Mum's birthday cake

I'm about 3 weeks late blogging about Mum's cake but a friend prompted me to keep blogging as I was starting to become a recluse lol.

Mum was going through a bit of 'stuff' leading up to and even after her birthday so the actual day wasn't too great for her. I must admit that I was lacking motivation and my creativity juices weren't flowing as they normally do when I bake but I made sure as always to put my 'ahua' into her cake.

I made a two tier Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing and since Mum LOVES elephants, I moulded a baby African elephant out of Modelling Chocolate.

There are a few things I would do differently for the next square cake I make and wish I had've taken time to think about how the finished product would turn out as the icing of the cake was quite rushed.

Mum couldn't even eat her cake because of the 'stuff' that was going on but all her visitors managed to polish it off for her and gave glowing comments so here are the pics of the finished product.

Chocolate Hot Cross Buns

I whipped these up and they were surprisingly easy. I made a few adjustments to a normal hot cross bun recipe so I could have a chocolate version and was quite pleased with how they turned out.

I keep forgetting how long you have to wait for dough to prove but was grateful for the fact as it meant I could do washing and cleaning while the dough and then the buns were proving.

Here are the final results...

Oh yeah, one comment I got was 'Would you like some bun with your butter' and well what can I say... I love butter :) Next time I make these I will make them smaller. I was full after having 1 of these. The kids however didn't dissapoint and managed to polish them all off that afternoon.

Spaghetti meatbals with Garlic bread

Before I start waffling on about tonight's meal I have to say that I had a serious case of "brain fart'.

I decided on the menu quite early and as I was watching my fav show I decided I would make my garlic bread. Once the dough had proven, I split it into three and plaited it. It was looking pretty good and then I had my brain fart. I was too busy laughing at what was happening on my show when I tried to pull the hot tray out of the oven with my hands... Stupid huh.... After a bit of jumping up and down on the spot and shaking my hands like something was stuck to them, I spent the next 10 minutes or so cursing at myself and running cold water on my hands.
As you can probably tell, the only thing that's hurt is my ego. lol.

Any way, as the Title says. Tonights dinner is Spaghetti and Meatballs with garlic bread.

Right now I'm buying time until I need to go pick up the kids and then the fun will start...

It's now 2 days after the fact and I can barely remember what all the drama was from that day as I am now fully recovered. lol.

I found the pics from that meal so will post them up as a picture says a 1000 words and I'm feeling a bit sleepy as updating my blog was the last thing on my to do list for today....

Satay Chicken with rice and home made tortillas

I dropped the kids off at school this morning and was wrecking my brain trying to think of something 'nice' to make for dinner. Of course it's not for a special occasion, I just wanted to make something different...
I went to mum's and decided I'd catch up with 'life in mum's world' and was chatting to her about dinner ideas. I then jumped onto You Tube and showed her the new show I'm addicted to... Cake Boss. I absolutely love that show and can imagine me and my kids doing something like that... Talk about 'Dream Job'.
Any who, I was trawling google for Chicken recipes and wasn't sure if I was going to make Chicken Enchilladas or Satay Chicken. I knew I had most of the ingrediants for both but was just missing the chicken.
I trotted off to the butchers and bought my boneless breasts and then popped into the green grocers and bought capsicum and spring onions. Bearing in mind that I only had $20 to spend on dinner and was happy that I managed to pick up some extra staples, bread and milk and still had change :)

I come home and need to clean up before I even think about starting on cooking anything...

After a quick tidy, I decided that I was going to make my own tortillas. I couldn't believe how easy they were and how quickly I managed to whip them up.
 So now I move onto my satay. After dicing and browning the chicken, I pull it out of the pan and throw in some butter. I browned some onions and then threw in my spices, peanut butter and tomato paste. Returned the chicken back to the pan and added some chicken stock. Reduced it down and then threw in my veges and some coconut cream.

The kids were salivating at the aromas coming from the kitchen and were starting to behave like vultures waiting for their dinner.

