A Farewell (with a cake)

My dearest friend Lynsey has left the nest and run off to Oxford to study conservation and save the world... And all I made her was this measly cake.

After seeing this tutorial for scallop icing, I could not stop myself from trying it out and now I think its going to be my new favourite way to ice everything!

Covered in mini astros for a celebratory finish - the cake went down a treat.

Good luck my friend; we will be thinking of you often! Esp. when I'm at your house for tea… ;)

Pear Clafoutis

My opinion on the humble pear is this:

 a raw pear when eaten at the opportune moment is a glorious thing! However that glorious moment occurs for about one hour in each pear's entire existence!

So what do we do? We cook them, because they are always delicious when cooked!

I made this pear clafoutis a few weeks ago when I had some friends over for dinner, the cold evening definitely called for a warm pudding and I had a bag of pears that didn't seem to want me to experience their raw glory!

I just made a simple vanilla cake batter, but added some orange zest and ground almonds.

There is a slight nip in the air today and I would not say no to a nice warm slice of this!

Beetroot Velvet

Beetroot Velvet - it kinda has a ring to it right?!?

Yes, everybody loves a good red velvet cupcake, and yes they are very pretty and boldly red and and and...
but the thought of just how much red food colouring goes into them was becoming too much to handle. I had heard about people using beetroot juice instead so when recently boiling some beetroot, as one does, I kept that bright reddy purple liquid and saved it for a rainy day...

Enter the Beetroot Velvet Cupcake  (aka. Red Velvet Cupcake au naturel)... I followed this recipe and man were they goood! Smothered in traditional cream cheese icing with a raspberry on top for a fresh burst and there you have it.

Also: its exam time and that means... its "put lots of extra effort into baking" time AND neglect blog time.

Spiced Chocolate and Figs

Another birthday called for another cake...

This one was a spiced chocolate cake (pimento allspice, cinnamon and a touch of nutmeg) with a cream cheese icing and fresh figs to top it all off!

What better food than a food synonymous with romance (that's figs) for my love's birthday!

The cake recipe was from here and the icing is simple: 250g of good quality cream cheese, 2,5 cups of icing sugar and about 2 tbsp of butter all whisked together until light and ceamy.

Synonymous with Baking

Soooo, it was my parents birthday yesterday, my mom's thoughts on the matter: "sharing a birthday with your husband - its like having a twin" - ag cute!
So in celebration, a cake was made... I mean what other options were there really?!?

Vanilla and Caramel Layered Cake, with Vanilla Buttercream Icing and Honeycomb Crumble...

Sorry did you say it was called "Deathly Sweet and Delicious Cake"? Ah yes. Yes thats the one!

Thyme and Dark Chocolate

Who would have thought - but apparently when you toss some fresh thyme leaves into a batch of dark chocolate chip cookies, you get 34 bites of 'chewy with a slight crunch' heaven...

I wanted to make some cookies to take away to a mid-week escape to the Vaal Dam, so I was browsing for a normal chocolate chip cookie recipe and boom "Sea Salt and Thyme Chocolate Chunk Cookies" pops up - who could resist such an intriguing sounding combination?!?

The recipe is super easy and straight forward, original recipe can be found here and below with a few slight variations of my own...

Sea Salt and Thyme Chocolate Chunk Cookies

220 gr all purpose flour
3/4 tspn baking soda
1 tspn coarse salt
2 Tbspn fresh thyme leaves
200g butter, cold and in small cubes
200 gr (1 cup) treacle sugar
150 gr (3/4 cup) brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tspn vanilla seeds or vanilla powder
180 gr dark chocolate chunks
sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Prepare sheet pans lined with baking paper.
2. In a bowl, whisk to combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and fresh thyme leaves. Set aside.
3. In a mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, cream the butter for about 2-3 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.
4. Gradually add the sugars to the butter, add vanilla, beat until light and fluffy.
5. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
6. Mix in the dry ingredients and then fold in the chocolate chunks until well-distributed.
7. Form each cookie using about two tablespoons of dough per cookie. Roll into a ball and place on the prepared pan, pressing down slightly to form a thick disc. Leave room between each cookie--they will spread. Sprinkle a small amount of sea salt on each cookie.
8. Bake for 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, until the edges of the cookies are just turning brown. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan on a rack for two minutes before removing the cookies from the pan and cooling directly on a rack.

