the way things should be....

well after my 5 day break from work in napier last week i am off again .... this time to wellington (tomorrow and thursday) to see jason alexander (better known as george from seinfeld) then on friday it is my birthday and then the weekend ... all of which i have off! im just praying that the sun shines like the it is today!  the last thing i baked was the blueberry cake and since then have had so many ideas and little time (due to work and play!) but when i arrive back from wellington i think i will make myself a birthday cake.... haha sounds a bit sad ... but i DO have friends.... i just <3 baking :)

i have had a few ideas from orange chiffon cake to an orange and almond cake BUT while browsing a few baking books over the last few days i have seen the reoccurance of a sponge layer cake and i thought with all the summer berries available at the moment i would try one! i thought id use blueberries and stawberries as they are readily available at reasonable prices at this time of year.  so if it all goes to plan im am envisioning it will have 4 sponge layers, berries (and on top) AND most cream & importantly strawberry meringue butter cream between ...

any maybe if i go all out some white chocolate decoration of some sort on the very top

in other news i got an early birthday present from my mum.... martha stewarts cupcakes book! i wrote an earlier post about it... it is truly fantastic! it has so many cupcake recipes and design ideas its almost overwhelming! i want to bake them all SO i thought in the style of julie and julia my project for 2010 would be trying to bake every cupcake in the book... starting from the very beginning! we will see how that turns out... haha knowing me i will probably lose steam but stay posted.....

berries...

disclaimer: my camera ran out of battery so all photos are crappy as they were taken off my phone :(


well im in napier for a mini break with T and besides being famous for its sunny weather (its currently raining and WAS thundering) and fish and chips (well according to me) its called the fruit bowl of new zealand (according to T) so i thought while i was down here i would take advantage of the ample fruit... in particular the berries!

i had a recipe i wanted to try out in my recipe folder at home but being in such a hurry to get to the airport i left it behind... so today with blueberries in mind i google image searched 'blueberry' cake (i like to see what they look like first) and came across a pretty yummy looking one and along with that a fantastic recipe AND blog!!


its called .....
Apple and Spice

and has fantastic recipes and interesting posts... im definetly going to spend a few hours on it when i get home...

anyway back to the cake... so i tracked down a place called the strawberry patch that stocked bluberries, fresh berry ice cream (which of course we had to sample :/ ) and also did pick your own strawberries at $4 a kg! yum ... unfortunately the day before i had already bought two huge punnets for $10 (which is still great value)... i also ate the majority of them and to be honest my stomach has been paying .... ....anyway enough said about that ! :o

ok so the recipe is here (original page and post ) or here....

Ingrediants
200g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp of vanilla
115g butter
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
240ml plain natural yoghurt
400g blueberries
65g natural marzipan

For the topping
1½ tbsp light soft brown sugar
2½ tbsp finely chopped hazelnuts

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 22cm 9inch spring form tin.
Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs on at a time, beating well between each one. Chop the marzipan into small squares and fold into the batter along with the vanilla and yoghurt.
Sift over the flour, bicarb and baking powder and fold in well, turning the bowl as you go until just combined.
Place half of the batter into the cake tin and then cover the surface with half of the blueberries.
Spread the remaining half of batter evenly over the blueberries and top with the leftover berries.
Scatter over the chopped hazelnuts and sprinkle on the brown sugar.
Bake between 1hr – 1hr 15minutes until springy and a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. (It will be wet if you hit a blueberry).
Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before removing from the in and allowing to cool before serving.
Tastes great eaten on its own, with crème fraiche or slightly warm with ice cream.

the recipe calls for marzipan which is different! blocks of marzipan in NZ supermarkets are around $8! so i went to the lolly/chocolate isle and bought a $3 log of chocolate covered marzipan and just scraped the chocolate off and used that....


yes... i AM cheap!

blueberries on top before adding the hazlenuts and sugar..... yum

 

i usually use a fan bake setting for my cupcakes but did this on a normal bake setting as it called for a long cooking time... the top didnt burn which was what i was most worried about! there is one thing to note of importance... this cake takes FOREVER to cool... im not sure why, maybe the heat in the berries? but it seemed very delicate and a bit crumbly while still warm so had to let it cool completely

out of the oven (terrible photo!) but you can see all the blueberries on the top and sides!

the inside of the cake (another bad photo :/)  might put more bluberries in the middle or do another layer next time!

 

Served it with fresh cream and strawberries... yum

as my baking journey continues i am becoming increasingly aware of the way ingrediants work and taste and think i am going to start experimenting with my own recipes or perhaps modifying or adding to existing ones! so standby for more fun and probably plenty of disasters!

