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.....