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