own brain child unfortunately, these came out of the Planet Cake book which btw has funny crying baby cupcakes too!

Aren't they just cute

You know, i've only just realised one baby is missing a nose.

Flower Cupcakes
A few months ago the youth in our ward held a massive ward garage sale to raise money so they can go to EFY next year. I contributed to the cake stall and made yummy lemon cupcakes with white chocolate ganache and orange cupcakes with dark chocolate ganache. Each cupcake was topped with white sugarpaste and decorated with an edible flower dusted with snowflake luster dust. They were so pretty.

Packaged and ready for delivery

Finally an Update

2010-10-04T19:51:00.000+10:00

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last posted and thought it was high time I got my act together and started blogging again. That and people have been asking me if i've put anything new on my blog, how's the blog going, what have I made lately, so finely you all (Dad) get to find out haha. But alas, today it's just an update so no food, sorry :(

As you can imagine a lot has happened in a year. I've had the twins - Yay Yay!! A boy and girl (in that order too) they're six months old now and probably the best babies one can ask for, no idea how I managed to pull that off but hey, it's great. I won't bore you with the whole "I did NOT have a c-section and that makes me feel like superwoman" "my babies are just the cutest" "they know their ABC's and can count backwards from 1000". I've been incredibly lucky with the twins, looking after them wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, I imagined the worst and got the best!

Getting the best twins was probably a good thing because our son has been quite sick. He was born with eczema, it runs in the family (husbands side) but since the end of last year it's gotten really bad. I mean severe, it got so bad he went to hospital and it seems he lives on antibiotics but he has ongoing specialist care so thats good. He was covered from head to toe with it and lost sooooo much weight. The day after I'd had the twins (imagine my hormones raging) my husband comes in after taking our son to the doctors and tells me he (our son) is the size of an 18 month old (he was nearly 3) and that he could die, not the best thing to tell someones thats just given birth. The poor midwives told me I had the baby blues haha, I told them I was crying because of my son! He still has the ezcema all over his body. It's not infected (at the moment) his skin isn't completely cracked (at the moment), he's not on antibiotics (at the moment), but he is just so time consuming. Two special baths a day, wet wraps, make sure he eats heaps of fat, monitor his weight, any weight gain is a huge success! People think our life is hectic and stressful because of the twins, but that isn't true. It's hectic and stressful because of our son. At the moment its three steps forward, two and a half steps back.

And then there's me. I still love making cakes and any opportunity I get i'll make something so you can imagine I have quite a backlog of yummy treats to share with you all.

Okay guys, thanks for reading this really long ramble hopefully it makes sense. Nice to get that off my chest though:) Well, thats my update in a nutshell. Till next post, take care.

Stained Glass Candle Cookies

2009-12-07T10:26:00.002+10:00

I think you'll impress everyone if you had a few of these around the house.

All ablaze. I used a small candle in it's own glass holder. The candle didn't make the lollies melt which was something I was wondering about. Just be careful when using candles especially around children, you know the 'don't leave candles going when you leave the room' etc. I had this on when my children were in bed.

It's Eat Christmas Cookies Season 3 over at Food Blogga. I participated last year and there were some really yummy Christmas cookies. I've checked-out the cookies for this year and the Chocolate Toffee Crunch looks oh soooo good and easy to make, can't wait to make them.

Find out about the Round-Up so you can join in too.

Check out this years Round-up cookies.

Stained Glass Candle Cookies

Dark Gingerbread (recipe below)

250g clear boiled fruit lollies (green and red starburst lolly pops were all I could find)

Royal Icing (coloured if you like)

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Line two baking trays with paper. Thinly roll out the dark gingerbread mixture on a floured surface and cut out twelve 12cm x 8cm rectangles. Transfer the rectangles to the lined baking sheets, spacing them slightly apart.

2. Using a square cutter (or sharp knife) cut out six squares from each piece, leaving a fine windowpane-effect frame. Bake the pieces for 5 minutes, then remove them from the oven and leave aside.

3.Ligtly crush boiled lollies while still in their wrappers, by tapping lightly with a rolling pin. Unseal the wrappers and place a few crushed lollies in each square of the frames.

4. Return the baking sheets to oven for a further 5 minutes until the lollies have melted. If there are any squares that are not completely flooded with melted lolly, use a toothpick to ease mixture to the sides. You will need to do this quickly as the lollies harden quickly. Leave the pieces on the tray to cool completely

5. Spoon royal icing into piping bag with a medium writing nozzle. Pipe lines over the gingerbread. Leave to set for about 30 minutes.

6. Sandwich two long sides of biscuits together with icing holding together tightly until they are stuck together and leave to dry.

Dark Gingerbread

makes 24

prep time: 10 minutes, plus chilling

baking time: 12-15 minutes

410g cups self-raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 stp gound cloves

125g firm unsalted butter

125g dark muscavado sugar

125g black treacle/molasses

1 egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 200 C and line two baking trays

2. Put the flour and spices in a food processor. Cut butter into small pieces, add to processor and blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, treacle and egg, and mix to a dough. Wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. Roll out the mixture on a floured surgace. Cut out rounds or squares and place on baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the spaces have risen slightly and appear a little paler in colour. Leave for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

I know this recipe idea came from a cookie book but I cannot remember which one. If you know please let me know so i can give credit.

Ice-cream Sundae Cupcake

2009-11-27T11:02:00.005+10:00

Tastes as good as it looks! They're so simple to make too. The cupcake consists of a vanilla cupcake, ice-cream, whipped cream, half a musk stick and a glace cherry.

Here's how I put it all together:

1. Using a knife cut a round hole as big as you like (mine weren't that deep), in the top of the cake.
2. Eat the cut out cupcake top;)

3. Now fill your hole with slighly softened ice-cream and spread it around and flatten it at the top.

4. Swirl on your whipped cream. Start on the outside of the cupcake and pipe around the edge then start piping in the middle to fill it in. Now pipe a little swirl on top of the middle.

5. Decorate with half a musk stick stuck in at an angle into the ice-cream and top with a cherry. Serve immediately or the ice-cream will melt.

Since these cupcakes were a success with my family, i've got my heart set on making Banana Split ones!

Notes:

Use a different coloured ice-cream to the topping (cream) so you can see the ice-cream and it'll be a fun surprise when the cupcake gets bitten into.
I found if the ice-cream wasn't softened a bit you couldn't really spread it and the cupcake came away from the liner.
Because I made only a few cupcakes we ate them straight away but if you make a lot you could pop the cupcakes filled with ice-cream into the freezer for a few mintues to harden up before pipping and decorating.
Pour a little cold chocolate sauce over the cream before adding the decorations - yum.

Wishing I'd Been On A Tropical Island

2009-11-16T16:52:00.017+10:00

It's been almost 5 months since my last post! I wish I could say that I spent the entire 5 months on a secluded lush tropical island with my family, lazily spending my days sipping milk from a coconut, swimming in crystal clear water, playing games and lying under a palm tree soaking up the sun.

Oh the reality, it couldn't be farther from my wish. In reality I mostly spent 5 months secluded to my bedroom, 'lazily' spending my days sipping water, lying on my bed or sitting outside soaking up the sun because it made me feel better.

Why was I sick. Well, it's because I'm...

Morning sickness and food blogging just don't go together! I couldn't even log into my blog email address because just the thought turned me green. I'm much better now, morning sickness is gone, I have a few other pregnancy niggles but they seem to be managable with the help of my friends and family.
Baby no. 3 - how exciting! We have a daughter and a son already so I don't really care what we have this time. I think it's a boy but my husband and daughter think its a girl. So...

Luckily i've had my scan and found out...

Yup, it's...

So as it turns out my husband and I were both correct. We found out we were having twins at 7 weeks. It was weird because before I left to have a scan I had an overwhelming desire to have twins, I mean I really really wanted twins and i've never had a feeling like that before so it was such a pleasant suprise (and a bit of a shock) to be told I was having twins, I cried, it was fantastic news. Twins don't run directly in our family, both our dads have twin cousins but that's about it, so it's exciting to be pioneering the twin thing in our family (fingers crossed).

I'm still undecided if this cupcake resembles a belly or not. My belly button is not like that at all (just in case you were wondering), and this belly must belong to a not very pregnant woman, needs more icing underneath for a heavily pregnant lady.

Shhh, she's sleeping!

