Kahlua chocolate cake

Dinner parties are one of my greatest pleasures, and a last week we had a few people over to our house for a night of delicious food and wine, and seriously bad youtube.

We started off with potato and leek soup, followed up by two baked pasta dishes - lasagna and cannelloni - and finished with kahlua chocolate cake.


A rich cake topped with kahlua cream cheese icing and two types of Lindt chocolate. Over indulgence in it's finest.


x CB

Vegan gingerbread with lemon icing

Sometimes there is nothing better than baking when it's awful out.
On Tuesday there were thunderstorms in the Springs, and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen baking a vegan version of a personal favourite - gingerbread.

I realised pretty early in that I don't have my cookie cutters at my flat as yet (have to track those down before my next cookie adventure, I think!) but despite not looking quite as amazing as the Post Punk Kitchen batch the recipe came from (I used golden syrup in place of molasses) these tasted delightful and went down a treat with a cup of tea post-Slammers workout.


The icing for these, a must know: juice of one lemon, icing sugar, and vanilla extract to taste. Tart but sweet, so perfect.

xx CB

Chaos Cakes: They hold the inside line

A few weeks ago the Alpha Beta Slammers' pinkest Scot, Mazzy Chaos, accepted an amazing job and headed back to her homeland.

Although sad to see her go (it's not every day you make friends with a pack-savvy blocker with a penchant for "eating the baby" and listening to the Go! Team, after all) we threw her quite the Boozy Tuesday leaving party, complete with spontaneous dress ups, plastic wine, and "Chaos Cakes".


For some reason the food colouring I used in the mixture caused the cupcakes to rise in funny directions, so they were a bit weight heavy on one side. No worries, however! Nothing a little frosting couldn't fix and, as aptly pointed out by Scheisse Minelli, these pink and yellow adorned creations look like they're "holding the line"!


Enough with the roller derby references, I'm off for a nap and some snacks.
Stay tuned for more frequent posting (I promise!) and some very exciting projects in the coming months.

xx CB

Treacle tarts and crown lynn delights

Hello sweet treaters,

It's certainly been a while!
Since I last updated I've been busy with assignments, skating, and eating (but not so much baking) delicious treats.

I also moved house, and now have the pleasure of being able to cook in a beautiful kitchen with a gas hub and oven. Even better than that, though, is that both of my flatmates are also crockery enthusiasts, so our kitchen is a mashup of Crown Lynn delights. More on that later.

For now, treacle tarts!
If by chance you managed to hide from all social networking and news media over the past fortnight and hadn't caught on, last night was Kate and Will's wedding. Apparently the wedding of our generation an incredible 2 billion odd tuned in to watch, and viewing parties popped up all over the place. I'm not usually one who buys into media hype or the royal family but I am most definitely a fan of British desserts, so when Amber from Code For Something invited me to her Royal Wedding TV Special I put on my best frock, some heels, and tried out Heston Blumenthal's treacle tart recipe for the occasion.


Heston Blumenthal is a freaking genius. Though I can't claim to have made the pastry cases myself (not enough hours in the day, it would seem) these turned out absolutely delicious. The recipe called for brown bread instead of white, and a considerable amount more golden syrup than other recipes I've found. I'm glad I ended up halving the recipe because even with half quantities I ended up with 12 mini tarts and 4 cupcake sized tarts (sans pastry).

Making a beurre noisette with the butter was absolutely worth it, and added both colour and a nutty flavour to the final product. I also sprinkled the pastry cases and cooked tarts with vanilla bean sugar, which is my new favourite thing. Yum!

Leftover tarts for my flatmates

Peak at the best kitchen ever!

xx CB

Multi-coloured icing.

The best thing about frosting, apart from the fact it is made mostly of butter and powdered sugar, is that you can make it in so many colours and pipe it into delicious patterns. Ruby sent me a website tutorial on making swirly, multi-coloured icing a few months ago and this weekend I finally got around to trying it out.

Lemon cupcakes with orange and vanilla frosting.

