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.

Mike's Eagle Cake

I was asked the other day if I could make an eagle cake for my good friend Nga's partner Mike.

It took me a while to visualize the finished product and my first sketches I threw together looked more like penguins and chickens rather than eagles.

The cake needs to be completed by Tuesday (2 days time) and I didn't start 'sculpting' the eagle until last night.

I will bake the cake tomorrow and have decided to make a chocolate sponge and roll it into a log.  I will then try and cover the cake with fondant and try and shape it to look like a wooden log.

As you can see by the pics below, I've still got a bit more work to do on the eagle, but it needs it's drying/setting time between layers so it doesn't all fall off... fingers crossed I can make the most of tomorrow and get alot more done on it.