The Cooking Challenge Week 4

Beef stroganoff - this was one of those things that I had wanted to make for ages and never got round to it because I thought it was a difficult recipe. Oh my, how wrong was I! And how yummy is it?! For those who watched Masterchef, I used Julie Goodwin's recipe, with a slight change, as always. It can be found here: http://www.juliegoodwin.com.au/recipe-beef-stroganoff.html

I can definitely see this as a "cook a double batch to stick in the freezer" type of meal. I might look for a slow cooker recipe, so I can add this to my "when I return to work and have no time to cook" repertoire. When I do I'll share with everyone!

The Cooking Challenge Week 3

After seeing my Easter cupcakes, it was soon my turn to bring morning tea for my mother's group. I wanted to make something not too chocolatey ( yeah right!) and decided to make white chocolate and raspberry cupcakes. Raspberry is a fruit and fruit is good for you. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

Again I use my regular cupcake base recipe, added chopped white chocolate and folded in raspberries at the end. I actually used frozen ones to see how they would go, and it went well. You be the judge.

I piped white chocolate ganache on top. Think next time I might just cover lightly as I think it was a little too much ganache.

The Cooking Challenge Week 2

This week I was running out of healthy ideas for Miss S to eat, so I made her ham and veggie muffins. Thanks to Stay at Home Mum! Get the recipe here: http://www.stayathomemum.com.au/recipes/biscuits-slices/ham-and-vegetable-muffins/ As usual I change things round a bit and I added pumpkin, and whatever I had round. These are great for a snack or breakky on the run and they freeze really well.

It wasn't browning at the top as much as I would have liked so I grilled it for about 10 mins.

Turns out that the tops were a bit hard for Miss S to eat so next time I might skip that bit. They were a hit at home, both hubby and bubby are fans of my muffins and they were gone in less than a week!

the house.

The Cooking Challenge Week 1.2

Waffle with chocolate honey nougat ice cream. Ok, this may seem like a 'cheat' BUT in my defence, I have already made something new this week and this is something new coming out of my kitchen, albeit the only part on my behalf was toasting the waffle and assembling it together.

All that matters is that it tasted good right?

The Cooking Challenge!!

Yes, the Cooking Challenge requires capital letters because it's something I've been thinking about, and told only a few people. Now that it's here I guess it means its real and I do have to see it through.

I had joined the FMS a photo a day challenge. I lasted 6 weeks? It came with a topic in which you had to take a photo relating to that topic n posted it. Now, if you do not already know, I am not the photographer in the household, but it was fun. I found that I do see things through a lens. But that's for another day.

My Cooking challenge is: I would make something different, that I had not made before, once a week. Seems easy enough? I am going to back date a little to the beginning of April as that was when I had started it. It wouldn't be fair to not see what I had done already right?

So, first up was Easter. I found a really cool recipe someone had reposted on FB. Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes! But as I usually do, I modified a few things. Used my usual cupcake recipe. The topping. Well, let's just say I had tried to follow the recipe, but the icing kept splitting so I improvised. I think it turned out ok. Had no complaints!

A little about me...

My sad little blog has seemed to have been abandoned for some time. This is because a few things has happened! I changed jobs, moved house and have a little girl! Now that she's 9 months, I feel that I'm in a little more control of my life and have the time to continue blogging again.Rather than just showing you my sweet creations, I'll share some of my other creations from the kitchen.

I am a wife to a very patient and loving husband, we have a sweet, beautiful, happy and very cheeky daughter, S, who will be 10 months next month. As I am still on maternity leave, she keeps me very busy during the day. I am a Capricorn (this is important to some), and likes to be organised. Please do not mistake organised with clean. There are things such as organised mess!

My 'day' job before S, I worked very heavily with spreadsheets and models, presentations and projects. I like numbers. They present a view in a factual way and build a case without distractions like colour and pretty flowers and fluffy stuff. More or less. Colours and pretty flowers and fluffy stuff are saved for my cakes. Cooking is my creative outlet. It gives me the adrenaline, get the brain juices moving to see what I can put together. I initially thought that it was only in cakes, but recently I have been inspired by both sweet and savoury recipes, conversations and blogs.

Ok, so enough about me. Let's see what I've been up to lately!