2009-06-22T10:10:00.008+10:00

Sleeping Beauty birthday cake for my daughter. LC went through all my cake books picking out ones she liked the best, then it was a process of elimination to see which one she really liked the best and this was it. This Sleeping Beauty is from Debbie Brown's Enchanting Magical Cakes. I changed the hair colour so it would match LCs.

Please excuse the mess in some of these photos. I pulled an all nighter and only remembered to take photos just before the cake was due for it's entrance. I tell you, i'll never pull an all nighter again. I had a major headache at the party (i wasn't able to enjoy it very much) and to top it off I couldn't bring myself to eat the cake until 3 days after - that's really sad!

Uh oh, where's your feet? Her legs (and waist) look a little weird:)

The colours of the fondant were almost the same as the ones in the book. I had to mix colours to get the results and I relied heavily on this colour mixing chart. I wouldn't have been able to do it without it - thank you colour chart:)

There are templates for the candleabra, bed heads and side bed things and as you can see I made the cake a little too long but put roses next to the bed to try and disguise it, anyway LC wanted roses on the cake so it all worked out well.

The bed head, footer and side things are made from Pastillage. I love that stuff. It dries really hard and I'm not kidding when I say that everyone wanted to taste it. Some even thought it was real wood - hmmm, maybe they were joking!

In the book Debbie uses this stand to place roses, but I thought it would be a good place to put the candles.

This design is so simple but effective. All you do is get a toothpick and mark groups of three dots - instant medieval!

This was another of my husbands wonderful ideas. He did this the next morning (after the party) to surprise me. He's a sweety:)

The end of the dress. You can't see it but i used a shimmer dust to make the dress sparkle.

Below is the pastillage recipe that I used. The recipe in the book calls for egg albumen which I couldn't find anywhere on the net, but luckily I found this recipe just in time. You need to make the decorations in advance so that they can dry. When it does dry it dries really really hard. Like I mentioned earlier, the bed heads were a very big hit and everyone wanted to try it. My nephew was walking around eating the bed head - ewww. I wouldn't recommend eating it though. Although it's mostly all sugar it does have raw egg and seriously I couldn't imagine it tasting very nice.

Pastillage

makes 350g (12oz)

1 egg white
300g (11oz) icing sugar, sifted
10ml (2tsp) gum tragacanth (I used tylose powder instead)

1. Put the egg white into a large mixing bowl, you don't beat the egg just add enough icing sugar until the mixture combines together into a ball. Mix in the gum tragacanth or tylose, and then turn the paste out onto a work surface and knead the pastillage well.

2. Incorporate the remaining icing sugar into the remainder of pastillage to give a stiff paste.

3. Store pastillage in a polythene bag placed in an airtight container in a refrigerator for up to one month.

Notes: Pastallage dries quickly so work fast. If it does become hard you just need to keep kneading it till it comes together and becomes smooth again.

Oh So Sweet

2009-06-18T18:33:00.007+10:00

These are soooo simple to make, any Little Chef can do these. The only thing I didn't let LC do was the cutting of the lifesavers - that's strictly an adults job.

Pop the whole thing into your mouth- yum. Even my husband commented they were really good.

Little Teacups

250g marshmallows
1 packet of freckles
2 packets of musk lifesavers, cut in half with sharp knife
approx. 3/4 cup icing sugar
water, just a little bit

Mix the icing sugar and water together till you get a thick paste.

Put a small amount of icing on the freckle. LC used a knife but I find it easier to use my finger, a bit messy but easier. Place the freckle on top of the larger end of the marshmallow.

Now put some icing on one half of a broken lifesaver. You can use your finger, a knife or dip it into the icing - make sure to hold on tight though.

Now place the lifesaver on to the side of marshmallow making sure to press it in for a few seconds. I prefered having the back of the lifesaver facing forward rather than having the lifesaver front (with the word 'Lifesaver') facing you, I think it looks better.

There are more of these little teacups over at Planning With Kids. They use a biscuit as a saucer which is really cool. There are also instructions and heaps of photos.

Cookie Monster and Caterpillar Cupcakes

2009-06-15T07:45:00.011+10:00

The end of May was busy with birthdays (me, my dad and my daughter ) and this was my excuse to go crazy and try cupcakes and cakes that i've always wanted to try and of course I had a burnout and that's why I haven't posted in 2 weeks. I don't think I could bake for a living. I couldn't eat cake for a few days - ahh!

Lets get the ball rolling and start with the cupcakes I made for my daughter to take to school for her birthday. I thought of making just pretty caterpillar cupcakes but I just couldn't imagine the real boy boys in the class being overjoyed so I made some Cookie Monsters for the boys.

Check-out the Cookie Monster on the bottom, second from the right. Don't know how I missed him but he makes me laugh.

Hmm, looks like someone needs to brush up on their food colouring technique.

I made the eyes out of about 4g of sugarpaste and used black food colouring but if you don't want to use sugarpaste, mint cool fruits would be a good substitute.

I have made caterpillar cupcakes before, they were fun and easy to make not to mention extremely cute so I thought the girls would love them.

Those little tufts of grass were my husbands idea, and a pretty good one at that.

I thought I'd try something new and put some shimmer powder down their packs but unfortunetly it didn't really work out.

Well, the cupcakes went down a treat with the kids, i'm glad they enjoyed them, althought my husband was extremly (and i mean extremly) upset to hear the kids enjoyed them. He thought I had made them for our daughters family birthday party we were having the following day, he was looking forward to eating the Cookie Monsters.

Happy Birthday To...

2009-05-25T14:08:00.012+10:00

Happy Birthday to......ME!
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday dear Meeee
Happy Birthday to Me

Gimme a few hip hip hoorays. Awww, thanks.

I love presents, I love attention (but only on my birthday) and I love birthday cake! One year when I was young (maybe 10 years old) I asked my mum if was going to have a birthday cake. She grumbled a bit and said she'd pick one up after work. It was a honey and ginger swiss roll (the cheap ones from the shopping centre) and I was soooo disappointed, it just didn't feel like a birthday. From that day on I told myself that it wasn't going to be a good birthday unless there was good cake!

Now i'd call that a good 30th birthday cake, even if I did make it myself - hehe. My daughter and husband made me a mothers day cake (i should post that up sometime soon) but i gave them strick orders to NOT make me a birthday cake (you'll see when I post the pics) because I wanted to make one myself.

The cake was originally going to have flowers on it but they didn't turn out, then I was going to have ruffles on it but my Dad said 'those carnations look nice' so i scraped that idea, then I remembered my Maisie Fantaisie book Sweet and Simple Party Cakes that hada polka dots cake and voila - here it is. I must say this polka dot cake is fantastic for beginners, not only does it look good but you can hide any imperfections with the dots - yay.

A cool little trick, hiding the bottom with some rolled fondant, it made it look kinda professional.

Whooa, I made the chocolate fudge cake in the book and boy was it sweet. I love sweet things but it was a little hard to eat. I'll definitely cut out some of the sugar next time (it has 4 cups!).

The original Dotty About You by Maisie Fantaisie.

Apparently the 30's are the new 20's (whatever that means!) so it's good to be young again!

Experiment Cupcakes

2009-05-18T11:31:00.014+10:00

Who's been a naughty girl? Ummm, that would be me!! In the past month i've bought 3 cake books and a decorating magazine. Last week I was just browsing (honestly!) the cake section in the book store when Planet Cake's book leapt out at me and so I had to buy it. The cakes in there are amazing, i can't wait to make the bag cake- cool huh.

The book is more like a course. It begins with the easy stuff (cupcakes) and you more on to the hard stuff (the bag). So, last week i started 'the course'. I've baked PC's (Planet Cake's) vanilla cupcakes and used their syrup and white chocolate ganache recipe and I can say that they were extrememly tasty. I mean really tasty!

The first cupcake i made was PC's hot pink and black bow cupakes. Although not perfect these were cool to look at. Can't wait to make them again. Okay, i had planned on making heaps of these but my creative genius was bursting to get out (lol) and the rest of the cupakes i decorated were experiments, just me messing around with different designs.

This is my favourite! I just love the bow.

I wanted to do a more manly cupcake for my husband so i made this cirlce one, but my husband prefered the pink tie-dye! Yikes, i thought it would be breeze to do this sort of design, i definitley need to practice more.

