What the world needs now is love... (and cupcakes)

Firstly, I am very excited to write that my oven is fixed! It has been broken for weeks, and I have really missed being able to make cupcakes whenever I wanted! So now, I will be working through the list of cupcakes that I have had in my head (which has just been getting longer and longer), that I've eagerly been waiting to create :)

I had planned to make these for Valentine's Day, almost 3 weeks ago...

Excited about a new stencil I got from a Cake Decorating magazine, I rolled out some red fondant, placed it on top, and filled in the gaps with edible glitter.

Then with a little heart cookie cutter, I cut out as many hearts as I could, aiming to have them all be mostly patterned:

Next... I patiently waited until my oven was fixed :)

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Today, with a new element in my oven, my red silicone patty cases, and chocolate chip butter cake mix (chosen as I thought about things that I loved {my husband being one of them} and things that he loves {which is not plan cupcakes}), I finally made cupcakes to decorate with these patterned fondant hearts!

In anticipation for Valentine's Day, I had also come across some little edible coloured hearts, that I sprinkled onto the buttercream icing once it was piped onto the cupcakes.

With the fondant hearts placed on top, I present you with some

(very belated) Valentine's Day cupcakes!

I hope your V day was filled with love, laughter, and/or CUPCAKES! :)

Well, I hope every day is filled with love, laughter, and perhaps cupcakes!!

Cookies and (ice) Cream... Again!

So currently, my oven is broken! It has meant that I've accidentally taken another 'vacation' from baking (and blogging)... I've joked with friends about my oven breaking down from being over-used, especially recently... I've been a bit bored knowing that I can't make cupcakes at the moment until a new element comes (hopefully soon), and with the busyness of children being back to school and routines and term activities, I haven't really done anything creative lately! With that as a shock to the system, I decided to make something that didn't need my oven to make!

I reminded myself of my many failed attempts at Cookies and (ice) Cream, and I'm sure I've mentioned before that my husband and I are both (well, the whole family really) fans of Ben & Jerry's ice cream... And my husband (at the time of these unsuccessful attempts) suggested that I try freezing the cookie dough instead of baking it!

... Genius !!

Taking that idea, and mixing it slightly with my own, I came up with making some of my favourite (like seriously) Ben & Jerry's ice cream bowls! The plan was to freeze the cookie dough in bowl shapes, and then scoop a small amount of (home made) choc chip ice cream into the bowls, and hopefully end up with bite sized cookie dough ice cream bowls!

With some prepared cookie dough, my new cake pop tray I hadn't yet used since Christmas, and an egg separater, I placed balls of cookie dough into the cake pop tray and squished them down to make the 'bowls'. I put them in the freezer while I made the ice cream.

Using my son's ice cream maker, I made vanilla ice cream, and then threw in some chocolate pieces before freezing it. The frozen cookie dough bowls turned out fine (I just needed to remember not to leave it in the freezer for too long).

Then I scooped some into my little cookie bowls, and voila! Home made rip-off replica Ben & Jerry's ice cream!!

 Tastes nothing like the real thing, but it was still fun attempting to make it!

And all my kids were more than happy to try them for dessert :)

Panda cupcakes!

Again, it is another privilege and honour to be asked to provide cupcakes for a special occasion! An 18th birthday this time, and the request was for panda cupcakes, like these Mini Panda Cupcakes from Bakerella... I had to do some tweaking with the decorating ingredients to make them fit on normal sized cupcakes, but I think they turned out alright! I was constantly referring back to this picture I was sent, though.

The first job was to make the cupcakes... Chocolatey chocolate cupcakes:

Once that was done, I'd decided that before I iced the cupcakes, I should probably work out how I was going to make them look like pandas... For the eyes, I had mini marshmallows, Cadbury chocolate melts, and Coles chocolate cooking chips...

With the marshmallows cut in half, I placed them onto the chocolate melts, sticky side down so I didn't need icing, and then with some fudge frosting, I added the chocolate chips :)

Before long, the panda eye production line began!

Now I was ready to make the icing... I used Solite (a product I've used before) to make the icing whiter than usual. Next I piped the icing onto the cupcakes and dipped them in caster sugar to make the pandas appear 'furry'.

Another production line began, as I slid two Nestle chocolate melts into the sides of the icing to resemble panda ears; then placing the eyes I'd made on them, and lastly using a Cadbury chocolate chip upside down & fudge writing icing, I made the noses and mouthes! ... Once I had made a few, I felt confident enough to try different expressions, and I am very happy with how they turned out :)

All boxed and ready go to the birthday girl's mother, who was surprising her

daughter (who loves pandas) with them the following day!

Because I became so involved in making these cupcakes, I had boxed them before I took the finished photos of them! So, I took them out and took these photos, with them coincidentally placed on a bamboo green platter of mine :)

 And of course some individual portraits of the different facial expressions
and potential panda thoughts :)

And here's a photo of the cupcake display, and the birthday girl:

Happy birthday 'Mandy Pandy'!! :)

Ohh back to school, back to school...

Well, it's the time of the year that always feels so surreal to me... Where did the last 6 weeks go? Is it really time to go back to school? Surreal that I've waited and counted down until this day with so much anticipation, but now that it's here, I'm nervous about having to get back into that 'routine' of getting up earlier, get dressed earlier, having a quick breakfast (not a leisurely pancake/waffle breakfast at 10am anymore), and being somewhere at the same time every day!

Then that's mixed with the surreal feeling realising that my children (which must also mean me) are getting older, are going to be learning more complex things this year, and now there's less years until they go to high school, and then graduate from high school, then move out of home - ..... Okay maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself on that one :)

But, as I usually do, I felt that the best way to get through the first day of school and cope with this change (again), is to make cupcakes!