Unfortunately I have lost my camera battery charger, so I am having to rely on awful quality photo booth photos to document my baking adventures. But! These were delicious and (once I'd figured out the best technique) very fun to decorate. I burst a piping bag on my first attempt, so switched to my icing gun, which I think I've decided is my new favourite baking must-have. Whoever decided a contraption that presses cookies, pipes icing, and looks totally badass in the process would be a good idea was a genius. Go. Buy one. Don't let people catch you pulling sweet secret agent moves with it.

xxCB

Grey Lynn Tarts with Tina Rae

It turns out my friend Tina Rae has a penchant for creating swoon worthy cakes. When I first stumbled upon the picture of this sweet little hen my eyes almost exploded, and flicking through her baking album I was unsure about whether it was more important for me to blog about it, or turn up on her doorstep apron in hand.

With bake dates in the pipeline (and permission to blog) I can now photospam you with the most delightful of cakey creations.

Drag cake!

Stove cake. If the hen made my eyes explode you can only imagine how happy this one made me.

So intricate and fun! As it turns out, Tina has just started up a little side project by the name of Grey Lynn Tarts. Baking out of her central Auckland kitchen she is churning out cakes and a variety of other sweet and savoury treats made to order. She takes custom requests too, so hop on over to her facebook page and support a fellow baker!

xCB

The Most Amazing Cookies

I have a soft spot for alliteration and adjectives, so when I came across this blog post on Can You Stay For Dinner I was instantly sucked in.

Writing style aside, these chewy cookie bars look divine and the ingredients list made me hungry just reading it. Lucky for me it was bFM Summer Series this weekend so I had a good excuse for some picnic baking.


General consensus is that these taste as good as they look. Perhaps not surprising given the pecan, white chocolate and brown sugar combination. They are pretty easy to make also, though be sure to leave the bars to cool fully before cutting them up or you'll end up with lots of crumbly bits (which aren't half bad on icecream, by the way...)

Be sure to head across and check out Andrea's blog, the photos are always beautiful and her recipe page is to die for.

xCB

Saturday food porn

Hello sweet treaters,

I had an operation yesterday and university has just gone back so everything is a bit hectic at the moment. Until I can find some time/energy to get my bake back on you should check out these drool-worthy photos of other people's creations (clicking on the image will take you to their blogs)

Cupcake in a jar.

Nutella meringues

Peanut butter candy bar squares

All I can say is "YUM"
Can't wait to try these out, so many good ideas for this year's Jukebox Jamboree.

x CB

Oh baby!

Sunday was the ever lovely Ruby Disaster's baby shower, and for the occasion I made her some cutesy cupcakes.

I have been meaning to try my hand at 3D fondant creations for a while, so it was fun to have a reason to play. I was also finally brave enough to try out my fancy new cookie/icing gun, and to be honest I'm a bit in love. Something about the sight of that swirly icing effect you get makes me so very happy.

Anyway, here are some photos of what I made:

Purple and green baby shower madness.

Mini chocolate cupcakes.

Full size cupcakes in chocolate and vanilla.

Close up on the fondant booties and duckies.

Baby shower itself was hilarious. My new favourite game is "Preggers or Porno", which is pretty much a bunch of facial shots and trying to guess whether it's someone giving birth, or someone having an orgasm. Surprisingly hard to tell the difference!

You can't really expect a tame baby shower from a bunch of rowdy derby girls, can you?

xCB

I have a confession

Baking is a little therapeutic for me. I may convert the kitchen to absolute chaos every time I enter it (the baking that follows resulted in a sink full of glucose syrup and a broken candy thermometer...), but the process of creating things out of sweet stuff is absolutely calming for me.

Pretty much, when I'm baking, I like to listen to things like this:

Pretend I have a kitchen like this:


And make things like this:

Frankie recipe: Cream Caramels

Oh. And like this:

Chocolate and vanilla shortbread

Happy Wednesday everyone!

xCB

Love-themed treats

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have an exam tomorrow, so baking has been off the cards for me this week.