One big happy cupcake family:)

Traffic Light Crackers

2009-05-14T06:57:00.008+10:00

These are on a playschool DVD which we have had for years so that's how long i've been wanting to make them! Playschool is one program I can sit and watch with my kids. They have a great site that has lots of useful box ideas and some recipes, check it out:)

How To:

Spread vegemite (or promite, marmite) on rectangular shaped crackers. Then top with half a cherry tomato, a small chunk of cheese and then a small piece of gerkin. My son didn't like the gerkin but use whatever, a piece of lettuce or something.

Little Chefs crackers. She's known her traffic lights since she was two! lol

Lime and Buttermilk Cake

2009-05-11T16:25:00.007+10:00

This cake was the find of 2008 for me. It was funny though, this recipe was lying around for several months waiting for me to just get on with making it! I didn't think the cake looked particularly interesting and I don't like limes so this cake was purely for my husband and children. Weeeell, guess who ate most of it? Haha yup, it was that good!! It's like a lemon delicious pudding but in cake form but using limes:) It's really soft and moist in the middle and I love it the best just after the icing sets. It's so nice when it's really fresh. I've tried this recipe using lemons instead of limes but it just didn't taste that good. Maybe limes and buttermilk were just meant for each other.

Lime and Buttermilk Cake

serves 8

250g butter, softened

2 limes, rind finely grated, juiced (should make 1 tablespoon)

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs, separated

2 cups self-raising flour, sifted

210ml buttermilk

Lime icing

1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon milk

1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease and line a 20cm (base) round cake pan.

2. Using an electric mixer on high speed, cream butter, 1 tablespoon lime rind and sugar in a small bowl until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, mixing well after each addition.

3. Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in half the flour. Add half the buttermilk and 1 tablespoon lime juice. Stir to combine. Fold in remaining flour and buttermilk and 1 tablespoon lime juice. Using electric mixer, beat eggwhites in a clean bowl until soft peaks for. Fold into batter.

4. Spread batter into cake pan and smooth surface. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in pan. Turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Make lime icing: Combing icing sugar, milk and enough lime juice to form a thick icing.

6. Spread icing over top of cake. Allow to set before serving.

Thomas The Tank Engine Cake

2009-05-04T07:13:00.007+10:00

Here is the Thomas The Tank Engine cake I made for my son's 2nd birthday. I had made 3 large slab cakes and 1 square cake to carve into Thomas, i was worried there wouldn't be enough cake but there ended up being too much. The cake could have fed 60, there was only 6 of us! We were lucky enough to take the cake that afternoon to a family bonfire but we still came home with some - Thomas was HUGE!

That's a sugarpaste head. Once you get the hang of it it's not that bad to make. My son realised it was Thomas so he wasn't that unrecognisable:)

Unbeknown to me, I demoted poor Thomas! My husband pointed out that Thomas was the No.1 engine that's why he has a 1 on the side and that I shouldn't change the number - sorry Thomas. I know Thomas doesn't quite look like Thomas. Where's the red and the detail? Well, carving the cake took me one hour because I didn't know what on earth i was doing so when it came to icing, i just slapped it on and did whatever! FYI there's supposed to be 3 wheels in blue icing.

Slapped on icing or not, my parent's think i'm pretty cool now!

This is a pic of the first Thomas head i made. I got up to this point and i was thinking how wonderful i was when i realised that there was no room for the eyebrows - aaaargh! Back to the start i went.

To make this cake i followed the Thomas The Tank Engine tutorial from Cake Space. It's a good tutorial although I didn't have time to email questions about measurements so I had to wing it when it came to how much sugarpaste to use for the face etc.

Welcome to....

2009-04-23T13:39:00.015+10:00

Has anyone tried snake before? I hadn't before I made these and I must say they taste a bit like scone! My son's eyes lit up when I showed him a snake, a definite hit. Well, lets take a closer look inside 'the pit', don't be afraid, they won't bite;)
These snakes are pretty ugly. The one on the left sports season all salt while the one on the right wears dark green food colouring (although you can't tell) and his name is Slytherin.

We're starting to get a bit more fashionable. These are covered in coloured sugar.

Very hip. My husband said the one on the left looks like a Rainbow Serpent .

Then there's ones that always have to be different!

Ssssss

If you're not into snakes:

try some very yummy cinnamon and sugar bread sticks.

Home-baked Bread Sticks

2 cups self-raising flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup polyunsaturated oil

3/4 cup skim milk

1 egg white, lighlty beaten

Savoury Toppings:

poppy seeds, seasame seeds, caraway seeds, mixed Italian herbs, Cajun spice, parmesn cheese, coarse salt, garlic powder, chilli powder etc

Sweet Toppings:

cinnamon sugar, hundreds and thousands, sprinkles. I used cachous for the eyes and large rainbow sprinkles for the tongues

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line 2 baking trays.

2. Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Add oil and milk. Mix together with a round-bladed knife to form a firm dough. Knead gently on a lighlty floured surface until smooth.

3. Cut the dough into 24 equal pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a 30-cm rope. Place 2.5 cm apart on baking trays.

4. Brush dough with egg whites. Sprinkle with toppings.

5. Bake until golden, about 10 minutes. Place baking trays on wire cooling racks and cool for 10 minutes. Transfer bread sticks to rack and cool completely.

Makes 24 breadsticks

To make spiral bread sticks, roll 30-cm ropes lightly in flour (I forgot to do that part) then wrap around oiled wooden chopsticks, I used a brush and brushed on the oil. Bake as above. Cool before gently removing from chopstick.

Tea For Two

2009-04-21T12:34:00.009+10:00

Here' s the second cake I made and it's my favourite with all of the details and little characters. I had so much fun, even if the models did take a while.

Would you believe that I don't have any brown food colouring (i know it's tragic isn't it) so I used browining essence instead!

My daughter thought some white sugarpaste would look good in the teacups to represent milk which was a great idea but I opted for some blue gel to look like water.

Present Cake

2009-04-20T14:17:00.007+10:00

Last week I went to the library and found the book Pretty Party Cakes by Peggy Porschen. I'd never heard of her before but i'm so glad I do now! I really really really want this book badly and you know, i'm so lucky, because it's my birthday next month, I don't think i'll have to wait too long - yay!!!

Anyways, in the book their is a square present cake and that cake looked fantastic with a green ribbon and light and dark pink circles. I loved it so much that I made a similar smaller one for a family gathering. It was so funny when I lifted the cake out of the bag, there were a few Whaaaays and cheers going on!

My improvised bow. I made the bow in the book but hadn't let it dry long enough so when I attached it it completely caved in! Not sure about those curly ribbons though (another improvised idea of mine).

Tomorrow i'll post up the other cake I made! Yup, I made two small cakes for the gathering and tomorrows cake is my favourite.

Easter Cupcakes

2009-04-13T11:11:00.014+10:00

Hope everyone is enjoying the Easter long weekend. We had my family over for lunch on friday so I thought I'd impress with some Easter cupcakes.

The good 'ole nest cupcakes.

I only had one flake to go on top of 9 cupcakes. So as you can see the nests didn't really look like nests. The flake is supposed to be broken up to look like twigs but my family still thought they looked great! *mental note: buy 3-4 flakes next time* The eggs were the limited edition m&m speckled easter eggs (but you could just use peanut m&m's).

This little chick topped my daughters cupcake. I had visions of her biting into one of those speckled eggs and finding a peanut (she's allergic) so I thought i'd make something. I shaved some nut free chocolate with a potato peeler for the nest, a lot easier than flaking the flakes!

My daughter name the chick Rose. Rose was very easy to make: One ball for the body and a slightly smaller ball for the head. Two small orange balls flattened and then cut in on an angle formed the feet. A tiny orange ball turned into a cone and then cut at the tip formed the beak. I made two indents in the head and then stuck in two tiny blue balls for the eyes. I used a straw to mark the eyebrows.

For the wings I made two love hearts and used the back of a knife to mark them and Whoooaaa is that a ....... it can't be a ............... it is a .............a Bogan in the background! Okay, so he's not a bogan, but I think my No1 Brother really wanted to be on my blog, hahaha.

Presented on the bottom of the cupcake tree that my No1 Brother gave me for Christmas.

A New Family Member

2009-04-06T09:57:00.008+10:00

The internet is finally on - Yay!