Inspired by various apple cupcakes I've seen, I wondered why apples were associated with teachers and education... So I did a bit of research and found out that in the 18th century in European countries such as Sweeden and Denmark, apples were given to teachers both as gifts, and as payment for education.

Back to School Cupcakes!

I made these with coloured caster sugar, butter cream icing, and a vanilla bean cut up... And you know what they say... "An apple a day, keeps the doctor away!" ... I wonder if a teacher came up with that slogan :)

Ooohhhhh...

... And now all I can think about is Billy Madison.

Happy 'Straya Day!

Australia Day: A legal holiday in Australia commemorating

the landing of the British in 1788.

Lamington - n.

An Australian dessert made from a cube of sponge cake

covered in chocolate icing and dried coconut.

So what I've done for Australia Day this year, is combine this Australian dessert with my own passion, and so I made lamington cupcakes!

Inspired by the presentation of these White Wings Lamington Cupcakes, I decided that I would aim to create mine similarly, but make them from scratch. So using this recipe, I did just that.

I used some union jack patty cases that I found while searching the cake shop for things I needed for an upcoming birthday order - perfect!

I was all set to make these when my oven stopped working! The grill and the fan still worked, strangely, but the element to heat the oven apparently needs replacing... Devastated, but still determined to make these, I fiddled with the oven dials, hoping to get a good temperature, and managed to bake some lamington cupcakes successfully! :)

Icing them with the chocolate icing, and dipping them in coconut, I present you with lamington cupcakes:

Then I topped them with cream and jam:

And they just wouldn't be completely Australian, unless they had been branded with our flag!

Happy 'Straya Day everyone! :)

My first wedding gig!

A few months ago, I had the honour and privilege of being asked to make cupcakes for the upcoming wedding of two friends of ours... I was excited and nervous, as this would be the biggest and most public cupcake display so far*...

Maybe it would be the most formal and elegant cupcake request so far! ... During the first meeting, the bride told me she wanted about 70 cupcakes - 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 vanilla.

'Piece of cake' I thought... So to speak.

My husband then hands her a cupcake recipe booklet that I'd (at the time) been making different flavours of cupcakes out of... You know, just to flip through and see if they wanted something a bit more 'fancy'. The chocolate was then changed to 'Cookies & Cream' (minus the cream) - a cupcake with Oreo biscuits crushed into it that I'd tried making before**.

The bride specified to me what colours of buttercream icing she wanted: ivory & pale green.

Well, the day had arrived, and I was about to make the cupcakes for the wedding! My new Breville Mixer Pro*** had never worked so hard in it's life! It was running almost non-stop for 8 hours to get these cupcakes made.

The first batch of Oreo cupcakes, ready to be baked:

A mixture of un-iced Oreo & vanilla cupcakes to send to the bride so she knew the progress of the cupcakes was under control:

Throughout the afternoon, as I kept the bride and organiser of the wedding informed of how things were going with the cupcakes, I sent through the next picture - a batch of Oreo cupcakes, iced with ivory buttercream frosting, just as the bride has specified to me that she wanted:

3 more giant batches of buttercream frosting later, and my new mixer didn't explode (well, if you don't include exploding icing sugar all over my bench top)! ... It was feeling a bit hot, though, so I gave it a small break to recover from the trauma I had put it through during the day...

Once the Oreo cupcakes were all iced with ivory buttercream, it was time to make the green icing and ice the vanilla cupcakes... I relied heavily on the photo the bride had sent to me (constantly comparing the colour of the icing to the colour on the computer screen), to make sure I got the colour exact (or as possibly close to exact as I could)! - There was no way I wanted to botch this up the day before the wedding!

And here they are - 78 cupcakes boxed and ready to be delivered to the reception venue!

I didn't see them again until the reception, where I got to look at their display on an acrylic tier, and at the cake topper that was placed on top... It was lovely, and I was especially impressed with the cake topper!

Here's a picture of the bride & groom cutting the cake:

I was thrilled to be involved with the wedding, and I wish our friends Marley & Brendan all the best as they enter both the challenging and rewarding journey through married life.

* Except, now that I think about it, the bluRopes cupcakes were pretty public...

** And thankfully succeeded!

*** The Christmas present from my husband that I had seen, wanted, chosen, & requested :)

" I'm on vacation "

So for the last two weeks, we've had a couple of overseas friends stay with us... For a stay-at-home mother such as myself, it's been lovely having adult conversations daily again (and someone to watch the kids if I only needed one thing from the supermarket)!

It's also meant that " I'm on vacation " became a well-known phrase in our house, excusing crazy and uncommon behaviours such as sleeping in, playing the Xbox all morning, drinking wine/beer at lunch time, playing cards all afternoon, staying up until midnight, and doing it all again the next day...

Seriously - who would want to go back to work after that anyway!

Well, sadly they did have to leave to go back to work, but because of this 'vacation' (and perhaps because I took an unplanned/unexpected vacation from baking due to having friends stay with us), I thought it would only be right to farewell them with some cupcakes!

When I think of 'vacation', I think of the beach... Or an island... So that's what I had in mind and made some palm trees with melted chocolate. On some I even added a chocolate piece to represent a coconut... Then with yellow sanding sugar and blue buttercream icing, I aimed to create the appearance of an island.

As I was icing the cupcakes, our friend from England wanted to decorate one as well. And because he was 'on vacation', I allowed him to step into my baking arena and ice some cupcakes...

I came back to see he'd added a shark fin!

I'm really looking forward to our next vacation!

... And also seeing our friends again so we can humorously excuse

certain behaviours due to being " on vacation " ;)