A friend of mine left for a year abroad last year and now he's back! So to celebrate I made some speculaas cupcakes to give him a nice Dutch welcome back.
xoxo Jennifer
Wednesday 31 August 2011
Welcome back!
Dear all,
A friend of mine left for a year abroad last year and now he's back! So to celebrate I made some speculaas cupcakes to give him a nice Dutch welcome back.
xoxo Jennifer
A friend of mine left for a year abroad last year and now he's back! So to celebrate I made some speculaas cupcakes to give him a nice Dutch welcome back.
xoxo Jennifer
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Happy Birthday Roxy
Dear all,
August has come again which means time for a birthday cake for Roxy! This year no Christian Bale or rude age-related comments, but a rose cake for the pretty lady!
The roses on the cake are home made with sugar paste coloured pink and yellow. The leaves are coloured green with green edible lustre. I made them 2 days in advance so they had plenty of time to dry/harden.
I thought I would stick with the pink and yellow theme and added some pink food colouring to half of the cake mix (coconut pound cake by the way). I then scooped through it a couple times for a marbled effect.
This was actually the first time I used a sylicone mould and I wasn't very happy with it. One half of it sagged in the oven giving me a lopsided cake.
To compensate for the lopsidedness I decided to cut off part of the cake (giving you a view of the marbled inside at the same time!!) The other downside of this cake going lopsided is losing the pattern. Cutting part of it off meant covering it completely in icing (not my original plan) and thus losing the nice shape of it. Cream cheese icing is still my favourite though so not too much complaining but still, what a waste!
Fortunately the roses worked out perfectly and in fact covering the cake completely off set the roses beautifully. I did a bit of free style arranging and this is what it turned in to. Not bad if I may say so myself!
So there it is, rose cake! Not sure if I'll use the sylicone mould again. I'm sure they're not supposed to sag like that, maybe it was just a fluke. A test to my baking skills (har har). Happy Birthday Roxy! We didn't need the sun because you were all the sunshine we needed.
xoxo Jennifer
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Hamburger Cupcakes
Dear all,
The other day my brother commented that I dedicate rather a lot of my posts to him - so today I will dedicate this post to his girlfriend instead! They both visited me recently, great evening, with one success and one failure... success first!
My brother actually gave me a new cupcake recipe book, called 'a zombie ate my cupcake' and it has all sorts of gruesome cupcake recipes in it. One odd but slightly less gruesome one was for hamburger cupcakes. Hamburger cupcakes? YES. Watch and learn.
Step 1: make one batch of vanilla cupcakes, and half a batch of chocolate cupcakes (I made a whole batch because I wanted a couple extra to do something else with - will explain later).
Step 2. Cut the vanilla cupcakes in half and make a batch of red and yellow (little bit runny) icing. This will represent the ketchup and mustard. Squirt it on as it really were a condiment:
Step 3. A good burger has lettuce of course. Now lettuce and cupcakes don't go together, so substitute coconut strips coloured green (with green lustre). Awesome!
Step 4. Cut the chocolate muffins in three. These will be the hamburger patties.
Step 5. Put the top of the vanilla muffin back on! For an even more 'authentic' look, sprinkle some sesame seeds on top! To make them stick I put some sugar water on first.
Tadaa! All done!
Now a quick side note on my other cupcake venture (the failure). I was going to make cupcakes with shards of glass (made of sugar) stuck in them with blood (cherry sauce) leaking out. Well, that backfired completely. The 'glass' never hardened, and the 'blood' was lumpy with bits of cherry. So I'm afraid these awesome cupcakes will have to wait for another time, when I pick up the courage to try again...
For now though, enjoy these burgers!
xoxo Jennifer
The other day my brother commented that I dedicate rather a lot of my posts to him - so today I will dedicate this post to his girlfriend instead! They both visited me recently, great evening, with one success and one failure... success first!
My brother actually gave me a new cupcake recipe book, called 'a zombie ate my cupcake' and it has all sorts of gruesome cupcake recipes in it. One odd but slightly less gruesome one was for hamburger cupcakes. Hamburger cupcakes? YES. Watch and learn.
Step 1: make one batch of vanilla cupcakes, and half a batch of chocolate cupcakes (I made a whole batch because I wanted a couple extra to do something else with - will explain later).
Step 2. Cut the vanilla cupcakes in half and make a batch of red and yellow (little bit runny) icing. This will represent the ketchup and mustard. Squirt it on as it really were a condiment:
Step 3. A good burger has lettuce of course. Now lettuce and cupcakes don't go together, so substitute coconut strips coloured green (with green lustre). Awesome!
Step 4. Cut the chocolate muffins in three. These will be the hamburger patties.
Step 5. Put the top of the vanilla muffin back on! For an even more 'authentic' look, sprinkle some sesame seeds on top! To make them stick I put some sugar water on first.
Tadaa! All done!