Our move went fairly smoothly. It's sooo nice being in our very own home. I tell everyone that I could live here forever!

In my last post I mentioned that we have a new arrival. Yes, we have a fifth member of our family now. I'm sure many of you have this member! Ahh, the sleepless nights, the stress, the happiness and joy, and I know i'll learn a lot. I know, it's going to be hard work but it's going to be worth every moment. So, would you like to meet our new family member? Here she is, our very own:

I've waited so long for a Mortgage, oooops, I mean Home! Good things do come to those that wait.

Our home before was a 2 bedroom unit with NO yard! We now have a yard for the kids to enjoy.

What's with the umbrella you might say? Kevin Rudd (our PM) is giving a $1600 rebate to those who get ceiling insulation, wahooo! So come 1 July, you know what i'll be getting.....free ceiling insulation. Okay, enough about my home.

How cute are cupcakecottages! I think this would make a wonderful 1st birthday cake with a candle as the chimney.

How to make Cupcake Cottages:

Level the tops of two texas sized cupakes. I've tried normal sized cupcakes and they work fine too, you'll just have to find really small sized lollies.

As a guide I marked out a square on the bottom of one of the cupcakes. Now you need to cut from the side of the square down on an angle.

Sandwich the two halfs together with icing. Ice the roof with one colour then ice the bottom cupcake with a different colour icing. I decorated my roof with fruity stap things cut to size for the edges, round fizzy lollies for the roof tiles, Bo Peeps (from Darrell Lea) and a fruit stick for the chimney. I used sugar paste for the door and handle and Bo Peeps for the windows.

We're going to make more of these next week for a school holiday activity - can't wait:)

Nishnobblers, One Revolting Recipe

2009-02-27T12:19:00.016+10:00

Don't take the title literally! Nishnobblers are really cool and super yummy, perfect for Little Chefs to make (with supervision of course).

Nishnobblers, what are they? Any Roald Dahl fans out there? If you've read The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me you may (or may not) remember they get a mention -

...there were Nishnobblers and Gumglotters and Blue Bubblers and Sherbet Slurpers and Tongue Rakers, and as well as this, there was a whole lot of splendid stuff from the great Wonka factory itself.

These Nishnobblers come from the book 'Roald Dahl's Even More Revolting Recipes'. There's heaps of revoltingly good recipes in there, i'm excited about The Magic Green Crystals.

You'll need 30 x 25cm sheet of bubble wrap.

Now, brush over 100g dark chocolate. I used more than 100g. I like my bubbles well and truly covered.

Make sure to get the chocolate into the the holes between the bubbles.

Well and truly covered. Put in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Melt 100g of white chocolate, let it cool a bit and spread it over the dark chocolate. Chill for 15 minutes.

When it's all set, carefully peel the bubble wrap off. Now cut shapes out with cookie cutters and there you have them...

Pie There!

2009-02-25T21:33:00.023+10:00

Over at The Pond, The Blonde Duck is getting high on pie. Yup, this piesty gal is dedicating this week to pies. I like the sound of the Peanut Butter Pie so I can't wait to make it. Duckie is also calling on her pond friends to send in recipes, pics, sweet memories and anything pie related, and if you do you might get chosen to be the Prince/Princess of Pie. How I'd love to be named Princess of Pie by Her Royal Pieness.

Okay Sugar Fairy, you've always been told to 'Reach for the Pies', so if you want to be Princess of Pie, work your magic. *Big breath* Here goes...

Deep Dish Apple Pie

This pie might take a long time but it's worth it. It's love at first bite! I used to make this pie a lot when I first got married so making this brought back lovely memories.

I got up at 5:00am this morning to make this. This was the nicest breakfast i've had in a while (no, i didn't eat the whole thing!)

Here are little pies I made for christmas.

Apple Cherry Pies

What James Bond does with those nasty little s'pies:

I think i'll give up on the cartoons (for now).

Deep Dish Apple Pie

Preparation time: 1 hour

Total cooking time: 50 minutes

Serves 6-8

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup plain (all-purpose) flour

125g (4oz) chilled butter, chopped

2 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar

1 egg

1-2 tablespoons milk

1 egg, extra, lightlybeaten

Filling

8 large green apples, peeled, each cut into 12 wedges

2 thick strips lemon rind

6 whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick (I just use ground cinnamon)

2 cups water

1/2 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Brush a deep, 20cm round springform tin with melted butter or oil. Line base with paper; grease paper. Dust tin lighly with flour, shake off excess.

2. To make filling: Combine apples, lemon rind, cloves, cinnamon stick, water and sugar in large pan. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until apples are only just tender. Remove from heat, drain well. Discard rind, cloves and cinnamon stick. Set aside.

3. Place flours and butter in a food processor bowl; add sugar. Using pulse action, process for 15 seconds or until mixture has a fine, crumbly texture. Add egg and almost all the milk; process for another 15 seconds until mixture comes together, add more liquid if necessary. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface; knead for 2 minutes or until smooth. Store, covered in plastic wrap, in refrigerator for 15 minutes.

4. Roll two-thirds of the pastry between 2 sheets of plastic wrap until large enough to cover base and side of tin. Carefully spoon apple into pie shell. Roll remaing pastry into a cirle large enough to cover top of pie. Brush pastry edge with a little of the extra beaten egg to seal. Trim excess pastry with a sharp knife and press around edge with a fork; brush top of pie with beaten egg. Bake for 50 minutes or until pastry is golden and cooked through. Leave pie in tin for 10 minutes before removing to a serving plate. Serve hot or cold with cream, ice-cream or custard.

Pies, Love and Happiness

Mini Caterpillar Cupcakes

2009-02-25T14:27:00.007+10:00

We'll be moving house within the next two weeks (if all goes to plan) so I thought i'd make something extra special to take to mothers group as it will be our last. These are mini cupcakes with tiny caterpillars on them and they were fun to make.

The inspiration for the caterpillars came from Lots of Sprinkles, Sharon's caterpillars are just so cute, I had to give them a go. Oh and it was my first time piping grass and now I'm obsessed, it's heaps of fun!

The only time grubs look cute in a garden!

These sugarpaste balls are the size of a small pea with smaller balls for the ears and a minute sized ball for the nose. Paint on some eyes with black food colouring.

A Leader Is Born

2009-02-23T11:54:00.010+10:00

This truly is a 'melting moment'. That hot fudge sauce melts the ice-cream like there's no tomorrow so I had to snap these pics fast so I'd have some ice-cream left to eat. I ended up sharing this with my husband because I made it too big, sometimes my eyes really are bigger than my belly. But what's it called?

Peanut butter brownie ice-cream stack with hot fudge sauce...now that's a mouth full.

Just as good by themselves.

Peanut Butter Brownies180g butter, chopped
150g dark eating chocolate, chopped
1 ¾ cups (385g) caster sugar
4 eggs, beaten lightly
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
¾ cup (110g) plain flour
2 tablespoons self-raising flour
1/3 cup (35g) cocoa powder
50g dark eating chocolate, chopped, extra
1/3 cup (95g) crunchy peanut butter (i used smooth)

1. Preheat oven to mederately slow. Grease 20 x 30cm lamington pan; line base and two opposite sides with baking paper.
2. Melt butter and chocolate in medium saucepan, stir over low heat, without boiling, until mixutre is smooth; cool until just warm.
3. Stir in sugar, egg and essence, then sifted flours, cocoa and extra chocolate.
4. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Drop small spoonfuls of peanut butter into the chocolate mixture and swirl through the chocolate with a knife.
5. Bake in moderately slow oven for about 50 minutes or until firm; cool in pan. Cut into 24 pieces for small brownie squares, I cut mine into bigger squares for stacking ( i can't remember how many squares it made).

Hot Fudge Sauce50g dark eating chocolate, chopped
½ cup (125ml) cream
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Combine chocolate, cream and sugar in a small saucepan. Stir over low heat until mixture is smooth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Assembling
Place one brownie square on a plate. Scoop out some softened ice-cream (the amount is up to you) and spread it over the top of the brownie. Place another brownie on top. Now you can either add another layer of ice-cream and brownie or you can pour over the hot fudge sauce to finish.

