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