Gingerbread House

T'was the night before Christmas, and there are treats all through the house. There's plum pudding awaiting, ham glazing and last but not least there is a snowy gingerbread house with tasty gingerbread men.

Making a gingerbread house is not a last minute project. You need at least a full morning or afternoon up your sleeve to allow time for making the dough, baking, decorating, constructing and the final finishing touches.

I used the recipe and instructions from the December 2011 issue of Australian Good Taste magazine. The templates can be printed out on card, covered in aluminium foil and then placed directly on the dough and cut around with a large knife.

Festive Rum Balls

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The tree and decorations are up, the shops are crowded and I've started playing Christmas carols on my days off. Yep, I'm one of those people. I like Christmas! With my gift shopping complete and Christmas lunch menu planned, I can sit back and start on the fun stuff.

Rum balls are not only delicious, they can make a fabulous gift for family and friends. Simply pop them in clear bags, jars, or chinese boxes tied with ribbon, or place in mini cupcake or truffle cases and a gift box tied with ribbon.

Cute As Birthday Cakes

Now that we're well into the silly season, my next post will be Christmas themed, I promise. But for today I wanted to share with you some last minute cakes I whipped up last weekend for the mother-in-laws birthday. Mothers are special creatures and as such must be appreciated and their birthdays celebrated with cake. The idea of someone not having cake on their birthday is just appalling to me.

Frangipani Wedding Cupcake Tower

On a beautiful tropical Saturday afternoon just over a week ago, a friend of mine tied the knot in the Whitsundays. It was a fantastic location for such a lovely ceremony which included their 2 gorgeous girls in formalising their commitment to each other. The bride looked amazing in her white dress and just a tad nervous as she walked down the aisle to her awaiting beau. 

Lemon Poppy Engagement Cupcakes

 I had such a great time last weekend. After all the planning and organising, my engagement party went off without a hitch. I wanted to put together a cupcake tower for dessert, instead of the more formal cake option. Cupcakes are just so easy to pick out your own and devour without the need for a plate or spoon. Lemon poppy was the new trial flavour accompanied by the already well appreciated divine carrot cupcakes topped with yummy cream cheese frosting. The recipe was taken from the fabulous Bella Cupcakes blog, and it is deliciously moist, so much so that these really do not require frosting at all.

Pick Me Up Tiramisu

Want a delicious dessert pick me up? You can't go past the Italian tiramisu. There are many variations on this recipe now such as berry, mango and chocolate, but the original coffee flavour is still the favourite. Espresso would be fabulous for the real caffeine addicts, but I find this version caters for most tastes as it isn't too strong.

This was a busy week with Halloween Monday, then Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. I took the easy route and handed out chocolate to the trick-or-treating neighbourhood kids. My favourite were 2 little vampire brothers - too cute! Melbourne Cup was spent at work with a sweep and a delicious lunch complete with nibblies, main and dessert. This was my contribution.

Wedding Cupcake Trial

 

Weddings. I love weddings. I'm at that age where my friends are starting to get married and I enjoy being there to celebrate it with them and shed a little happy tear at the ceremony and speeches. Now that I am newly engaged, I have entered the circle of married or to be married. And I like it. I can now freely talk about weddings in public, read wedding magazines and attend wedding expos without the slightest turn of a head.

Next month I have the greatest pleasure of baking and decorating a friend's wedding cupcake tower. I am nervous, but excited. Yes, you might have guessed, this is my FIRST EVER wedding cake/cupcakes. The bride is going to look absolutely stunning, and I am hopeful that my cakes will measure up the same way.

The Greek and Italian Experience

This was my most memorable Greek meal. I enjoyed it in Athens on a 39°C day in August after a  morning spent exploring the Acropolis and the New Acropolis museum. In the full sun. At 2pm in the afternoon, we were starving and disgustingly hot. We found refuge at a decidedly Greek looking restaurant under an awning trying to locate the faintest wisp of a breeze. The breeze wasn't quite there but the food was satisfying.

 This was my appetizer of eggplant croquet, dolmade coated in cream sauce and a zucchini ball. The eggplant croquet won out in both taste and texture. Boy, don't the Europeans know how to prepare eggplant. Soft,  melt in your mouth and seasoned perfectly. My main was moussaka, delicious, but extremely difficult to photograph capturing the beauty of...brown!

French Follies

 I am feeling re-energized, happy and excited about food, baking and blogging. I have returned to the lovely country I call home equipped with new insights and adventures from overseas. I have over-indulged and satiated my hunger on Greek, French, Swiss and Italian food. I should be sick at the mere thought of gelato or ice-cream having eaten it once ( sometimes twice ) a day for a whole month. But...I am not. Shamefully, I could eat a whole tub of Baskin Robins ice-cream without my stomach making the slightest protest.

Alas, holidays are over, I am back to work, and I have not consumed any ice-cream since setting foot on Australian soil. I want to share with you some of the delicious food I managed to remember to photograph before stuffing it in my mouth.

France

The country of romance, and the setting in which I got engaged!!! I loved Paris to bits and also explored the enchanting Loire Valley chateau's on a trusty push bike. The bread and pastry in France is THE BEST, and I will forever now be disappointed with other offerings. The French are not rude (in my experience). Greet them in their own language (it's not hard) and they will help you with whatever you need.

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.