Pavlova...Simply Magic

2009-01-19T08:13:00.010+10:00

Ahh, Pavlova is my all-time favourite treat! I don't eat it a lot so when I do have some Pav it's a special moment for me ;)

Do I make my own meringue? When I first got married I used to make everything from scratch but then time became short when the kids came along. I've been buying shells for a while now but I want to be able to tell people that I made the meringue and feel proud:) The solution:

It's not Fairy Magic..... it's Pavlova Magic! I know, these have been around for years but I've been to much of a snob to buy one! Honesty, I thought I was above buying these 'cos I could make a Pavlova from scratch. *ashamed*

How easy is this: Put the mix in the bowl. Fill the bottom part of the egg with warm water and put it in with the mix. Beat for a few minutes. Put sugar in the top part of the egg and then pour a little at a time in the mix. That is it basically. Why didn't I try this earlier!

Okay, there is one downside to this pavlova mix. It REALLY stinks! The smell does go away....after it's cooked and cooled. Oh, it takes about 1 hour in the oven to cook and then you need to let it cool in the oven so that took about 2 hours.

Mango, strawberries, blueberries and passionfruit.

And how much cream do I put on my pavlova?

A LOT! Half and half and proud of it! Sometimes I'll add a little more cream after i've got my slice. What can i say, I love cream.

I'll be adding a few of these magic eggs to my food storage because I think they will be great to have on hand.

Little Window Sandwiches

2009-01-16T13:38:00.010+10:00

Think of the surprise littlies (and biggies) will get when they see these in their lunch box. Better still, let the kids make their own sandwiches for lunch, these are easy to make and i'm sure they'll have fun. *You can store any leftover bread in the freezer and use later as breadcrumbs.

Here's the to do:

Cut two pieces of bread with a cutter.

Using a smaller cutter, cut out the middle of one of the slices of cut bread then spread on your desired filling.

That combo was Little Chefs idea and apparently it tasted great!

Astro Boy Birthday Cake

2009-01-12T08:44:00.002+10:00

I searched the net looking for Astro Boy birthday cakes for inspiration and there wasn't that many! I was surprised about that, so here is my contribution to the world of Astro Boy cakes. This is the cake I made for my husband's birthday last week.

He's all sugar...paste that is.

It was all to much for poor Astro in the end, he had to lie down.

Up close and personal with Astro Boy
His eyes were the worst part to make. Next time i'll make indents into his head and stick the eyes in instead of having googly bulging eyes.

Nice legs! I stuck toothpicks in his legs as an after thought which made his legs go all funny and his boots now look like socks.

He is supposed to be standing on yellow and orange flame colours and the icing is supposed to be that really nice deep blue that you can see in the pic below but I just couldn't get the icing to go that colour.

The colour schemes came from this pic.

Another picture i used to help me.

I took some notes when I was making Astro to help me next time so here they are, they might help you too. Astro was made with Sugarpaste(fondant) which I bought at my local food shop.

Food Colouring (I used Wilton Gel colourings):
Creamy Peach for body colour
Royal Blue and Moss Green for his belt (i wasn't completely satisfied with his belt colour)
Red (no taste) for his boots
Black for his pants, eyes and hair.
Plain white sugarpaste for the eyes

Red Shoe/foot: 3 grams each. Make into a bit of a cone shape and push end of bush into the smaller end to indent for red boot.
Red Boot: 1 gram each approx 2.2cm long
Top of Red Boot: small pea size each, flattened slightly
Cream Leg: Large pea size each. Slightly tapper at top
Black pants: 3 grams
Green Belt: pea size
Cream Body: I wrote 7 grams and 10 grams, i'm not sure which one it was
Neck: pea size slightly flattened
Head: 10 grams
Arms: 1 gram each (not including hands)
For Astro's hair: They are just sharp triangles stuck to his head but I started off making them into shark fins and then tweeking them. I just found that to be the easiest for me.
Astro stood approx. 8.5cm tall.

Fruity Milk Pops

2009-01-08T08:44:00.014+10:00

It's been stinking hot and humid here. We're sweltering in the heat because we don't have an air-conditioner:( As I write this there is a nice cloud cover and it's drizzling yet still humid.

Because it's hot it's nice to have a few cold treats on hand so Little Chef and I have been busy in the kitchen making Fruity Milk Pops. These are fantastic because there are only TWO ingredients and are a breeze to make.

I recommend freezing these overnight. After about 5 hours, ours weren't frozen and I thought we'd done something wrong. Actually, I thought it went wrong because I let Little Chef do A LOT of the work but no, they just needed a lot longer to freeze. I know I know, I should put a bit more faith in my little cooking buddy.

Fruity Milk Pops2 packets of jelly (jello), 85g each (we used Mango)
3 cups of cold milk

Moulds (ours are roughly 60ml per mould and made 10 ice-blocks)

What to do:

Blend the two packets of jelly and cold milk in blender for 3 minutes. It should be frothy (airy, with lots of bubbles).

Pour mixture into ice block moulds and freeze.

Summer Yum!

We said:
Little Chef: These are really good.
The Sugar Fairy: You can feel the little jelly bits, interesting texture.
Mr Cupcakes: These are weird.

On The Farm With...

2009-01-05T09:48:00.018+10:00

The inspiration behind this cake was a Christmas present my son received from my brother. As soon as I saw the cow I wanted to make it into a cake. This was the first of it's kind for me so I'm rather please with the results:)

I wouldn't say they were twins, distant cousins maybe!

What they look like from err...behind.

Butterfly Fairy Bread

2009-01-02T10:24:00.014+10:00

Butterfly Fairy Bread is a twist on the Aussie favourite Fairy Bread. Fairy Bread is a MUST at kids birthday parties. Actually, i've been know to eat a few Fairy Bread sandwiches just for the fun of it!

The Sprinkles Fairy makes sure my kitchen is stocked with plenty of hundreds and thousands.

Butterfly Fairy Bread
You'll need:
white bread
butter/margarine
hundreds and thousands
fruit sticks
butterfly cookie cutter

1. Cut out butterfly shapes from the bread.
2. Spread butter on the bread.
3. Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands.
4. Cut the fruit sticks so they make the body of the butterfly.

Fairy Bread
Spread butter on white bread and then sprinkle with hundreds and thousands. Cut bread into triangles. Leave the crusts on!

Cupcakes and a One Year Old

2008-12-31T11:06:00.012+10:00

Last time I bought cupcakes from Cup-a-Cake I didn't really like them. Well, I was down that way just before Christmas and thought i'd give them another try.

My daughters choice (it's pink!). This cupcake was the better of the two. I liked the icing and the cupcake was a little moist, so this one was good. And how easy would it be to make this!

Another fun and easy cupcake to make. This one tasted just like the other ones I bought, so I didn't like it. It did however have a one year old fan....

"Mummy, i'm just resting my fingers on the box so I can get a better look"

"Mummy, look at that" he says while his finger hovers over the cupcake

"Ooops Mummy, my finger slipped" The temptation was just too great (there's a tiny finger mark near the Jaffa)

In for the kill. There was no holding him back so I just kept taking photos. Fun memories.

Cupcake Tip Fom a One Year Old: If you want your Ruldolph to have a mouth just follow my above instructions.

Oh, bring us a Figgy Pudding...

2008-12-10T15:07:00.011+10:00

...and a cup of good cheer. Just 15 more sleeps until Christmas!

Ok, not quite a Figgy Pudding these are Plum Puddings, although I don't know if they look very different.

Plum Puddings

1. Roll a ball of brown sugarpaste (fondant) and flatten. Press a piping nozzle into the sugarpaste to make currants.

2. Roll a sausage of white sugarpaste and put this over the top of the pudding. Try your best to make it look like the sauce is dripping down the sides. I was thinking you could use yellow sugarpaste for a more custard look.

3. Roll some green sugarpaste and cut to make holly leaves. For big holly leaves you can use a straw. I used a really small 6 pointed star cutter and shaped to look like holly. Add leaves to the pudding.

4. Roll tiny red sugarpaste balls and put on top of holly leaves.

5. Use a small brush to paint black food colouring onto the currants.

6. Transfer to cake when dry.

Source: The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible by Sheila Lampkin

Peppermint Cookies

2008-12-04T19:40:00.016+10:00

A friend made these for our Christmas Enrichment Night and I've been wanting to make them ever since because they were deliciously pepperminty (no fake peppermint essence here, Candy Canes all the way!) This recipe will be great if you have left over candy canes after Christmas.

The recipe is from Crisco. They used red, white and green candy canes which looked really festive, so if you can, use those.

