Rocky Road to Romance

White chocolate rocky road - a new favourite!

"The course of true love never did run smooth", "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach..." - there are many proverbs which make rocky road the perfect valentine's day treat IMHO ;-) For this valentine's day, I made classic rocky road (using the recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook) which has been a real hit with every man whose been lucky enough to have ne make it for him. I also made something a bit different - a variation on this classic - white chocolate rocky road made from melted white choc, cranberries, pistachio nuts, ginger nut biscuits, coconut and mini marshmallows. It tastes divine! Really quite different from the milk chocolate version, but no less delicious. I will definitely be making it again. It would make a nice Christmas gift, particularly if you packaged it up nicely in snowflake-patterned cellophane food bags. I packaged up my bite-size rocky road pieces in these cute bags with pink and red hearts on which made them look very festive. The recipients, loved ones who have been very kind to me in the last couple of months, were very grateful indeed. And check out my vintage china! I got a full set of cups, saucers, sandwich plates and a cake plate from a charity shop in the centre of Cambridge for £19.95. Bargain, eh? The delicate green colour of the crockery doesn't show up brilliantly in all my pictures - I think the flash has bleached out the subtle colours, as it so often does, but hopefully you get the idea. A belated Happy St Valentine's day to you all!

Wizard of Oz cupcakes

 

   

 

I made these cupcakes for the colleagues who were closely involved in the putting on the production of "The Wizard of Oz" with me in the school where I work. They made good little thank you pressies - people do always seem to appreciate it when you go to a bit of trouble and personalise your thanks, I find! I made the toppers myself. Very easy in fact! I found some iconic images from the film, printed them on card and cut each one into a disk shape using a brilliant little gadget from "hobbycraft". Using cellotape, I then attached the image to a cocktail stick and, to conceal the unsightly and slightly amateurish appearance of the taped stick, I attached another identically-sized image on the reverse using mini double-sided sticky pads. The cakes were quite plain - vanilla sponge with regular, buttercream frosting (tinted Oz green, of course!) A few silver dragees were added for a bit of Glinda-esque sparkle. Sorry that the quality of the photos isn't brilliant - taken on my phone.....

Velvet Snowflakes

As the holidays are here, I decided to make some festive cupcakes: red velvet with cream cheese frosting, decorated with silver ball dragees, edible pearls and home-made snowflakes (which seem to have melted!) They taste good though ;-) Happy holidays, everyone!

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple frosting

I stole the idea for these cupcakes from make bakeswap buddy Susie, who has a fantastic baking blog called 'fold in the flour': http://foldintheflour.blogspot.co.uk

They taste very autumnal with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in the sponge mix (they do taste like gingerbread, don't they Susie?!) The use of pureed pumpkin in the sponge mix and maple syrup in the frosting made me think of America, as these ingredients were being used in abundance during my recent visit to New York (yes! I am a Hurricane Sandy survivor!!) With that in mind, I suppose you could call them thanksgiving cupcakes...

Pink Piped roses at the Patisserie in my Kitchen

I wanted to have another go at piping buttercream roses on top of my cupcakes and, as it is a frolleague (friend-and-colleague, geddit?)'s birthday, I thought I'd make a batch to gift to her. I also wanted to put one of these super-cute patisserie boxes to good use. I reckon that if someone gave me this as a gift, I'd be pretty chuffed :-) My piping-work still needs practice - I piped a few dudds. Guess I'll just have to eat those myself... ;-)

It's too damn hot! Magic Stars Cupcakes

I'm seeing my gang - a group of schoolfriends who've stayed close since we left college (in 1999!) - this weekend for a picnic. I said I'd bake a batch of cupcakes for the occasion and had it in my head that I'd do vanilla sponge with my new favourite icing (white chocolate buttercream) and dainty chocolate roses and chocolate bows handmade by yours truly. So... I got up today, got all my kit out and began to attempt making the bows and roses. Problem was, with it being so muggy, the icing was too warm and sticky/melty to work with with - I reckon my palms were too clammy! So instead, I decided instead to buy some chocolates to put on top of the cakes. Not quite as impressive as handmade decorations but quite tasty nonetheless (I obviously had to sample a load of the chocolates - Magic Stars - to make sure that they were ok ;-) They've got rainbow glitter on too, but it hasn't really shown up in the photo. Hope everyone enjoys them!

Green Roses 'n' Purple Butterflies

Getting a bit closer to nailing the rose piping effect now. I also thought I'd try out a mint-coloured colouring. Do you get green roses in nature? I'm not so sure... But then again, purple sparkly butterflies don't occur in nature either (to my knowledge)... 'Fraid you can't see the sparkly-ness of the butterflies from this shot. Hey ho.