chocolate chips....

well after much delay i finally made my first cupcakes of the year and as promised they were chocolate chip ones from martha's book! they turned out a little dense for my liking, the recipe called for egg whites beaten into 'stiff peaks' but not over beaten.... well being the novice i am i really dont know when to turn the electric beater off.... i mean stiff peaks are stiff peaks right.. you cant get any stiffer? well i think i must have as im sure the egg whites are in the recipe to keep the mixture light....?!?!

anyway they werent a complete disaster, they were edible and most who ate them didnt complain! i made some chocolate buttercream with the edition of 175g of 70% cocoa chocolate... yum! it was probably the best tasting icing i have made so far :)  i was too lazy to decorate them in any sort of impressive fashion so i just crumbled up some choc chip cookies and piled them on top of the icing...

oh and most importantly... i got a new camera! its not an SLR but next best thing i think! 10MP and 12 optical zoom for a pretty good price, im pretty pleased and hopefully it will make my blog a little prettier to look at .... this is how my cupcakes (and photos) turned out

well besides the semi failed baking we didnt get up to much in the weekend, just relaxed, cleaned the house (speaking of which, the landlord is selling! so we are going to have to find a new place to live.... im dreaming of a big kitchen!), caught up with my mum etc etc

on saturday we went to western springs in the early evening for a impromtu picnic and it was beautiful! havent been there since the end of winter when it was pretty bare and uninspiring! i managed to put my new camera to use and grab a few practice shots