Peppermint Cookies
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Yields: 3 dozen

3/4 stick Crisco® Butter Shortening Sticks OR 3/4 cup Crisco® Butter Shortening (I just used 3/4 cup of canola spread margarine)
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy canes or peppermint candies (see below for my method of crushing)
Additional 1/4 cup crushed candy for top of cookies (optional)

1. Heat oven to 350ºF/175ºC.
2. Beat shortening, brown sugar, granulated sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl of electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Beat in egg.
3. Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Mix into shortening mixture at low speed just until blended. Stir in crushed candy. Shape into 1-inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet.
4. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Do not overbake. Immediately sprinkle with about ¼ teaspoon crushed candy. Cool 2 minutes. Remove to rack to cool completely.
Tip: A 6-oz package of 12 candy canes will make enough crushed candy for the cookies and the garnish.

How I crushed Candy Canes
My friend had a problem crushing her candy canes and asked me to let her know if I came up with a better way then using a rolling pin and a ziplock bag full of canes. To start with I put the canes in a deep bowl and tried to crush them with the end of a rolling pin. Shards of cane went everywhere and after other fruitless attempts I had a break through:

1. Heat a few canes at a time in the microwave on high for 25 seconds. *Careful, when they come out they will be hot.* Try and work quickly with the warm canes it's a lot easier than cooled hard canes.

2. Put them in a teatowel and beat with the end of a rolling pin. Below is a picture of half beaten canes. At this point I just crushed them with my fingers. Easy!

3. You could also use scissors to cut half beaten canes (while still warm) into little tiny pieces.

4. Crushed canes. The last batch of candy canes I warmed up just crushed straight away, no scissors or fingers needed. Too easy!!

I'm sending these cookies into the Eat Christmas Cookies, Season 2 Event. Check out the Round-up page to see all the Christmas cookies people have sent in.

Koala Cookies

2008-12-03T07:51:00.018+10:00

These biscuits turned out great. Petal did a lot of the work on these because they are really easy. We'll be making another batch soon so Petal can give some to her friends as Christmas gifts.

Ginger Cookies ( you can use any cookie recipe though)
2 cups (300g) plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
125g cold butter, chopped
1 egg
1 tsp golden syrup

1. Preheat oven to 170°C/140°C fan-forced. Greased oven trays; line with baking paper.

2. Process sifted dry ingredients with butter until mixture is crumbly; add egg, golden syrup and ginger, process until ingredients come together. Knead on floured surface until smooth.

3. Make 1 30g ball and 2 8g balls (you don't have to measure if you don't want to. I'm a bit thingy about getting things just so). Position as below.

4. Push a paddle pop stick into the big ball just until you can feel it the other side.
5. Flatten the balls over the stick. Push the paddle pop stick up further if you need to. The paddle pop stick should be quite a ways in.

6. Cook them in the oven for approx. 15 minutes.

7. Decorate. We used mini m&m's for the eyes, left over oval jubes from the flower biscuits, sugarpaste flowers for the girls (a bit Hello Kitty don't you think. *Hello Koala*??). Used royal icing to stick them down. You could use melted chocolate.

You can see these being made (but a Teddy Bear) on Howdini.com.

Wedding Anniversary

2008-12-02T09:39:00.010+10:00

Recently we celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. How time flies!

When we got married we decided that we wouldn't have a reception because they are too much hassle and cost to much. We were poor students. In fact all we wanted to do was to just get married.

My Temple Prep teacher, Brother Thompson asked us about our wedding plans and I told him I was just going to borrow a dress from down there. Well, next time we met he said he'd spoken to his wife (who was in America) and asked her if she would make me a dress, and she agreed. So Sister Thompson arrived from America on a Friday night and had the dress ready for my by Sunday afternoon. Can you believe that, she must have been sooo tired. But that's not all, another Sister in the ward had dropped by her house and found out what was happening and decided to make us a bouquet and lapel. Some people are just so nice. My husbands sister was getting married the same day too (actually we gate-crashed their day), and we managed to book a time a few hours before them, haha, they didn't mind though.

As I said before, we didn't have a reception and thus no wedding cake. Well, it's taken me 9 years but I finally made a miniature wedding cake for us. It's not amazing (there's heaps of mistakes: lumps, ganache marks on sugarpaste etc), this was my first sugarpaste covered cake. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing but i'm happy with the results.

Double Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Ha ha, do you think i'll be good at making those Topsy Turvy/ Mad Hatters Cakes? I'll just say the top layer was supposed to be a bit lopsided ;) hehe

This is where I got married, the Sydney Australia Temple

Pretty Flower Biscuits

2008-11-28T09:51:00.016+10:00

There are so many great blogs out there that have creative kids food, there's Little Nummies, Gourmet Mom on the Go and Fun Snacks 4 Kids to name a few. I've been inspired by these blogs to set aside one day a week to post my own creative kids food. You don't have to be a kid to enjoy these fun foods either.

I've just realised that Petal snuck an extra button on three of the ones she made.
You'll need three ingredients:
*Marie biscuits/cookies or other round biscuits (Marie's are an arrowroot biscuit)
*White chocolate buttons
*Jubes

Melt some chocolate buttons in microwave. Spread chocolate on the biscuit leaving the edge chocolate free (if you want). Place a jube in the middle followed by 6 chocolate buttons as petals around the jube. Position buttons on an angle.

Of course there are lots of other things you can use instead of jubes and chocolate buttons. Here are some suggestions:

Middle (instead of jubes)

*saltanas

*smarties

*peanut m&m's

*dried apricot or date cut in half

*macadamia nut

Petals (instead of choc buttons)

*smarties

*dried apricots or dates

*nuts: almonds, walnuts

*apple or pear (quartered and then cut in half again)

*banana

If you have other suggestion let us know. We'd love to hear it :)

These were really tasty, even my husband agrees. The taste changes depending on the flavour of the jube. The first one I ate had a blackcurrent jube and it tasted like an Iced Vovo (actually it tasted better) and it was soooo good. Next time (yup, there'll be a next time) i'll try fruit pastels, because I think they'll have more flavour than the cheap jubes I bought.

Frosty the Adorable Snowman

2008-11-26T13:13:00.017+10:00

Super cute!

Aww, look at those big brown eyes.

Instead of eating them, use them as table decorations or use on the outside of a gingerbread house.

Coconut Truffle Snowmen

(amended from the book 'Christmas' by The Australian Women's Weekly)
Makes 6

360g white eating chocolate, chopped coarsley
1/3 cup (80ml) cream
1/2 tsp coconut essence (or there abouts. Whatever suits your tastebuds)
1 cup (80g) desiccated coconut
saltanas (or dried cranberries)
orange sugarpaste (or pistachios)
mini m&m's

1. Stir chocolate, cream and essence in small saucepan over low heat until smooth. Transfer mixture to small bowl; refrigerate about 2 hour.

2. Roll two level teaspoons of mixture into balls to make six small balls, roll three level teaspoons of mixture into balls to make six medium balls, roll level tablespoons of mixture into balls to make six large balls (you will have 18 truffles); place on tray. Refrigerate until truffles are firm.

3. Roll truffles in coconut; assemble six snowmen using three of the different-sized truffles for each, using toothpicks to secure them through the centre if needed. Decorate snowmen with cut up saltanas for eyes, sugarpaste/pistachio for nose and mini m&m's for buttons. Use scraps of fabric, tinsel, pipecleaner or ribbon to make scarf.

Just Remembered: I stuck on the eyes, nose and buttons using glucose syrup.

Funny!

Children love this song: Once There Was a Snowman (make sure you click on the dot that is for words and music. Top left corner). Use actions as suggested by the words.

Priceless Christmas Gifts

* Give the gift of yourself to your family and loved ones. Spend the day doing kind things for them. You could make breakfast, help wrap and deliver presents or clean up after dinner

* Give parents a break. Spend time looking after the children during the Christmas holidays.

*Visit someone who is sick or elderly. Ask them to tell you about a past Christmas.

*Express your love and gratitude to the Saviour in your prayers.

* Write a letter to your parents or someone to whom you are grateful for the things they have done for you.

*Read the Christmas story to a young child and teach them about the Saviour (See Luke 2)

Chocolate Forest and Peppermint Patty Cupcakes

2008-11-25T12:58:00.007+10:00

Here are the cupcakes I promised i'd make after eating those nice looking but bland tasting ones I bought last week.

