First Holy Communion

I'm on a roll. . .two blogs in two days! Ha! This one as the title indicates is about the First Holy Communion cupcakes I made for my partner's cousins. These cupcakes again deviate from my challenge as they are not from the 500 Cupcakes book. I decided against using any from the book as I wanted to use recipes I knew well so that there was less chance for failure, afterall I made them Friday night after work for Saturday morning, which didn't leave much room for error.

It was a long time ago now that I made my First Holy Communion but I do remember that we, the girls obviously ^_^, wore white dresses, shoes, gloves, and so forth. I figured I would try to keep the cupcakes primarily white and aimed for the 'pretty/cute' factor to tie in with my memory of the white dresses. I decided on the following cupcakes:

Victoria Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes by following the same recipe as the one I referred to in my Cake Stall blog. I figured these ones were perfect for the event, they're pretty and girly, and the cream and icing sugar are delightfully white.

Chocolate Surprise 

I made these ones using the chocolate cupcake recipe that I adore from Joy of Baking.com again. I dubbed these ones 'surprise' cupcakes on account of the fact that I put a Cadbury Roses Chocolate in the middle of each of the cupcakes.

I put a strawberry chocolate in the pink-bowed cupcakes and a caramel chocolate in the silver-bowed cupcakes. However, I think this chocolate cupcake recipe makes me even more forgetful than usual because I put my batch of cupcakes into the oven for a couple of minutes before I remembered I'd forgotten to put the 'surprise' inside! Just like the last time I made them! Ha! o_O

As I was working on a kind of 'white' theme I topped these cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting which came from Chockylit's blogsite. I adore her site, she comes up with the most fabulous flavour ideas and combinations and explains everything she does really well too!

Once I finished frosting these cupcakes I topped the strawberry chocolate filled cupcakes with some pink dragees and used yellow and green dragees to top the caramel chocolate filled cupcakes. Dragees can be found in most supermarkets, I just love how pretty and shiny they look! ^o^

Plated up and ready to go, I don't have a nice cupcake display stand, it's something I've yet to, but really want to invest in, so I covered one of my serving trays in cupcake wrapping paper! I thought it looked quite pretty! ^_^

On the topic of cupcake stands, I love the vintage ones, they're super cute! My favourite stands at the moment can be found here. I love that they're all so unique and that they use teacups and glasses, so cool! Unfortunately they're a little too pricey for me! Maybe when I win the lotto! Haha!!! ^_~

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, these cupcakes went down a treat!!! Everyone seemed to really enjoy them and as predicted everyone was 'surprised' by my Chocolate Surprise cupcakes!

My next blog will again veer away from my challenge, as it's more of a flavour experimentation. . .

Happy Baking! ^_^

Dieting

My partner and I decided to go on a diet for a month (this was decided before I began this blog) because we were feeling rather unhealthy, having a few too many take-aways and such. Ironically my partner, who didn't really want to go on the diet, was the one who kept me on it! I was ready to give up within the first few days, ha! Did I mention I have a massive sweet tooth, which is what I missed the most on our diet, all things sweet!

The diet I put us on was more about eating heathily then about losing weight but as most girls will admit losing weight is nice too. Of course being on a diet isn't really conducive with cupcake making, afterall most cupcakes aren't considered healthy. Happily though my book of 500 Cupcakes has a low-fat section, so that is where I have begun! ^_^

Over the past week or so I have tried two different low fat muffins from the book (no that's not a typo, they are both muffin recipes but they are in the cupcake book):

Citrus Yoghurt Muffins

Batter all mixed and ready to go into the cases. These cupcakes used the zest from a lemon, lime and orange. The cupcakes contained 115ml of sunflower oil and an egg so there was some fat content in these.

Cooked and out of the oven! Yummy!!!

 I also made the suggested citrus glaze to top half of them. The glaze contained caster sugar and the juice of each of the citrus fruits that were zested for the muffin batter.

These muffins were divine! They were so, so moist and the citrus taste was delicious and easily identifiable without being tart. If I didn't know better, I'd have never thought that these muffins were low in fat. I'll definitely make these again the next time I want a treat that doesn't make me feel quite so guilty. ^_^

Raspberry and Cottage Cheese Muffins

Batter in the cases ready for the oven (I only made a half batch of these). Also I substituted fresh raspberries for tin raspberries because the tin was only about 50p. 