If it hadn't been, however, I would have made these:

And probably this:

Hope your valentines is sugary sweet!

xCB

Sweet treats recipe: Shuku Shuku

I have to say when I first read the recipe for these sweet Nigerian cookies I was a little skeptical. Consisting of only caster sugar, egg yolk and desiccated coconut (plus flour and icing sugar for rolling) they didn't sound like anything too special.

I was pleasantly mistaken!

These little gems are super tasty, a little chewy, and SO easy to make. Simply mix 60 grams of caster sugar, 3 egg yolks and 80 grams of desiccated coconut into a firm dough-like consistency, work into marble sized balls, roll in a little self raising flour and bake on greaseproof paper for 10-15 minutes until golden. Once they've cooled you roll them again, this time in icing sugar.

And the very best thing? They take about 25 minutes to bake all up, and I only made 3 dishes the entire time. Going to have to remember these ones...

xCB

Branching out: Peach Pie

I realised the other day that, although I do a heap of baking, I have a tendency to only make things that would fit into the "cake" variety (yes, I do admit that as much as it pains me cupcakes pretty much are just that... cup sized cakes). Deliciously buttery, spongey treats that can be filled with things and covered in icing are wonderful, but to fill a blog with them when there are so many other "sweet treats" that I could be learning to make?

Unimpressed with my lack of baking variety, last night I decided that I wanted to try my hand at Peach Baklava - a recipe I've long been eyeing up from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook. Forever unprepared, it was a little too late to back out of baking adventures by the time I realised I had no filo pastry (and that, realistically, I couldn't be bothered going to the supermarket to get some...) as my heart was set on sweet peachy desserts... so I made peach pies instead, complete with homemade pie crust!

Full of peaches, brown sugar and cinnamon this wasn't quite the summer dessert that the baklavas would have been, but it tasted pretty amazing with vanilla icecream, and made an even better treat served cold when I got home this afternoon!

Later in the week I am going to keep up with my non-cake run and try out the Sweet Treats cookbook's recipe for shuku shuku. Stay posted!

xo CB

A Weekend of Cake: pt.2

Facebook is dangerous. A stressed out "IHAVETOOMUCHCAKEBATTER" status cry can lead to all sorts of suggestions of what to do with said batter. And I'm really not one to give up challenges. Hence why what could have been a second lego brick cake morphing into the second installment of my Weekend of Cake - a typewriter cake for my friend Aimee, who also had a birthday this weekend.

This was actually incredibly fun to make. I baked the remainder of the batter (which had been colour gelled yellow with intention of being a lego piece) in a shallow rectangle cake tin, then did some creative cutting and iced it all together. Bang on some skittles and licorice along with some coloured fondant and BAM. Typewriter cake.

Token photobooth shot before I run away for birthday festivities...

And a better quality photo of the cake itself...

xo CB

A Weekend of Cake: pt.1

I'm on a fondant rampage at the moment, and it's not entirely intentional.

Friday just gone was my friend Nemo's birthday, and there is little she loves more than lego. So much so that she even has a lego man tattoo on her leg! Perfect cake then? Lego brick cake!

This should have been so much easier than I made it. Cake baked in a rectangle loaf cake, plus 6 mini cupcakes for the lego knobs and then icing over the whole thing, right? In logic this would have worked.

Sadly I misread the recipe and ended up with twice as much cake batter as anticipated (never mind that, however, as this led on to A Weekend of Cake pt.2!) and, a little overwhelmed, I managed to break the cake when removing it from the pan and the blue buttercream I'd made just wasn't cutting it. Hence the last minute supermarket dash for fondant!

It may have turned into a bit of icing overload, but overall it was pretty delicious... Blue tooth inducing as it was.

So many hilarious photos followed, but keeping it work safe I'll just post this one. Let's just say Lego Dave enjoyed it too!

xo CB

Moving up in the world

I'm currently in the process of moving the blog from my (very old) gmail account over to a new, Sweet Treats specific one. Shouldn't take too long, and it means I now have my very own blog email address, hooray!