Po - va - teet - sa

Would you ever had guessed a pronunciation of Po-va-teet-sa, from Povitica?? nah me either, but heck it doesn't matter how you pronounce it because its one hell of a tasty Eastern European treat either way! I've never been to Eastern Europe but if this is what I'm gonna get... it's moving up a few places on my endless "Places to Visit" list!

The Daring Bakers' October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European dessert bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

This bread has been more commonly named, by more common people as swirly bread! I think my attempt at Povitica shows you why:

Délicieux

"The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-­ blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!"


 There was no playing games with this recipe - I followed the entire process to the T (not as my mom taught me which was a much more 'dash of this', 'splash of that', eat half the mixture before its cooked' kind of approach). It was worth every knead, every layer of butter, every long wait between rises, because they were darn delicious!


They were perfectly light and crispy on the outside, buttery and flaky on the inside and divine with some cheese and jam.


The proper camera was in Pretoria with Curtis so I had to make do with my extremely outdated little point and shoot, I think it actually has less megapixels than my phone (which is not of the smart phone variety either!) so the photos don't quite do them justice but here they are anyway... 

tadaaa...

Ok so, confession time: either I made my Pate de Fruits slightly incorrectly or I am just not the biggest fan - whichever way you look at it, although some of my family found them tasty, I was left with a rather large batch of very sweet strawberry flavored jam squares.

But alas, when cut into smaller squares and placed on top of a cupcake, it makes for a small burst of strawberry deliciousness!

Problem solved - now who wants a cupcake?

Daring Bakers - First Challenge

So after hearing of the elusive Daring Bakers for a while, I went a-searching the interwebs, found their site and after making sure I knew what I was getting myself into, signed up straight away...
It is worth a browse and is loads of fun if you're into baking (and/or cooking, there is a daring Cooks too!)

The blog check-in line for August:

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

I didn't give the chocolate tempering a try yet, but definitely going to give it a bah sometime, especially because I even bought myself a candy thermometer for the Pate de Fruits :) I was so excited, felt like such a granny!

So the first picture is my attempt at Strawberry Pate de Fruit :)

The second picture is of dark chocolate ganache truffles, one with a vanilla powder coating and the other with a white chocolate base and almonds.

 Mmmmm!

Some coffee with your house?

Ages and ages ago, Angie of Lucky Pony, posted about this brilliantly cute and somewhat over the top idea... and so over half a year later, knowing it was sitting in my 'Recipes' bookmarks folder, I tried and succeeded in making coffee-cup gingerbread houses!

Yes they are delicious and yes they make it a little tricky to actually drink your coffee without getting a face full ginger delight and yes you should make some because they are awesome!

Recipe from here

PS. I landed up with ginger cookie dough for days, so unless you plan on making houses en masse, perhaps half alles.

Homemade Oreos

After seeing these on Everyday Musings' 'wonderful and always full of delicious things to attempt in the kitchen'  blog, with the original recipe from here, I had no choice but to make my own batch asap!
I made a special note to put the suggested sea salt on the icing as I am more than intrigued to see how this changes the experience of a homemade oreo... but then promptly forgot about the whole thing and ended up with the non-salted kind - which, in any case, were truly and tremendously delicious!


Here is what mine looked like:

And here is the original:

You choose?? But the homemade version definitely tops my list (of course there is no bias involved)
Oreo's image found here.

Blueberries, Vanilla and Tequila

Friday night/afternoon, I had a T-party to attend so I baked these little beauties - In the most non-boasting way possible: "Are they not just the cutest things you've seen?!?!"


And yes it was a 'T' and not 'tea' party is because T stands for a wonderful Mexican-made/cactus-origin-ed (add that do the dictionary) beverage - you got it: Tequila! (pronounced in a high-pitched leeetle mehico accent)


It happens on one Friday of every month - without fail - and involves about 12 girls, lots of tequila and of course baked goods galore... lets just leave it at "Girly Heaven" :)


There is however a little saying (in true cliché fashion) that "what happens at tequila club, stays at tequila club" and so this quaint picture of some dainty cupcakes will have to do to curb your curiosity!