Now a quick side note on my other cupcake venture (the failure). I was going to make cupcakes with shards of glass (made of sugar) stuck in them with blood (cherry sauce) leaking out. Well, that backfired completely. The 'glass' never hardened, and the 'blood' was lumpy with bits of cherry. So I'm afraid these awesome cupcakes will have to wait for another time, when I pick up the courage to try again...
For now though, enjoy these burgers!
xoxo Jennifer
Wednesday 10 August 2011
Rainbow cupcakes
Dear all,
The other day at work we had the yearly summer barbecue. Each department was asked to bring a dessert and at the barbecue the kids would act as jury and pick the best dessert. Well - I so had that in the pocket. Or so I thought. With a grand total of zero votes I was the grand loser of the evening, although I had an absolute blast making these little rainbow cupcakes. So even though the (stupid) kids didn't like them, I thought they were great, and here they are to share with you!
For the rainbow cupcakes I used 5 different colours: red, orange, yellow, green and blue. Ready to go!
I made two batches of rainbow cupcakes, top to bottom and bottom to top, if you catch my drift... It certainly doesn't look like cake, but I think these look awesome!
They look rather inconspicous once they're baked (as far as blue cupcakes look inconspicuous....
To decorate I made "cloud" icing (fluffy white icing) and added little rainbow sprinkles to top them off!
Well I think the end result is seriously cool.
I was told that the kids weren't used to "brightly coloured food"... I made these insanely coloured cupcakes thinking they would appeal to kids (I'm not normally a fan of the litres of food colouring in food) so that just shows you what I know about kids... next time I'll just bake a cake I would like myself!
xoxo Jennifer
The other day at work we had the yearly summer barbecue. Each department was asked to bring a dessert and at the barbecue the kids would act as jury and pick the best dessert. Well - I so had that in the pocket. Or so I thought. With a grand total of zero votes I was the grand loser of the evening, although I had an absolute blast making these little rainbow cupcakes. So even though the (stupid) kids didn't like them, I thought they were great, and here they are to share with you!
For the rainbow cupcakes I used 5 different colours: red, orange, yellow, green and blue. Ready to go!
I made two batches of rainbow cupcakes, top to bottom and bottom to top, if you catch my drift... It certainly doesn't look like cake, but I think these look awesome!
They look rather inconspicous once they're baked (as far as blue cupcakes look inconspicuous....
To decorate I made "cloud" icing (fluffy white icing) and added little rainbow sprinkles to top them off!
Well I think the end result is seriously cool.
I was told that the kids weren't used to "brightly coloured food"... I made these insanely coloured cupcakes thinking they would appeal to kids (I'm not normally a fan of the litres of food colouring in food) so that just shows you what I know about kids... next time I'll just bake a cake I would like myself!
xoxo Jennifer
Wednesday 3 August 2011
Bastogne Chocolate Tart
Dear all,
For his birthday my brother gets to request a cake (You'll remember his Orange Cake last year) and this year it was a Bastogne Chocolate Tart. It's a non-bake cake with a Bastogne cookie base and gooey chocolate. It was like eating chocolate ganache and biscuits!
Thanks to my mum's food processor I had these Bastognes crumbled and mixed with butter, and mashed into a cake tin in no time (I should get me one of those - so much faster than beating cookies to a pulp with a rolling pin. In fact, I tend to break my rolling pins in the process...). So I was up and mixing the chocolate (milk and dark) with the cream in a flash. chooocoollaatteee... hmm....
And hey presto! A couple (3 or 4) hours in the fridge later: cake!
Look at that.... chocolate goo! It could have done with a couple more hours in the fridge to set further, but this looks kind of good too. Happy Birthday Little Big Brother!!
xoxo Jennifer
For his birthday my brother gets to request a cake (You'll remember his Orange Cake last year) and this year it was a Bastogne Chocolate Tart. It's a non-bake cake with a Bastogne cookie base and gooey chocolate. It was like eating chocolate ganache and biscuits!
Thanks to my mum's food processor I had these Bastognes crumbled and mixed with butter, and mashed into a cake tin in no time (I should get me one of those - so much faster than beating cookies to a pulp with a rolling pin. In fact, I tend to break my rolling pins in the process...). So I was up and mixing the chocolate (milk and dark) with the cream in a flash. chooocoollaatteee... hmm....
And hey presto! A couple (3 or 4) hours in the fridge later: cake!
Look at that.... chocolate goo! It could have done with a couple more hours in the fridge to set further, but this looks kind of good too. Happy Birthday Little Big Brother!!
xoxo Jennifer
Monday 1 August 2011
Dinner Party Desserts
Dear all,
In my new place I have space to have dinner parties - and so I do! I made the Guinness Cake and one of my friends made a Green tea Roll-up cake, and an Orange pound cake. Here is a picture of this heavenly trio!!
xoxo Jennifer
In my new place I have space to have dinner parties - and so I do! I made the Guinness Cake and one of my friends made a Green tea Roll-up cake, and an Orange pound cake. Here is a picture of this heavenly trio!!
xoxo Jennifer
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