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas....

its almost the first of december and we are truly about to enter the holiday season! i wish the weather would follow suit but its another overcast muggy day here in auckland!  the christmas brunch yesterday was a huge success and everyone loved the cupcake wreath! i managed to pull it together and make everyone a take home cupcake too with little christmas trees on top :)

as mentioned in the previous post i made gingerbread cupcakes which tasted delicious! i got the recipe from this book.... (it involves crystalized ginger and spices but is pretty simple!)... i once again got it from my favourite book resource... the library!

i spent most of saturday coating the mint leaves with melted chocolate, putting them in the fridge, letting them set then removing the leaves from the back to reveal beautiful chocolate leaves! this was much easier (however time consuming) than i thought and they looked amazing... if i do say so myself.....

as i use butter in my icing recipes i can never achieve white icing so for these i had to use store bought (gasp!!) icing.. it was 'betty crocker vanilla frosting' and it was surpisingly nice and easy to work with! i will definately buy it again when i need white icing! (great for christmas projects).... i also added a bow and some extra decorations to the wreath to give it more context, i used plastic bells and tiny presents (originally tree decorations)

this is a great idea for a table center piece ... besides the leaves (which are time consuming) it was relatively easy and really effective!

i topped my christmas tree to be cupcakes with the same white icing and used a knife to texture it... i let it set and then swirled a christmas tree on top with a kinda star tip (sorry dont know the number of this one) .. starting with a big circle and gradually making it smaller as i increased the height....

i used edible silver balls and red stars as the decoratins and put a little yellow star on the top of each tree... i used edible white dust/glitter to sprinkle over! AND just to top the whole thing off put a little present under each

super cute!!

my head is now filled with christmas decorating ideas and i think im going to try snowman cupcakes next! stay tuned xx

 

oh christmas tree oh christmas tree....

well we are entering my favourite time of year! i love the food, the decorations, the music, the weather, time off from work, road trips, family and presents :P  I put my tree up on wednesday even though it was far too early ... we always believe the date to put it up is the 1st of December but me and T got a tree for our place so i just wanted to decorate it asap! it was a pretty cheap warehouse version but suprisingly it didnt look too sparse which is what always bothers me about cheap trees! i managed to decorate it and the rest of the living room in a not TOO tacky manner ... i might put some pix up ....

the baking project this weekend is a christmas wreath made out of cupcakes for my mums xmas brunch tomorrow (got the design idea from the hello, cupcake!), i am going to bake gingerbread cupcakes and have been making white chocolate leaves (by brushing mint leaves with melted chocolate, letting them dry then peeling the leaves off) at work all day! the idea is to top the cupcakes with the leaves and round red lollies (jaffas in my case) and arange them in a circle, i got a bow and some cute decorations to enhance it too ... i will post the pix tommorrow after i have finished it, my mum ALSO requested a cupcake for everyone to take home if i have time so might make 8 individual chocolate ones with a little iced xmas tree on top....

once again... fingers crossed

what a weekend....

well my weekend was truly taken over by cupcakes! i was supposed to start baking at around 11am on Saturday but due to oven issues and sleeping in issues i didnt start till around 4.30pm... needless to say it kind of snowballed from there.. leading to a bed time of 3am with an unwelcome alarm at 6am to finish off putting caramel corn manes on the lion cupcakes and get to the market by 7.30am!

had heaps of fun and saw a few people from the facebook group (special prices for them of course :P ) which was great!

we sold quite a lot of cakes to the people that came but to be honest the market was a bit lame! there was only a handful of stalls and consquenstly not much foot traffic! i took the rest to work this morning and they went like hot cakes! so next plan of attack is more planning and a better market! i will have to go to a few first to really get a guage on how many cakes to make in regards to how many stalls and people they have markets! someone suggested a market in grey lynn so may have to check that out....

thought my stall looked quite cute with heaps of different retro plates and little cups .... heres a few pics from the day

my table with all the plates and some of the cupcakes on (rest were stored in boxes under the table)

my first shot at mini cupcakes... they were a huge hit and my fatest seller! brownie flavour, vanilla with choc icing, carrot and vanilla with orange icing... yum!

chocolate cupcakes with melted white chocolate on top and a yummy oreo

orange cupcakes with tasty orange icing and the cutest little flower!

crazy planning....

3 days till my market debut with my cupcakes! i have planned to make 150 cupcakes but have no idea if it is do-able! but we will see.... i have decided on the following flavours

carrot
lemon
orange
banana (and walnut)
brownie
chocolate
vanilla

phewp! all with different designs on them! i think icing them is obviously going to be the most difficult thing to under go... but i have enlisted my lovely boyfriend who said he will be mr mixer and washer :)

ingrediants cost me $90 so i hope to at least break even, its hard to tell as i have no idea what the foot traffic is like or interest is in cupcakes at this market!

hold tight for heaps of photos from the baking, icing and selling !!

the land before time...

I made the cake! It took me far longer than I had intially thought, although that is because I used a completely inappropriate recipe for the first attempt! The cake was all crumbly and just fell apart :( Goodbye 8 eggs, loads of milk, flour, sugar... etc etc


So instead of trying to be fancy I just pulled out the most simple cake recipe I could find and made sure it came out of a cake decorating book ..... (guaranteeing it would be rubust!)


I baked two round cakes out of said butter cake mix ( with cocoa added) and cut out the shapes to make the dino shape (1 cake was used as the actual body and the other was cut into two to make the tail and head)

 

Then I attempted a crumb coat (a rough coat of icing to seal in the crumbs) ... but as im impatient it only lasted in the freezer for about 15 minutes... so out it came... looking PRETTY rough but ready for its final icing coat (well almost ready!)

After perfecting the icing it was time to do what i had been looking forward to... decorate it! I had mint truffle hersheys kisses, brown m&ms (regular and mini) and big chocolate buttons! I just put the spots all over and also used regular sized m&ms for his toes :D

i was quite pleased with the final result and decided to give him a smile instead of scary teeth :P not sure what sort of dino this would actually be considered... but anyhow his name is cliff and he is going to get eat VERY shortly.....