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