And all things nice.

A few weeks ago I made these cupcakes.. it kinda felt like I was eating a muffin because it was more fruity and less sweet than your average cupcake. But alas my theory is.. if it has frosting on top.. it's a cupcake. So anyway, the flavour was apple with cinnamon. The recipe is pretty simple, pretty much it's just vanilla batter with like 4 big apples chopped up with some cinnamon and I made the frosting to be maple with cinnamon. It tasted like autumn, I liked it. Pretty pictures..

♥ Sharni

I made: Ninja bread men!

Last week I decided to crack open another engagement present and put it to use in my sweet little kitchen. This time it was ninja bread men! Awesome right!? The pack came with 3 different dudes making ninja moves. I didn't follow the packaging recipe as it involved shortening. I don't like cooking with shortening so I consulted the ever trusty Australian Women's Weekly biscuit cookbook from 1990.. and sure enough there was a ginger biscuit recipe. It's a pretty standard recipe and I highly recommend it if you haven't had a gingerbread biscuit before. I wonder if anyone has never tried one? Anyone..?

INGREDIENTS

125g butter
110g (½ cup) sugar
1 egg yolk
300g (2 cups) plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 teaspoons ground ginger
2½ tablespoons golden syrup

METHOD

1. Warm golden syrup first.. I just microwaved mine for 30 seconds. Cream butter and sugar until creamy, add egg yolk, beat well. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients and warm syrup, mix well. Easy as!
2. Knead mixture lightly, roll out to mm (1/8 in) thickness on lightly floured board. this can get pretty messy but it's worth it! At this point try not to eat the raw dough.. (as I am guilty of..)
3. Cut out biscuits, lift carefully on to lightly greased oven trays. Dough should make at least 20 biscuits. Bake at 180°C for 15 minutes; cool on trays. When cold, decorate biscuits with icing. You can make royal icing, I used a black icing tube I had in my cupboard which made my ninjas look super tough! I gave them robes and belts and all.
4.Eat them all! Or share them!

By the way, Lauren (Glossary) and Sian (Pink made it punk) are doing a fun new thing called Kitchen Pen Pals. Basically, two girls, two countries, one recipe. Lauren learns and cooks recipes as provided by Sian. I love reading it because they are both in Africa, the recipes sound amazing & Lauren is funny.

Mmmmm lammmmmington

Hello friends! The other day I cooked up a delicious storm in my kitchen to make lamingtons and I documented my cooking adventure over at Halleys blog Life of Something New. It was my first ever guest post and it was fun! Check it out here. I just read on Wikipedia that they are popular in Cleveland, Ohio. WHY!? They are big down under regardless!

I made: donuts!

For our engagement party months ago we got some super sweet donut moulded pans! I finally broke them out and got baking! The packaging had an actual recipe which was pretty much cake batter. The shape was perfect but taste wise it was a little dense.. not as fluffy as real ones.. but then again.. aren't real ones pretty much fried dough? There was no deep frying for these ones. The original recipe called for buttermilk but I redid them a few days later with just a basic sponge cake mix and they were much better. I actually realised that I had no icing sugar after I had begun baking so instead I invented my own peanut butter and honey drizzle icing for it plus sprinkles on top. Pretty tasty! Next on the list of things to make: ninja bread men!

I made: Doctor Who blue velvet cake

Last week it my misters birthday and he is a big Doctor Who fan so I decided to make him a dalek cake.. with a tardis center! So on the outside it looked like a standard cake decorated to look like dalek (robot).. but then you cut it open.. and it's a two layer blue velvet cake with cream cheese frosting on the inside with the colour of the tardis (time machine)! The recipe I used was from One For The Oven. (click link for recipe and pretty picture)

Some things I learnt from the recipe..

• It says add 1 tablespoon of food colouring.. but I used about 4 tablespoons to get that deep blue colour.. but maybe my colours weren't deep enough to begin with.
  
• I learnt that "1 stick of butter" means about 1 cup.
• Cake flour isn't readily available in Australia but to make a similar version you mix 1 part cornflour to 3 parts plain flour.
• My cream cheese frosting looked a bit yellow.. but I'm sure if I used good quality Philly it would have looked better, so probably my fault.
  
• I am not sure why but I thought it was a bit more dense than I expected.
• I used frozen blueberries in the centre so it didn't quite look the same but tasted fine.
  
• To make the shape I had to cut bits of the cake off so when I applied the frosting it got a bit crumbly so it was a bit tricky to make the cream cheese frosting stay white (not with crumbs of blue..)
• I decorated the outside with gumballs, blue licorice and other bits of lollies.
  

All in all it was good.. a bit of a longer process than what I am used to but I learnt all sorts of new things. It was pretty tasty.. I had been tasting the mix all day so at the party I didn't enjoy it that much but all the cake went quickly and everyone was super impressed. I can't wait to have kids (or more parties!) and bake them epic cakes! xo

Love letter to PB

Hey America, why has it taken you so long to send us peanut butter M&Ms? Now you are for sale at the deli near my work, there is no going back. I was browsing the aisles with my yogurt in one hand and I had to back track to make sure it really was you. It was! You are in your pretty little red paper wrapper and I know you're not made here because our M&M's normally come in plastic wrappings. You're not even popular enough to be made here yet, you are still made in Hackettstown, NJ. You taste so much better than Reeses simply for the fact that you have a delicious crunchy shell like the rest of your family and you taste just like you did in June 2007 in the best way possible! I love you peanut butter M&M's, thanks for cheering up my dismal Tuesday.

My top 5 American foods that I cannot buy here..
♥ Pinkberries (with raspberries and oreo's!)
♥ Teaberry chewing gum (tastes like summer camp!)
♥ Pumpkin pie (sure, I can make it, but I can't buy it)
♥ Bagels (of the "everything" variety)
♥ Vanilla toothpaste (it's as good as food ok?)