Birthday Cupcakes

(not the greatest food photo, but I was drunk at the time of taking the photo.)

So I had a party for my 23rd birthday, and made my own cupcakes. I used my fool proof vanilla cupcakes recipe from a Women's Day cookbook. I made two batches and ended up with 30 cupcakes, which was more then enough to cater for everyone at my party, plus more for my friends to take home.

I was going for the birthday cupcake look, with three different colours of butter cream frosting, with different types of sprinkles. 

The frosting was made in advance (Thanks Mum, for making the buttercream frosting!!!), but wasn't put on the cupcakes till during the party, so it wasnt as fluffy and full looking as I hoping for, but I was really drunk by this time and just wanted to decorate and eat some cupcakes, so I was happy with the result. And everyone else enjoyed the cupcakes, and that is all what matters.

Next time I will ice the cupcakes in advance, and hopefully they will be more full and fluffy looking in the icing.

I also had pastel coloured candles to put on each cupcake, but I totally forgot about putting them on. I now have birthday candles for the next birthday!

Vanilla Cupcakes with White Chocolate Ganache

I missed out on one of my friends birthdays due to getting Labyrinthitis (which was awful, and I never want to get it again).
Because of that, I couldn't go out and party on Rachels birthday night, so the weekend after (which happened to be Halloween), I made Rach some birthday cupcakes.



I know Rach likes Twilight, and being Halloween, I was going to try to make Twilight vampire cupcakes.
Since Rach had asked for vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate icing, and the only white chocolate icing I know how to make is a Ganache, I thought I could work with that. But once I was making the ganache, I found it wasn't as white as I would have liked it to be for the icing of the cupcake, so kept putting in more cream, which resulted in an overly runny, sticky, white concoction. Which in turn, would not let me do what I wanted, so Twilight cupcakes were not to be made.



The end result of the cupcakes was actually really nice. I put in a bit extra vanilla, as I find the recipe amount doesn't give it a strong enough vanilla taste. The failed ganache did make the cupcakes a bit hard and extremely sticky to eat, but did taste good. And I always aim for something that tastes good, so I didn't fail there.

Banana Bread

I love banana bread. I love it even better when it's hot and fresh, straight from the oven, if not, toasted will suffice. After going on a bit of a banana bread bender, I decided it was time to make my own banana bread, using the older looking bananas in the fruit drawer. I searched the internet for the perfect banana bread recipe, and decided I liked Janelle Blooms banana bread the best. The recipe called for walnuts, and I had a bag of walnuts already in the kitchen cupboard, so all was perfect.

The end result was good, not great, but good. I tend to have this habit of over-mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, so it turned out a little chewy, but  not too bad. I guess it means I will have to make it again and not over-mix everything.

Apple and (not so much) Spice Muffins

I realised I haven't baked anything for a while. I went to bed all stuffy headed last night and woke up in a not so good mood. I watched the end of season 3 of Supernatural and was feeling grumpy and decided some muffins would cheer me up. Home made muffins, hot out the oven, should cheer up everyone, in my opinion.

I went searching through my mums old baking book, and found a recipe for Strawberry Muffins. Yum! Alas, no strawberries in the kitchen. I turned the page and saw Apple and Spice muffins. Bingo! There is quite a few muffins in the kitchen. After going through the kitchen to make sure the rest of the ingredients were readily available, it was time to bake.

So this was the first Ive made muffins from scratch. I used to make muffins quite a bit when I was younger, but it was always from the packet. I no longer bake from the packet. I like baking from scratch. I like following a recipe. I like changing the recipe a tad to make it more me.

Would I make these again? Yes. Only better. There wasn't much of a spice flavour, so I sprinkles mixed spice over each muffin before I put the trays in the oven. I will make apple sauce, so the apples are more cooked and sweeter, as the recipe just called for 1cup of chopped apples. Also, I wont stir the batter too much, as they weren't as soft and fluffy as a muffin should be. But they tasted good, and thats all that matters :)

Belated Mothers Day Dinner

I was going to cook my mum a two course meal for Mothers Day, but she had tonsilitis on Mothers Day and wasn't up for eating, so I made her a belated Mothers Day meal.