Baked and ready to eat!

These cupcakes were also quite moist much like the citrus muffins above, however they contain far less fat as there is only 4 tablespoons of sunflower oil and 2 eggs. The recipe also calls for a cup of skim milk and 115g of low-fat cottage cheese.

Unlike the citrus muffins, I found that these ones lacked flavour, which could be because I used tin raspberries. I'll have to try this recipe again but use fresh raspberries instead. The book also suggests using blueberries, cherries or apricots as substitutes for the raspberries so I'll have to try them too. 

There are still quite a few more low-fat cupcake/muffin recipes in the book but my partner and I are now finished our month long 'healthy-eating diet', so I probably wont be trying out any more low-fat recipes just yet. Although, the fact that the Citrus Yoghurt Muffins tasted so good does pique my interest about the other low-fat recipes. . .

My next blog is going to be about the cupcakes I made for my partner's 8 year old cousins' First Holy Communion.

Happy baking. . .





Cake Stall

So it's been longer between blogs than I would have liked, unfortunately work took over my life for a week! I had to write 19 reports, not exactly my preferred activity for the weekend but they weren't going to do themselves. In any case they're done and I now have time to blog. ^_^

It's a good thing I haven't set myself a time limit for this challenge of mine because I didn't even end up using a recipe from the 500 Cupcakes book for the Cake Stall! Instead I went for classics that I knew would sell well and that is the point of a cake stall after all, to raise money, in this case it was to help fund a trip for the nursery I'm working at.

The cupcakes I made were:

Victoria Cupcakes

Fresh out of the oven. . .mmm! I was really pleased with how these came out!

Filling the cupcakes: basically, you cut a cone shape out of the top of the cupcake put the filling inside, I used a teaspoon of jam and piped some whipped cream on top.

I put some fresh strawberries on the cream and then placed the section I had cut out of the cupcake on top or created 'butterfly wings'. Finally, I dusted them with icing sugar.

The recipe I used for the cupcakes can be found in the book Cupcake Heaven.

Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes

You'll notice that the three rows on the left are different from the two on the right, that's because I have a memory like a sieve! For the caramel aspect of these cupcakes I used Cadbury Caramel Nibbles and had intended to mix them into the batter, unfortunately I forgot to put them into the first 12 I made! Instead I quickly shoved some into the cupcakes about five minutes before they finished cooking (when I remembered that I had forgotten them). They all still tasted nice from what I heard. ^_^

The cupcakes topped with Chocolate Fudge Frosting.

One happy customer told me that this cupcake was, "the perfect fix for a chocolate craving"!

To make them just a little more fun I chopped some Nibbles in half and stuck them in the frosting, along with a milkyway star. Doesn't hurt to add just a little more chocolate either! ~_^

The base recipe I used came from the website Joy of Baking.com. This is a fantastic website for all kinds of sweet recipes! There's a little bit of history behind the recipes, they're easy to follow and the recipes I've used so far have been really yummy!

The modifications I made to the recipe were: to include the Caramel Nibbles in the cake and I substituted half the dark chocolate in the frosting for milk chocolate. I contemplated making some caramel frosting but to be perfectly honest, I was too lazy! Haha!

Lemon Coconut Slice

The biscuity base for the slice.

My partner thinks it tastes like a Flapjack, which I had never even heard of until he mentioned them and then I saw them in Tesco (I've never seen them in Australia), I can't say I much care for the taste of Flapjacks either. 

On goes the lemon icing and then it's into the fridge to set before it gets cut into slices.

Sliced and put on the presentation plate.

Everytime I've made this slice I've had at least one person ask for the recipe however, I don't give it out very often and do not intend to put it on my blog as that isn't really the purpose of it.

All of the cupcakes and the slice I made were sold, as was everything else that was made by the other people I work with. We raised just over 80 pounds (Australian computer, no pound sign for me) but the day was spoiled in the end, as some horrible person stole the bag of notes we had with the change. We don't exactly know how much money was in the bag of notes so we're not entirely sure how much more we might have raised. Oh well, at least we made the 80 pounds, that's not too bad.