In the mean time, check out this photo I found on the internet! It appears to have come from a 50's inspired wedding blog, and it honestly makes me drool a little.

Candy stripes, lollipops, and bunting...

...this is what my dreams are made of.

x CB

Sweet treats from my childhood

Last week I finally made it into The Yellow Brick Road and was SUPER excited to find this amazing book - Sweet Treats by Frankie Magazine.

Filled with well written, easy to follow recipes of old school sugary treats (including candy hearts, marshmallow cones, and honey joys...!) as well as being illustrated with beautiful photos and fabric prints to make me wish I was living in the 50s, I had to buy it. Not to mention it has the same name as my blog!

Since having a flick through I've taken it upon myself to make all 39 recipes by the year's end. With 49 weeks left I'm sure that will be more than doable, allowing for study/assignment breaks, laziness, and of course other exciting baking adventures.

This evening I got started by making two of the simpler recipes - Coconut Ice and Chocolate Crackles. Both of these scream childhood to me, and eating them (a girl has to taste test, after all...) reminded me of school galas and pony rides.

Sugary sweet!

Coconut ice

Chocolate Crackles

Can't wait for my next trip down memory lane!

x CB

Rainbow Unicorn Cake for Amie Wee

When my friend Amie Wee posted a photo of her dream birthday cake on facebook with an "I NEED THIS TO HAPPEN" tag, I couldn't pass up the challenge.

Can you really make a unicorn cake, with rainbows on the inside?

ABSOLUTELY.

And then on Friday night it actually happened :)

Luckily I had a photo for reference, because I was unsure how to make unicorns out of cakes, but baking paper cake patterns are my new best friend (you can cut them up and make mistakes without destroying the cake itself!) and a few smart cut-and-pastes out of a rectangular shaped cake and the unicorn was happening.

Once I had the shape sorted I covered the entire thing with fondant, made a fondant eye, mane and nose, and tested out my exciting sparkly yellow sugar on the horn. The end result?

A unicorn cake success!

Rainbows on the inside? ...Yes!

My colour gel experiment paid off, and then there was the happiest cutest existence of an Amie ever ^^;

x CB

Bake dates and giant cupcakes.

My friend Elicia bakes the most amazing treats with insanely elaborate icing and delicious flavors. I've been staying at her house the past few weeks, and so a few nights ago we had a spontaneous baking party.

I think naturally when you get two baking nuts together it will never be a case of baking a simple cake, and this was no exception. She happens to have a GIANT cake-sized cupcake mould, and so we decided to bake in that.

I haven't really used silicone bakeware before, but it turned out quite well. This particular mould was baked in two parts, and then iced together.

Thanks to a Nigella chocolate cake recipe (which was oddly simple - put all of these things in the blender and hit start...?) we ended up with this beaut of a cupcake - chocolate, with strawberry buttercream frosting.

xCB

Matryoshka cupcakes

I was really surprised the other day when I googled "Matryoshka cupcakes" (and then, when I found nothing, "Russian Doll Cupcakes") and came up with nothing except this amazing Hello Matryoshka cookie from bakegreek.com, and a few cupcake decorations.

Having decided (and then pretty much promised) my friend Anna that I would make her Matryoshka cupcakes as a surprise for her sister, and have them ready for Friday morning, I had some serious brainstorming to do.

A few sketches later and in a fit of determination I'd come up with 4 designs and had a vague idea of the stencils I would need for them. I think it's safe to say that everything sounds easier in my head, because I forgot how hard fondant is to work with in humidity. Life.

In the end I coloured and rolled the fondant and then chilled it before trying to cut it, and again between cutting them and decorating the cupcakes. I had a few problems with it going a little hard, but the sugar syrup I used when applying them to the cupcakes seemed to fix it well enough.

I decided on a plain vanilla recipe for the cupcakes themselves, and used a vanilla frosting under the fondant to help it stick. I think overall I am pretty happy with how they turned out, and can't wait to see what Anna thinks tomorrow!

x CB