A few weeks before mums day, my mum got the latest Woman's Weekly magazine, and in the recipe section, found a nice fish and broccoli pie. My mum loves broccoli, and pie, so I told her I would make it for her for Mothers Day, but as I don't like fish, said I was swap the fish for chicken. After reading through the recipe, it said to cook the fish in milk, and was thinking that chicken cooked in milk does not sound too good (fish cooked in milk doesn't sound too good to me, either), so I went looking for another pie recipe.

Easy leek, mushroom and chicken pie.

I have an old Donna Hay magazine from a year or two ago, with alot of pie recipes in it. I went through it, and found a recipe called Easy leek, mushroom and chicken pie. I showed it my mum, and she was pretty impressed by it, so I cooked that for her Mothers Day dinner. I changed the recipe around a bit, and added in some boiled broccoli. 

Aswell as the leek, mushrooms, chicken and broccoli, the pies also had a few teaspoons of Dijon mustard, and some pepper. Aswell as the pie crust. When Donna Hay starts a recipe name with Easy, she means EASY. The recipe said for the pie filling to be spooned out onto rounds of puff pastray, to make four seperate pies, but as my mum did not have anything to cut circle shapes out of the pastry, I put all the filling into a shallow baking dish, and put a slice of puff pastry over the top.

After dinner, comes dessert. Cheesecake Brownie Slice with mixed berries. I've made this before, and it was amazing, and even more amazing after sitting in the fridge overnight, only the first time I made it, there were no berries in the mix. I added in berries, as my mum saw a recipes for Cheesecake Brownie Slice with raspberries. This is a really fun recipe to make (but my hips/stomach are probably saying something else).

melted chocolate. yum!

As I was making this, I've realised, I can make brownies, I can make cheesecake, but I've never made them seperately. So brownies, and cheesecake are now on my baking to make list.

The brownie mixture and the first layer of berries in the pan.

The cheesecake mixture and more berries, over the brownie mixture. Next time I make this, I may have to make more cheesecake mixture. But, the last time I made it, I swirled the cheesecake and brownie mixture together, so I'm guessing my recipe does not work for the layered style.

Easter Carrot Muffins

Since I'm not the hugest fan of chocolate, I decided not to go all chocolatey for Easter this year, so I baked my mum some mini carrot cakes. When she asked why I baked these, I told it's because it was Easter, there's always an Easter Bunny, and bunny's eat carrots. I also placed mini Lindt Rabbits on top of the cakes, but I don't all that clicked in with my mum, but still. These muffins/cakes were great. I just don't like grating carrots (or I just don't like my mums grater). I got this recipe from a Good Taste magazine, and added some walnuts, so it's more carrot cake like.

So the batter doesn't look very appealing, but it tasted good. I know this, as I'm always stealing tastes of batter before it gets cooked. I still like to lick the bowl and spoon once the bakery goods are in the oven.


I love muffin cases. They are cute ( and can be bought in different colours and patterns, and also foil). They also save on washing up. And I think that cakes and muffins look alot neater in cases.



The icing was fun to make. And yum to eat. It was just a simple cream cheese icing. The recipe asked for orange zest and orange juice, but due to my allergy to oranges, I used lemon zest and juice. Next time I make a cream cheese icing, if it wont clash with the cake, I will try it with lime zest and juice.

Rockcakes

I had a real craving for some of my mums pumpkin scones, and as I'm getting better at baking (and loving to bake more and more), I wanted to try out my scone making skills. I do most of my baking at my mums, as she has everything you need to bake with. Only thing is, her kitchen is tiny as, with no bench space. When I told mum of my wanting to make pumpkin scones, she let me down by saying there wasn't enough room in her kitchen, as I didn't know you had to roll the dough out on the bench to cut them into the scone shape. So I thought of another bakery goodness my mum used to make heaps when I was younger and instantly thought of rockcakes. I got the go ahead to bake them, and happily set about in the kitchen, getting out all the tools I needed, and setting up all the ingredients.

These were amazingly easy to bake, didn't take much time, and tasted really great. My mum approved of them, but just said I needed to add more spice (which I can happily do next time I bake these.) I will deffinatly be baking these again, and the fun thing is, you put in different combinations of ingredients. For these rockcakes, I just used a mixture of dried fruit (without peel, as I'm allergic to oranges, and I don't enjoy peel).