LA Pool Party

A friend of mine asked me to make a cake for their LA Pool (birthday) party. Again, it didnt quite turn out as I had initially visioned. Sometimes I over estimate what I can do (in particular the amount of time I have).

So the "stars" and "red carpet" were in line with the theme of the party. I added the figurine (loosely based on the birthday girl) and the showy-ness of LA people. Quite happy with the figurine. Stars spell out "Chagi Bear" as requested by the birthday girl.

Lessons learned:

• Realistic. Dont under-estimate what can be achieved in a set amount of time.

Baby thoughts

For me?! No!! A colleague was having a baby and I thought it would be cute to come up with a baby themed set of cupcakes!!

This time I actually tried to plan what I wanted to do with the decorations for the cupcakes. Whilst I was happy with the results, it was not quite what I had in mind initially.

Lessons learned:

• not plan? It didnt quite turn out as I planned.

The World of Figurines!!

Last year I went to my second Planet cake class. Let's just say that it opened me up to what you can really do with sugar!

It started with my first taste of figurines in class.

This gave me inspiration. And ideas. And I came up with....

I was more than happy with my little baby Seseame St friends!!

Lessons leaned:

• Get all the colouring done first before starting the figurines
• Keep them away from hot food!

Cupcakes! First of many!

When I discovered the world of icing, OMG. I was amazed at what it could do!! At the time I felt that I couldn't just make cupcakes and have them all decorated really nicely... just because...

I wanted to try out my cutters and my flower-foam-setting thing (I know very technical). A simple design that looked impressive - at the time anyway.  I made these to take to work for the biggest morning tea.

Lessons learnt:

• Need to even out the tops of cupcakes for consistency

The Portuguese Tart

This time it's Portuguese tarts. I couldn't find one anywhere so, as anyone would do, (well me really) I decided to find a recipe and make them myself. This way I could eat them whenever I wanted!

To my surprise, they were much easier to make then I thought! And the taste? OMG!!

Topped with a sprinkle of nutmeg. It really hit the spot

Lessons learnt? They're really easy to make!

O is for... Opera Cake!

Sometimes I feel like something ( to eat that is) and I get a sudden motivation to find a recipe and make it! This was one of those moments. At the time we (ok I) was obsessed with MasterChef. I decided that the Opera cake was to be my next project.

I must admit, it looks much more impressive and complicated than it really is. Regardless, this is one of my favourites - love the flavours of coffee and chocolate come together so well. One piece is never enough!

Lessons learnt:

• Sharp, clean hot knife when cutting the edges off
• Layer need to be as even as possible

Camera cake

With all the photos taken of all my creations in the past 3-4 years at my disposal, I have decided to start with my Hubby's birthday cake. This was an easy choice. I would say this was the beginning of a new world for me. Prior to this I would say baking was a "once in a blue moon" thing. Hubby's into photography - which as you will see, is wonderful. I'd say he's taken photos with his macro lens of my cakes more than anything else!!

What could be a more suitable "theme" for Hubby's cake than a camera itself?

It took a few weeks of planning. Ploughing through pictures and cake ideas, I decided that I wanted to make a camera figurine on top of a cake. I initially used his current camera ( at the time) to try and get the dimensions as close to the real thing a possible. From the body, lens, details of the dials. I was making good progress until a week before the party (yes a week!!) he got himself a NEW camera. Sigh. Some features were set and couldn't be changed, but the outer details, dials, screen etc I managed to "adopt" to the upgraded version.

Because I wanted the camera to be the focus, I kept the cake fairly simple. Just wished I took more photos of it before we went to dinner! The place added a purple "tinge" to all the photos!!

Very proud of my first "proper" cake. First of many to come!

Lessons learnt:

• Colour icing black - not "paint" it on with edible powder and alcohol.
• Don't let Hubby upgrade his camera a week out before a party!!

No more procrastinating!!

I've been putting off adding to my blog as I wanted to put everything up in chronological  order. As good intention as I had, it has not resulted in ANY entries. As you can see. So. Out with that idea and see how things go tonite!!

Welcome!

My first post! Hopefully everyone will enjoy seeing my updates... in the mean time, I have a lot of catching up to do!