I gave it my best shot but did have problems along the way. You see i'm not the best at cooking cupcakes (i know it's tragic isn't it) and i'm even worse at making and icing them swirly style, but i'm here to learn.

Chocolate Forest/Chocolate Fountain

I wanted to try those fountain things and they were heaps of fun to make. Melt some chocolate and make designs on greaseproof paper and leave to set.

The cupcake wasn't particularly amazing that's why i'm not posting the recipe. It was nice but not nice enough. The icing was normal choc buttercream but I put some melted dark chocolate in it which made it taste quite nice.

Peppermint Patty/After Dinner Cupcake

Topped with an After Dinner Mint

Mmmm, doesn't that icing look sooo nice (joking!) I don't like peppermint essence much so I tried a buttercream with some After Dinner Mints but I think the combo of the mints and too much milk made the icing look like this. It didn't taste bad but didn't look too good either. Actually, it reminded me of peppermint choc chip ice-cream! The photo doesn't capture the green colour but the colour was really cool. I used Wilton's leaf green gel colouring.

Melting Moment. You know summer is almost upon you when chocolate starts to melt at 6 o'clock at night.

I made this for my husband. I put a marshmellow on the cupcake and piped the icing around it and stuck heaps of those fountains on it.

What I've learnt:

*That i need to get my hands on a nice chocolate cupcake recipe that's made from scratch and is super moist and doesn't contain Bicarb Soda (had a bad experience with it once and avoid using it) I'm fine with baking powder.

*I'm not a fan of great globs of icing

*Practice Practice Practice

Thankful Hand

2008-11-24T18:59:00.009+10:00

The theme for this weeks Unplug Your Kids was Thankful. We made a thankful sandwich hand.

Here's how we did it:

* Make a hand template by tracing your childs hand on paper and cutting it out.

*Make a sandwich and use the template to cut out the hand shape.

*We used melted chocolate to write the things Petal was thankful for. She is thankful for: herself, mummy, daddy, her brother, play and dress ups.

*Decorate the hand with a ring and a bracelet by using whatever you have in your cupboards. We used a cherry tomato for a ring and blueberries and dried pineapple for the bracelet.

Christmas Tips and a Wreath Cupcake

2008-11-22T15:08:00.009+10:00

Since Christmas is only 33 sleeps away, I thought i'd share some of the Christmas tips from the enrichment evening I went to.

1. Prepare: Plan your schedule and calendar now. Claim ownership to your time and learn to say no. Set your budget and don't exceed it. Plan your menu, time and activities wisely. I've drawn up a calendar and on it i've put all the activities i'll be going to, what i'll be cooking and when to start cooking, when to make certain crafts etc to help me prepare. It's helping a lot!

2. Service and Love: "How can I make someone else feel the true Spirit of Christmas this year?" Forget yourself and go to work.

3. Gifts That Really Count
*A voucher for a service you can give; ie babysitting, ironing, making the bed for a week, cooking dinner, mending etc
*Take a hamper filled with Christmas fare to a family that can't afford it for themselves. I remember doing this as a youth, we sang carols and gave hampers. It was a good experience.
* Invite family, friends, neighbours into your home to watch the DVD "Joy to the World"

*More tips next week*

Simple Wreath Cupcakes
What you'll need:
*Cupcakes
*Red and Green M&M's (you can usually buy a packet of just red and green closer to christmas)
*Betty Crocker Creamy Deluxe Vanilla Frosting (or just make your own)

Ice cupcakes and put six green and two red m&m's ('m' side down) in a circle in the middle of the cupcakes putting the red m&m's slightly on an angle. Too easy huh! I put my cupcakes in red patty cases for a more festive look.

Cup-a-cake

2008-11-20T08:34:00.008+10:00

Sorry for my lack of posts this week. I have a cold but i'm getting better and should be all right in a few days or so.

I bought these cupcakes at Cup-a-cake in Chermside's Westfield Shopping Centre. Well, how did they taste I hear you say...not that good! They tasted like they came out of a box and the icing was too buttery and too peppermint essenty. I think that they looked good but taste wise they didn't work for me.

Chocolate Forest

Peppermint Patty (this was my daughters choice)

Because of these disappointments, i've decided to make my own Chocolate Forest and Peppermint Patty cupcakes. I'll post my success/failure on Tuesday :)

Fondant Booties

2008-11-17T11:53:00.010+10:00

When I started blogging one of the first sights I came across was Cupcake D'lights (South Africa) by Zalita. She makes the most amazing models for cupcakes and cakes and ever since i've been wanting to be able to do that. I have bought and borrowed books so I could learn how to model and last week I finally made my first models, booties for a friend who is going to have her second baby very very soon.

Aren't they sooo cute! I made pink ones too but the photos didn't turn out well.

Story (not sure if it's funny or not): I had spent thursday evening making blue booties. I was really excited about them and didn't end up getting to bed until midnight. I slept in on Friday morning so my husband got our 1 year old up and then went to have a shower. After a while I got up and excitedly went to the table to admire my handywork only to discover that my spiderman of a son had climbed onto the table and eated all the booties! I'm so glad they were really easy to make so I was able to make more, otherwise I would have been very upset.

Rattles I made for her too.

A Taste of Spring

2008-11-12T10:57:00.016+10:00

In less than 3 weeks it's going to be Summer and I haven't even posted something for Spring! Hopefully i've redeemed myself by making these lovely Springtime Flower Cupcakes. My daughter absolutley loved them and of course choose the pink one. I first saw these somewhere on marthastuart.com. They used a flat lollypop and green sugarpaste for a leaf.

It's so easy. All you need:
*Cupcakes
*Betty Crocker Icing (or make your own)
*Sprinkles (I liked the way the Celebration5s turned out)
*Spearmint leaves
*Lollypops (I used Chuppa Chups)

Spread the icing on the cupcake, sprinkle on the sprinkles, push the lollypop down the middle, add 2 spearmint leaves and you've got Springtime Flower Cupcakes.

My new fav sprinkles. I tried to make the spearmint leaves stand up a bit but they wouldn't, stubborn little things!

Enrichment Christmas Night

2008-11-05T18:34:00.012+10:00

Last night I went to our wards Christmas Enrichment Meeting. It was a lot of fun. I was a 'star' model. I was nominated by Helen T to be the model because according to her I have model looks, hahaha. Thanks Helen! I was told that I could choose someone to help me so guess who I chose? Revenge is sweet...but I digress. As well as being fun it was spiritual and informative. There were tips on how to prepare early for christmas and take the worry out of it and to also make christmas more centred around the reason for christmas which is the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

As always, at the close of the evening there were lovely tables set out full of yummy food that the sisters brought along. Here's a look at what I made for the evening:

These were supposed to be cakepops but the cake was too moist and just slid down the lollipop stick so I had to improvise

Mini sugarpaste candy canes

Vanilla Sable Christmas Trees with flaked almonds, royal icing, little flowers and a silver dragee at the top

Yay, I finally found some blossom ejector cutter things and couldn't wait to try them out. I justifed using them on the tree by making them in christmas colours

With coloured cachous. My husband liked these the best

Flag Challenge

2008-11-03T10:55:00.019+10:00

As the title suggests the theme for last weeks Unplug Your Kids was Flag. Years ago I saw a lovely Australian Flag cake which i've been wanting to make ever since. They used strawberries for the red, blueberries for the blue and white chocolate for the white. Well, I didn't make it (stawberries and blueberries, that's just expensive) so I remembered a post I did called Chocolate Polkadot Topped Cupcakes and thought i'd use the same method to do the Aussie Flag (except I used an Aussie Flag template).

Aussie Flag on a Cake

Petal and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen working on this. Making the cake and icing. She didn't do the topper (that was purely my indulgence) so she did a little topper which turned out to be a giant mound of chocolate, yum for her!
If you want to know how to make Chocolate Polkadot Toppers check out my instructions. The instructions are the basic instructions that you'll need and you can make anything using it. I made the flag. Here are photos from making the flag:
1. a) Under the white piece of paper is an Australian Flag colouring page from coloringcastle.com, they have 23 flags from around the world there. You can use marker to trace the flag on the other side so it's easier to see. I only thought of that after I had made it!!

b) On our Flag, The Union Jack (the red cross thing) is situated on the top left corner but i've flipped the sheet over so it's bottom left, so when you flip the topper onto the cake it's the right way up (hope that makes sense). c) I used parchment paper for this as I needed to see through to the flag template. I secured the parchment onto the paper using chocolate.