The silence whilst they ate was priceless and a sure indication when the chiming of forks hitting their empty plates rang out I knew my peace was to be short lived.

I've been combing 'Trade Me' for some more baking supplies as I have a cake to bake each month til August and will need a heap of stuff.

Time to pull out the pen and paper and start designing my elephant cake for Mum's birthday next month. It'll be here before I realise it...

Before I go though, here are some pics from tonights dinner...

Juni's Monkey Cake

I took the baby that I hijacked back on Friday after having him for three weeks as I needed to get my butt engaged into making a cake for Juni's birthday.
Saturday: Nika and I baked the cake and iced it and then I started to have a titu with the monkeys and some bananas. By Saturday evening, I had what was starting to resemble a monkey cake complete with tree trunk.
Sunday: OK, OK. I know his birthday is today, but I also know that we won't be cutting cake until after dinner so I've technically still got a day to work on his cake... So I got up at 5.45am and I've been fluffing around for half an hour trying to decide how I'm going to finish off this cake. Gonna have breakfast (Coffee and smoke) and procrastinate a bit longer before I complete this cake. Just can't seem to get the foliage for the tree right. I really want green spun sugar but it seems the food colouring gel is playing havoc with the sugar syrup so gotta find my liquid colouring and give that a go.... This will be attempt number 3 and also the third time I have to wash this damned pot...
Oh yeah, not to forget that Juni asked for pancakes for brekkie so I better get a shake on...

Cake completed

It took me a further 2 more attempts to finally get the sugar syrup sussed and I'm quite pleased with the final result. As a side note, I managed to convince Juni to have hot cross buns for brekkie as I got up at 5.30 and was busy making sugar syrup to make pancakes...
Anyway, after 2 days and nights, here's the completed cake...

 

Just Deserts

I was a bit over zealous with my custard/pineapple mixture for Deana's pie today and had a WHOLE lot left over and decided to make a pie for our desert and also made a steam pudding at Daniel's request.

Pics of the pie as follows;

STEAM PUDDING

So, here's the pics of my burnt sugar steam pudding. This is my most favourite steam pudding and I'm soooo glad I found my trusty recipe :o) This pudding is sooo moist and sticky it makes the guilt of eating it so enjoyable.

Yay for JJ <3 Thanks to him, I had the perfect vessel to make the steam pudding in.

Now that my family are fed up on all my sugary goodies and their sugar fixes have worn off. They are now snoring my favourite lullabies, it's time for me to head to bed.

Deana's Flowers

OMG I've kidnapped a baby (just kidding) technically I borrowed a baby. JJ has been staying with us for the past 2 weeks and he's a cute little 6 month old and you won't believe how challenging it is to cook dinner let alone do baking or make fondant flowers...

I'm grateful that Deana's party was delayed but as per usual... I left the bouquet for the last minute.

I didn't manage to take step by step pics but here are the finished results.

Took these pics before Nate and I left for the Weymouth Cossie Club where Deana's birthday was and the two black squares are just plastic containers held together with sellotape...

Nate had to come along to hold the flowers as I knew they wouldn't survive a car ride un-attended. En route to the birthday Nate gave me a mild heart attack. I forgot to tell him that the plastic containers were only held together with sellotape and the top container went for a slide and collided with the dash board. Luckily for us the flowers had hardened and there were only a couple of minor breaks. The time now is 11.15pm and thanks to my Zyban tablets I'm wired and possibly because of my mild heart ache earlier so I need to start checking my cupboards to see if I have the ingredients I need to make a pineapple pie for Deana's kai-kai tomorrow. That's me for now, but Juni's birthday is next Sunday and I need to think about how I'm going to make a tree cake with a monkey hanging from it. I might see if I can convince him to have a different type of cake that I can make that will fit in with a 6 month old baby...
Ciao for now

PINEAPPLE PIE

So I was slightly delayed with regards to starting the pineapple pie today and was instructed to have it delivered by 12 noon. Well that dead line came and went and I managed to get it delivered just before 2pm. I was quietly stressing at the situation but was instantly relieved when I arrived to find them still setting up the food and cooking a bbq. So here are the pics of the pie I made for Deana's kaikai.

