Because who needs an excuse to bake delicious things and tell the one you love, well…you love them. These are red velvet mini cupcakes with white chocolate ganache, cream cheese frosting, sprinkles, cherry ripe hearts, strawberry slice hearts and anything else I found in the baking cupboard! (for the record, I’ve sampled and they are DELICIOUS too) Happy Valentines Day! Kx
Last week I made a batch of lemon curd, which was easier than I thought it would be. I used this recipe which I just found on google. I then made cupcakes from scratch and used frozen raspberries the ones I didn’t fill with lemon curd later. They were good!
And luckily we now have an abundance of cupboards in our new place, which means plenty of room for a “baking section” to keep it all together in one place. How very domestic! Kx
Our lovely nanna turned 87 on the weekend. To celebrate I baked mini chocolate cupcakes (these were mostly for our nephews benefit) and raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake cupcakes for the oldies. It was nice to bake again, I hardly get a chance anymore but seeing as my boy was returning home as well, it was a day that deserved baked goods.
if you’d like a pretty fail safe recipe for basic butter cakes, here it is:
125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1&1/2 cups SR flour
1/2 cup milk
to which I usually add about 2 table spoons of cocoa powder & about half a block of lindt 70% dark chocolate roughly chopped for the chocolate cakes. And for the raspberry ones I minus some sugar and milk and add some sour cream (to make them lighter) and half a pack of frozen raspberries and a handful or two of white choc chips.
The icing for the chocolate ones is basically the other half of the block of lindt chocolate and 100g or so of butter softened and whipped into the (cooled) melted chocolate. Raspberry ones I whip 3/4 block of philly cheese with half a cup (give or take -as needed) of sugar and thats it. Easy Peasy!
I didn’t get a photo of the final product except for this one of the mini chocolate ones on one of my latest plates. You know, when the props are available you need to take advantage! Kx
I spoke too soon and if I’d looked harder I would have found that Sydney also has a super cute vegan cupcake delivery too! Thank you Viva Cupcakes!! They may not have moustaches but they definitely look super yummy and I can actually order from this one (and I will!) yay!! Lx
There are so many good reasons to visit Melbourne (or live there) I’ve just found another one (one week too late for our visit) – the cutest vegan cupcake shop there is – It’s called Mister Nice Guy and it has the best site as well AND Check out these flavours AND they deliver AND it’s animal friendly which of course is the best part!!
Why, oh why can’t we have one of these in Sydney?
On the weekend we visited our lovely friend Mechelle’s opening for her exhibition “Little One” to see her new risographs that are based on cute sketches of her childhood memories. The exhibition is at Sweets Workshop in Summer Hill, which is a super cute little gallery that’s just been opened. You should definately check it out if you’ve never been! There is also a cute little interview and profile on the Finders Keepers Blog here.
All attendees got a cute paper hat made from “riso boo-boos”.
And a delicious vegan cupcake (or two), baked by Mechelle and her amazingly talented sister Anney.
Mechelle and Anney are also the queens of zines! and stock their goodies at Sweets Workshop. I especially love Mechelle’s hillarious zines about public transport and Anney’s beautiful cornycopia drawings. So much talent here! Kx
Yesterday we made a trip to Adriano Zumbo’s amazing macaron factory/cafe/patissier in Roselle. If you are nowhere near either of his cafes (there is also one in Balmain) you can drool over his amazing flavours and creations here or you could just harden up and take a drive! These macarons are WORTH IT!!!
This is what they looked like before. Ooo pretty!
And after…when we felt really sick.
Some more than others. haha!
The best flavour by far was the salted caramel and peanut, but I was also quite partial to the oatmeal, honey and ylang ylang. Kx
Schwartz Bakery was the highlight of our trip to the Blue Mountains last weekend and the main reason my boy was so willing to come, even when I explained I would be dragged him through antique centres and op shops all day. They do the most amazing traditional German pretzels and sour cherry crumble. The chocolate pretzel on the left was actually pretty tasteless considering how amazing it looked! But if you’re ever in the area you should really check it out, especially because the op shops in the Blue Mountains are completely scoured and the antiques shops didn’t even have one Bambi between them. Thank god for etsy! Kx
On the weekend we were pretty excited to discover quinces are in season! I was excited mostly because since I met my boy I’d heard a lot about how amazing quinces are and considering I’ve never seen or tasted them other than in paste form this sounded pretty good to me! Also Trev is pretty clever in the kitchen so whenever he speaks about something he likes to cook I know it’ll be good regardless!
This is what the looked like before we baked them. They are kind of like really hard giant yellow apples. We combined cinnamon sticks, vanilla bean paste, lemon juice, water and brown sugar in a baking pan and basically just slow cooked them under foil for 2 and half hours.
And this is the amazing colour they went in the process!
And this was the finished product! I’ve gotta say they totally beat apple and rhubarb and would make an amazing crumble. And they turned out perfectly, unlike our Masterchef Gnocchi which was a giant mashed potatoey mess, worse than when most of the dud contestants cooked it. Despite this, it still tasted pretty good! Kx
Baking today. These are apple tea-cupcakes with a custard centre! They exploded, a bit.
Vintage finds, this puppy planter (which i’ve decided is a good remote control holder)..
And this cool floral scarf which is the brightest shades of magenta and purple! Love. and only $4.50.
And Juno, like a baby on a sheep skin rug.
And watching tv with me on the couch (right before she chewed a hole in the cushion!)
and generally destroying the house. Tipping her water onto the carpet which she then proceeds to eat, chew and ruin. Sigh.
Testing out my porcelain pens that Lynds bought me a while back. I was inspired by A girl called E who made this fantastic teapot for her friends!
And friends of mine got a new puppy! Isn’t he beautiful! I cant wait to meet him. Kx