2.
Coming together nicely. I've added the Southern Cross.

a) Now, wait until it sets. I put mine in the fridge for a while (maybe 3-5 minutes) and the paper curved up which made a big crack appear in the middle of the topper. Put the topper in the fridge for no more than 1 minute so it is hard enough to peel from the parchment.

b) I covered the white chocolate stars with the blue but I don't recommend it. The white stars ended up having a blue tinge.

c) Now don't ask my why I decided to have pink icing, I think it looks terrible. I should have done a blue icing to blend in with the flag.

I just 'crack' myself up (okay, bad joke. It's getting late!)

Chocolate Toppers - How to

2008-11-03T09:46:00.015+10:00

This is a fun and easy way of making a cupcake, cake or anything for that matter look good.

What I've done so far using this method:
Chocolate Polkadot Topped Cupcakes
Australian Flag

1.

a) What you do is trace around a cookie cutter the size of the cupcake on the back of contact (what you use to cover kids books with) and cut out the circles.

b) If you don't have a cutter the size you want you can trace around your cupcake.
c) If you don't have contact you can use parchment paper but i've found that sometimes the chocolate can slide right off the parchment paper.

2.
a) Put some white chocolate into a cup/bowl and microwave until melted. Sorry, I didn't weight how much chocolate I used :( If you make too much, you can always eat it (that's what we did!)

b) Divide the chocolate into three cups and tint one cup blue and one cup maroon leaving one cup white.

c) I used chocolate colouring which I bought at Spotlight and Kitchenware Plus at Loganlea (South of Brisbane). I'm not sure how gel or liquid colourings would go. Does anyone know?
3.

a) I used a toothpick but you can use piping bags to make dots on the shiny side of the contact.

b) Don't worry if the contact goes curvy.
4.

a) At this point the white chocolate should be cool and not hot. If by chance the chocolate has gone hard put it in the microwave for only a few seconds. Wait for it to cool. Now spread the chocolate over the whole circle.
5.

a) I thought that the topper was firm enough to peel but this is what happened.

b) So I then put my toppers in the fridge for just one minute so that it gets hard enough to make it easy to peel back from the contact and it worked.

c) The end product. Put this on your just iced cupcake (if the icing is hard then this won't stick so well.

Passionfruit Melting Moments

2008-10-23T12:52:00.013+10:00

My husband told me these tasted fabulous. I was slightly taken aback because I can't remember if my husband has ever said something I've cooked was fabulous!

Biscuit

250g unsalted butter

40g (1/3 cup) icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

185g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour

60g (1/2 cup) custart powder

Passionfruit Filling

60g unsalted butter

60g (1/2 cup) icing sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Beat in vanilla essence. Sift in the flour and custard powder and mix to a soft dough. Roll level tablespoons of the mixture into 28 balls and place on the trays. Flatten slightly with a floured fork. (I ended up putting more flour and custard powder in this as I found it hard to form into balls. It made them turn out slightly dry and extremly melt in your mouth crumbly.)

Bake for approx. 20 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the filling, beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy, then beat in the passionfruit pulp. Use the filling to sandwich the biscuits together. Leave to firm before serving. Makes 14 filled biscuits.

Wax Bags for Icing and Painting

2008-10-20T14:49:00.012+10:00

The theme for Unplug Your Kids last week was Wax.

Wax Paper Icing Bags

I decided that we'd decorate some small cakes for Family Home Evening using glace icing in wax paper bags. I didn't follow any instructions (for the bags) so they turned out really small. I'll use some instructions next time!!!

All you need: Cakes, icing and piping bags
Fill the bag with icing and snip off the end
Petal's creation. Aparantly it's a halloween cake. With all the icing underneath that blue icing it is a bit scary! She made this for Daddy.

Can I pass this one off as Petal's creation? Yeah, that's supposed to be a red back spider on a web :)
Wax Paper Paint Bags
I thought it'd be fun to use these bags for paint too! I loved this idea as there was NO paint brushes, palettes etc to clean up.
All you need: paint, paper and piping bags

Fill the bags with paint and roll the ends up (do this with the icing bags as well)

Petal's creation. I like the way the painting turned out. Would be nice on a canvas.

Chocolate Polkadot Topped Cupcakes

2008-10-08T20:24:00.017+10:00

Hmmm, must have White still on the brain! White Chocolate Mud CupCakes with White Chocolate Ganache and a Coloured White Chocolate Polka dots Topper.

Here's my instructions on how to make the toppers.

Yuuuum!

These won't last long, but then again, do cupcakes ever last long!

Popcorn and Powder

2008-10-06T06:23:00.020+10:00

Unplug Your Kids theme for last week was White. As this was my first time I was a little nervous, but we all had fun so we'll definitely keep it up.
White Chocolate Popcorn
We sang Popcorn Popping while the popcorn was popping.

Recipe: Just make some popcorn and add as much or as little melted white chocolate as you like. Leave it to set. I leave mine in the fridge which makes it go hard.

White HairPetal (not my daughters real name btw) had fun putting talcum powder in my hair. Funny really as i'd spent a lot of money and 2 hours at the hairdressers on the weekend to cover up my white/grey hair! She didn't really want to have her hair done. In the end I did it but it didn't turn out well since she has blondish coloured hair.
Petal got crazy toward the end but it was all good. We laughed a lot doing this.

What's in the Box?

2008-10-03T07:24:00.025+10:00

There is something yummy in this chocolate box. I think i'll give you some clues so you can try and guess What's in the Box.

Clue #1: Red Velvet Cake (maybe that's not such a good clue since you can use any cake)

Clue#2: Cream Cheese frosting (or in my case a tub of Betty Crockers Vanilla Frosting. Yes, I cheat......sometimes) :)

Clue#3: Two types of chocolate, milk and coloured white

Clue#4: They're pretty cute

Clue#5: Sprinkles and a smartie

Clue#6: Bakerella

Yep, they're Cupcake Bites. They didn't turn out quite as i'd hoped (they looked nothing like Bakerellas) but next time at least i'll know what i'm doing.

Here's what I did differently:

Since I didn't have a flower cookie cutter or a chocolate mould to hold the cake balls in I used a mini cupcake case in mini cupcake pans. I weighed the Red Velvet Cake Balls at 38g each (I think these were a little too big), put approx 1 1/2 tsp of melted dark chocolate in the bottom then pushed the balls down. I'll use a little more dark chocolate, maybe 2 - 2-1/2 tsp so the sides have a thicker layer of chocolate.

With the wrapper still on.

Taking the wrapper off. This photo doesn't do the cupcake wrapper method any justice. Make sure that the Bites are cold before you take the wrapper off otherwise the chocolate will come off with the wrapper (found that out the hard way!).

Hmmm. The majority of the Bites didn't look dodgy! Unfortunatley this isn't one of them!

Ps. I was trying to go for a cute purple white chocolate colour but ended up with a grey/blue gross colour instead.....not very appetising :) Ha ha

Cheesecake Brownies

2008-09-22T09:04:00.020+10:00

The Cheesecake Brownie was nice by itself but...

add Strawberry Sauce...extremely yummy!

The recipe I used was from The Australian Women's Weekly book Cupcakes, Cheesecakes, Cookies but, here is a similar Cheesecake Brownie recipe I found.

Strawberry Sauce: place 4-5 chopped medium strawberries in saucepan with 2-3 tsp caster sugar and 1 tsp water. Bring to boil then simmer until tender. Put a strainer over a bowl or cup and strain the stawberries through. Discard the strawberry pulp and cool the sauce. Pour over brownie. Makes enough sauce for 1-2 people.

Boy Oh Boy!

2008-09-13T09:57:00.015+10:00

I have a new nephew! Yay! My brother-in-law and his wife welcomed their 4th son into the world last saturday night, congratulations. Jnr doesn't have a name yet. I think it's a toss up between Liam and Lucas. What do you think? When I asked that question to my daughter she suggested Lisa! Oh well, at least it starts with an L.

Baby Cakes I made especially for you Complete with little dummies...cute!

Rubber Ducky you're the one, you make cupcakes so much fun!