Chinese Take-away cake

This cake has been a difficult cake to do.  Not in the sense that it was complicated but in the sense that the reason I made this cake was difficult.  This cake has been made as a good-bye to a very close couple of my husband and I who are moving to China for two years. When they told us they were moving it felt like it would be ages before they left and there was plenty of time to catch up and spend time together but now the time is nearly up and I am left feeling quite sad.  Its never nice being the person left behind but even more than that I am losing my 'go to' person as I would call it.  The person I call whenever there is the slightest problem, whenever I am stressed or just want a good chat.  These two are more than friends, they are family.  We have said quite a few good-byes with them over the years and we always pick up where we left off but its still hard.

In spite of the fact that they are leaving and I am sad I am also super excited for them.   What an opportunity to work in another country for two years!  My husband and I had the opportunity to travel China a few years ago and we fell in love with it and know that if we were in the same position as them we would probably be doing the same thing.

The cake itself is a vanilla pound cake with a chocolate buttercream covered in fondant.  The lid, fortune cookies and veggies are made out of gumpaste which is a first for me.  The noodles are made out of fondant and the chopsticks and prawn are made out of modeling chocolate.  The pagoda has been hand painted with a mixture of food coloring and lemon essence.

Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes

I've had a block this last two weeks.  Its not as though I haven't been baking, I have! The thought of sitting down and writing about the baking has been a bit draining and I have felt extremely uninspired. I think possibly a combination of being sick and having a boy who is not sleeping the greatest at night doesn't help.  I also have to blame my sister as she sent me the first three seasons of the TV series Ace of Cakes and my husband and I have been spending our evenings watching as many episodes as we can stay awake for.  I consider it research and training.

Anyway, now I have a big backlog of baking to catch you up on.  It may come in drips and drabs between any cakes I am making.

Last week my Aunty came and stayed with my children so that my husband and I could have a night away.  I cannot tell you how wonderful this was!   We had an incredible time watching USA vs Canada in the ice hockey (even if the fans were 70% for Canada and 30% for USA and even though USA lost).  Can you believe that we didn't even talk about our kids once the entire night!  I felt a bit sorry for some friends the next day though as I think I made up for the lack of talking about them the night before.  I was beginning to miss them!

For the weekend I tried to make sure I had plenty of yummy treats for my aunty and my daughter to snack away on.  When I saw a post about cinnamon roll cupcakes I knew they would be perfect as you can eat them any time of day pretty much! I used a recipe for cinnamon rolls and changed it a little to make them into tiny cupcakes. I find I can never eat an entire cinnamon roll so this suited me just fine.  Click here to see the recipe.  When rolling out the dough, roll it out 22" x 12".  Once mixture is spread onto it and rolled up, cut into 24 small rolls and place each roll into a cupcake case.  Bake rolls in a preheated oven for approximately 12 minutes. If you don't have a bread maker there is a hint from one of the reviewers on how to make it without it.  I was just lazy.  The icing is pretty incredible and you wont be disappointed.  Either ice while still warm so that the icing melts into the buns or wait until cool and microwave for 10-20 seconds before eating. Yummm!

Fairy Princess Cupcakes

This weeks cupcakes are special because the recipient of these cupcakes is very special to me!  It occurred to me that I hadn't made special cupcakes for one of the most important people in my life, my daughter!  Sometimes its so easy for me to get caught up in projects and life that I forget about the little people.  Being a stay-at-home mum doesn't mean that I am 'home' with my kids.  I so often get wrapped up in needing to get something cleaned or something baked or something organized that my daughter is at my side begging me to come to her room or sit down with her.  I find myself saying 'let me just get this done' or 'let me just do this'.  My constant battle being a mum at home has been to actually be present with my kids.  I felt pretty convicted of this and have been consciously trying to set aside special time for my kids.  Yesterday I decided that I would put on a 'tea party' for my daughter.  We made special invitations for her friend and walked to her house and put the invite in the mailbox.  Then today we got dressed up in pretty dresses, made beautiful fairy crowns, had yummy fairy princess cupcakes and pink fairy princess tea.  It was so much fun! The girls loved it and it held their attention longer than most things which for two year olds can be a challenge.

For the fairy princess cupcakes I used the previously published Zebra Cake but instead of adding the coco I kept the cake entirely vanilla.  I split the batter into two bowls and coloured one bowl with pink food colouring and the other with teal.  I lined 18 cupcake tins and I then put one tablespoonful of the pink colouring in the bottom of each liner.  I then followed by putting one tablespoonful of teal colour in the centre of the pink.  I then followed with one tablespoon of the pink and then approximately or slightly less of the teal again.  (you want the cases to be 3/4 full).  I baked these in a preheated oven 350 degrees F/180 degrees C for 18-20 minutes or until the tops sprung back.  On the top of the cupcakes I put the previously published buttercream icing and placed butterflies made from modelling chocolate.  The cupcakes themselves taste ok BUT they look incredibly fun and the icing tastes great which to two year olds is all that matters!

Congratulations Bouquet!

What a funny crazy day.  My daughter said it best when daddy was tucking her in tonight: "Mummy is crazy." Yes darling girl, mummy is crazy! Why, you ask? I drove at least an hour today up and down looking for the road that my friend lives on, only to find out that I was on the wrong road to begin with! I eventually did find where I needed to go but insanely did not give up and go home and call my friend after at least 30 minutes (because I didn't have her number) because I was a woman on a mission! I had promised my little girl we were going to see her friend and when you have already loaded two kids in the car and they were quietly sitting in the back seat like little angels there was NO way I was going home.  We got to visit for only a short half hour but it was worth it for several reasons.  I saw the most amazing rainbow, I had cuddles with a brand new baby, I was able to give my friend a bouquet of cupcakes and my 2 year old said thank you for bringing her to her friends house.  All very much worth it!