My next blog will see me back on track as I will have cooked my first cupcake from the 500 Cupcakes book. ^_^

Happy baking. . .

The beginning...

My love of cooking began around my teenage years, as I gradually took a greater interest in what was going on in the kitchen. I would ask my mum what she was doing, how she was doing it, what she was cooking and slowly became more and more involved in the whole cooking process, mind you there were times I didn't want to be involved. I don't particularly like touching flour, it literally makes my skin crawl (I'm a little strange like that), so I never liked flouring the meat and zucchini for our schnitzel dinners. It was always worth the effort in the end though, because it tasted SO good.

My mum also had a repertoire of cakes, puddings and slices that she baked, which is where my passion for cooking really took flight. She had one particular chocolate cake with caramel icing which I will always associate with my childhood and even now it's still a favourite of mine and my two brothers. It was invariably something we looked forward to in our lunch boxes at recess or after school with a glass of milk.

As I got older my sweet tooth began it's hostile take-over of my brain consequently turning my search for and experimentation with new recipes away from the savoury and toward all things lusciously sugar-filled. I think the fact that cakes can be made to look so pretty probably has a lot to do with my obsession too. Below are some cakes I have attempted in the past:

This was my first foray into birthday cake making and I think the first time I ever tried using fondant. I made the cake for my friend's daughter's birthday, I think it was a mudcake inside.

This birthday cake was for my friend's other daughter, one of the hardest things was trying to make the chocolate gates. I was living in a part of Australia that averages about 40 degrees celsius in the summer time so trying to work with them and not have them melt was very tricky. 

This cake was for a friend's 'Bogan' themed birthday party. VB is a cheap brand of beer in Australia and I tried to create a cake version of a VB can.

Another birthday cake for my friend's daughter's birthday, in the book that this design came from they used horses but she preferred elephants, so I turned it into an Elephant Carousel. It took about 10 hours in total to make!

Yet another of my friend's daughter's birthday cakes, this was fun to make! I loved the 'jelly water', some of the sea creatures are sweets and some are plastic toys.

A cake for my friend, she loves elephants and I was inspired to make him pink as a hommage to the Pink Elephants on Parade in Dumbo

I attempted to make this globe for my partner's cousin's going away party. I was a little disappointed because the cake didn't turn out as spherical as I would have liked, the tins didn't fit together perfectly, also I couldn't find any white fairy floss for the clouds.

This cake was based on a recipe I had found online and the only reason I baked it was because I had a massive chocolate craving! It was divine and on the weekend I baked it I ended up having a piece for breakfast, lunch and tea!

I made this mudcake with ganache icing for myself and my partner's birthday (our birthdays are 5 days apart). I also made the truffles on top.

I made this cake for my partner's birthday, he loves the Rocky movies. I had to paint the fondant black because trying to knead the colour into the white fondant didn't create a dark enough shade of black.

In the beginning for me it was all about cakes (evidence of this can be seen above!) but now the cuteness of cupcakes is increasingly capturing my imagination and so I have decided to write a blog inspired by the movie Julie and Julia. I haven't read the blog written by Julie Powell but I loved her idea which I saw in the movie (I loved the kitty in that movie too, so cute!).

On my kitchen bench I have a number of cake, slice, biscuit and cupcake books that I love to bake from but I have a tendency to stick with the 'safe' ones or the ones I've cooked before which I know I and the people I cook for like. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing because at least I know people will like them and to be fair I do have a tendency to tweak the recipes I am following. However, baking the same recipes over and over again does get a wee bit boring and so I have picked a book, 500 Cupcakes by Fergal Connolly, with the intention of cooking each and every cupcake in the book. I've decided not to set myself a time limit, after all, baking 500 cupcakes is no small task! I'll also be blogging about various other sweet treats I make, such as the cupcakes and slice I will be making this week for a cake stall, as well as those that I have when I eat out, makers of tasty sweet treats deserve to be recognised and celebrated!

Now to decide which of the 500 cupcakes to bake first . . .