For all the bowl lickers out there

Last night I was sitting at my computer reading the 'Kiwicakes' Forum and I was pondering over what my Friday would be like.
As I sat at the table scrolling through different topics I came across the 'cupcakes' section and decided to have a nosey.
I must say the forum participants are a friendly bunch of wonderful people who are happy to share their secrets with an amateur like me :)
So once again I thought it might be nice for the ladies in my Friday night prayer group to have something other than store bought cookies to snack on. I then went to bed thinking about chocolate cupcakes.
Once I had dropped the kids at school this morning and after a few coffees and cigis, I was pouring over the many recipes in the forum (And also because I kept changing my mind on which type cupcakes I would make) I finally fell across a wonderful blog - Kitchen Wench.
http://www.insanitytheory.net/kitchenwench/devils-food-cupcakes/
So off to the shop I trotted to get the ingrediants that I didn't have in my cupboard.
I'm now home with ingrediants in hand and have also prepped my kitchen for baking mode and have got my baking tunes playing so will post and update with pics once I'm finished...

OMG I have to say that even though there's a little bit of fuss in getting this mix together, it is DEFINATELY a bowl lickers delight!!! That is if you're not worried about eating raw eggs.  I have always been a bowl licker and I vowed to break my 'don't eat my own baking' rule because the raw mix was sooooo good.

The first lot of cupcakes are now out of the oven and resting for the next phase...  Minus 3 of course hehehehe.

Will hop off now and start getting everything else ready. Just looked at the time and it will be time to pick my monkeys up soon...

So after many attempts after I had completed the cupcakes to try and upload the photos and failing successfully I decided I would try and throw them up today...

 

 Although I didn't get any marriage proposals, lol I did get a whole lot of wonderful comments about these delicious morsels. I'm not ecstatic about how the icing turned out but the taste more than makes up for the look of the icing. I have been asked to attend a barbeque after church next Sunday and to bring more of these cupcakes with me. I'm not sure if I will bake them or if I will do something else.

As a side note, I managed to eat 12 of these babies. I'm glad I made so many because I gave some to my neighbour, my mum and there's still plenty left for the kids.

Mike's Cake Completed!!!

Well after spreading myself over all of the kitchen and dining room table.  I have FINALLY finished Mike's cake with 6 hours to spare :)
Had to replace quite a few feathers because I broke them when I placed the eagle on the cake.  Poor thing, it's got toothpicks up it's butt to keep it from falling off the log.
SO.... without further a due, here's Mike's cake...

Mike's Cake cont....

So.... I've started baking the chocolate mud cake slice.  I haven't tried this recipe before and it's a HUGE mix. The recipe was from http://kiwicakesnz.blogspot.co.nz/2010/06/chocolate-mud-cake-recipe-from.html.  The ingredients were similar to a cake which reminded me of one my wonderful neice Miss Sarah Bear made once.  It was melt in your mouth moist and fluffy.
Hopefully.... this is the same recipe and turns out the same way.
It's quite funny though, the quantities in this sucker meant I had to mix the cake in a HUGE pot...
Will post pics once I pull the cake out of the oven and do the roll with Jam smothered all over it....
The kids are pleased it's a huge mix because they get to have some cake.
Juni doesn't like me making cakes for people because he gets to 'look' at them but isn't able to eat them.
So, now I've pulled the cake out of the oven and have smothered raspberry jam on top of it and rolled it. It's still warm so I'm going to throw it in the freezer until I've finished mixing the fondant to the right colour...

I forgot to take a photo of the cake before I put the jam on it but I'm sure you get the idea...
Once I had rolled out the fondant and after dying my fingers multi shades of blue, yellow and red, I still couldn't quite get the shade of brown I was looking for so I decided I would put my miniature bottle of Gin to work and mixed the food colouring with icing sugar and turned it into a liquid with the gin.
Thank goodness I only used small quantities.... I'm sure the last thing my friend needs is drunk children.