8 years with my husband!

Where has the time gone?  Ten and a half years ago I met my husband and eight years ago we said I do.  He is my best friend and I am still as crazy about him now, even more than I was back then.  We have done so much in 8 years, worked and travelled around the world, renovated a house, had two kids, gone through several different jobs.  Each new thing has always brought about a new obstacle or challenge but we both have met it head on and overcome it.  I feel a little sad when people say 'good job' for getting to eight years because so often marriages don't make it past seven years.  To me, 'good job' will be when we have been married for 50 years and can still joke and laugh with one another and can still sit at the table after dinner and talk about our day, our fears and our dreams and still be a team.  The day that we stop working at communicating, working at putting each other before our kids and our jobs and working at loving one another is when we stop doing a 'good job' and I don't ever want to get to that place.  I love you babe and I look forward to many more years together.

For our anniversary I made my husband a cake.  This cake is of a hockey puck with the USA hockey team logo on it.  We both share a love of ice hockey and ironically there is very little ice hockey in New Zealand.  Unless you live in a big city or down in the south island it is virtually non-existent.  So you can imagine our excitement when we found out that USA and Canada were coming to play each other in New Zealand!  The game happens to be in a couple of weeks so we have been looking forward to it as a post anniversary date! We are going All-American to this game and will be sporting our ice hockey jerseys proudly.

This cake is a chocolate guinness mudcake with a baileys buttercream filling and a dark chocolate whiskey ganache.  Definitely not a cake for the kids and boy was it yummy!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

I have never been a huge fan of beer, that is until I was pregnant.  Suddenly I was craving beer in the middle of the night.  I think that the ultimate rebel was coming out in me wanting something I knew I couldn't have when pregnant.  My close girlfriend is nearing the end of her pregnancy of twins so I knew I had to make special cupcakes for her this week, so I thought what better than the pairing of beer and chocolate!  

I got the inspiration to make these cupcakes one morning this week after dropping my daughter off at kindy.  So off I went to the supermarket with my baby under my arms, looking half put together (as you usually do after the morning kindy run) and picked up a four pack of Guinness and a pack of nappies.  I think I must have looked like an alcoholic this early in the morning buying alcohol.  What's worse is that I had to complain about the price being wrong and bring it to the attention of several shoppers and checkout ladies that I was buying beer at 9am(Guinness is expensive and it was saving me $3!).  I suddenly felt the need to explain that I was baking.  I had to laugh too as it was the first time in a long time I wasn't ID'd.  Hmmm, I must have looked bad.

The cupcakes were pretty easy to put together and the icing was pretty good too although I tend to prefer a good old fashioned buttercream icing so I also made a batch of chocolate buttercream with a bit of coffee added to it to go on some.  You barely taste the Guinness, especially once the icing is on top and if anything the beer only enhances the taste of the chocolate.  I think next time I would try a recipe with baileys in the icing and maybe a whiskey ganache centre.  A bit too much maybe?  I abstained this time though due to the fact that these went to my pregnant friend.  This recipe made a ton of cupcakes so I also shared them around with my husbands workmates and to some special mums that attend the Friday session at my daughters playcentre.  Everyone seemed to really like them so I definitely recommend trying them!  If you are out buying Guinness I also recommending making the Beer Bread I posted in May with a bottle of guinness.  You will not regret it and I guarantee it will be the best bread you have ever tasted!!!

You can find this recipe on food.com: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/chocolate-stout-cupcakes-recipe/index.html

Camera Cake

This has been my favorite cake to make to date!  I love recreating real objects and was super excited when my friend asked me to make this camera cake for her husbands 40th.  What I loved even more is that my husband enjoyed getting involved in this one.  Its a real mans cake I think.  The bottom base of the cake and the camera are made of chocolate mud cake covered in chocolate fondant.  The lens and the film roll were made from rice crispy treats covered in chocolate fondant. The negative and the strap of the camera are made from modeling chocolate.  A lot of planning went into this cake and it came together so well because of it.

The party was in Auckland so we took the opportunity to have a night away with only one of the kids and visited some close friends. It was a fantastic time and it was special catching up with some great people.  Even better, there was no issue in the transport of the cake.  Phew!  I am going to start looking into properly getting cakes couriered so if you live outside of Tauranga I may still be able to make you a cake!

Key Lime Pie

My girlfriend gave me limes from her tree about a week ago and I was so excited!  Limes are so dear in the supermarket that I very rarely cook or bake with them but I LOVE key lime pie and knew I would have to make one.  Citrus is always my dessert of choice after dinner, especially lime.   The tarter the better and the creamier the better.  There are tons of versions of key lime pie.  The one I chose is super quick and easy to make as there are no eggs involved, just 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk, which makes an incredibly creamy pie.   The crust calls for a graham cracker crust (why I started my graham cracker kick this week) but you can use any biscuit you would use to make a cheesecake crust.  If you have an over-abundance of limes this pie will surely impress your guests with very little work involved.  I will warn you that it is very rich which may leave some disappointed as it is so yummy and they will want more but just won't be able to do it (which arguably is a great thing as you will get leftovers!).

You can find the recipe at: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/key-lime-pie-vii/detail.aspx