Raspberry Swirl Baked Cheesecake

My little blog has in this last week reached its first milestone of 1000 views...Woot!

This is a week for milestones it seems then. I'm headed off today on my first ever venture over the oceans to a distant far-away land (i.e. Europe).  Even the plane flights and airports conjure up excitement and anticipation, however I'm sure that the novelty will wear off at some point over the 37 hour transit time. Yes, I did just calculate that.

On to the topic of baking, my last baking before my holiday was done last Friday when I baked cheesecake for "cake day" at work. Yes, you heard right...cake day. I was instantly excited upon seeing the notice about said cake day which was devised to celebrate all the August birthdays on one calorie filled celebratory day. Fantastic idea! I'm a big fan of cream cheese and baked cheesecake is my fave cheesecake type. Not a traditional birthday cake I know, however it is still cheese "cake" and delicious might I add.

This is my last post before my overseas adventures, so there may be some blog silence over the next month. However I'm hoping to have a few updates on my food travels depending on internet availability :-)

Lime Cupcakes

I have realised that I am now a blogger...and Australian. So I decided to join the Australian Food Bloggers ring. Makes sense right? I just didn't count on one of those little "word verification" thingy's to stop internet spam foiling my plans. Obviously I am not a human being capable of working out which bloody letters are in the diagram even after putting my glasses on and trying more than 5 times! At this point I'm a little annoyed, and promptly decide to give up on being in this bloggers ring.

I have since however found the Foodies blog roll, which received a big tick in my books as it has heaps of fantastic food blogs that I can easily spend hours procrastinating by trolling through all that wonderful food porn. So all is now good in the world with a coffee and a citrusy-light lime cupcake  ♥

Divine Carrot Cupcakes

 Just last weekend I got a brand new camera and as soon as it was finished with its first charge, I had to spend some (or a lot) of time, having a play around with it. You see, I'm going overseas in just a couple of weeks, and the old camera was playing up just a bit too frequently for my liking. An example involves me standing in front of the 12 Apostles in Victoria, with the camera not working until it's been turned on and off again 10 times. I just cannot have this happen to me whilst in Europe.

My new camera is the Nikon coolpix S9100 which is a compact ultra zoom camera - apparently. Well, I'm really excited about taking this new toy overseas to capture some moments and memories of the adventure. I equally enjoy looking back through baking photos and the memories they're linked to. Some are linked to events, such as a brother's birthday, but others are linked to memories of the food itself and how good it tasted. When I look at the photos of these carrot cupcakes, I most definitely relate it back to how good they tasted and my mouth starts salivating craving one.

I looked at a few different recipes and in the end based mine on a carrot cake recipe with a few slight tweaks. I reduced the raising agent, increased the walnuts but finely chopped them up and also added crushed pineapple as I wanted the moisture without the flavour. And boy were these moist - I ate one 3 days after baking and it was still just as good as freshly baked. Also the carrot was grated using a microplane grater and this makes for a nice soft texture in the cake, although any grater will do. I'm so happy with how this recipe turned out that it will be my go-to carrot cake and cupcake recipe from now on.

The directions for decorating these cupcakes are in my previous post - Pretty in Blue Cupcakes.