Katie's Cake...

H A P P Y   B I R T H D A Y   K A T I E - B E A R !

Our beautiful Katie celebrated a birthday this week and what better way to surprise her then with a home-made cake! My girlfriend Tina and I wanted it to be perfectly pretty so we choose a pink theme and stuck to a basic butter cake recipe.

After mixing up a double batch of butter cake mix we divided it into 3 bowls and coloured each a different shade of pink. While the 3 cakes were baking we made a huge batch of buttercream icing using softened butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Once the cakes had cooled we assembled the cake tower using buttercream to stabilise one cake on top of another and completely covered the whole thing in icing. Lastly, we took handfuls of sprinkles and patted them into the icing to cover the entire tower.

It's simple yet effective and looks amazing when you cut it!

X O X

Caramel Oat Cookies...

Sweetened condensed milk is an old family favorite when it comes to baking sweets in my household. In this recipe I combined a coconut macaroon base with oats and nuts to create a soft caramel cookie packed with nutty flavors.

Ingredients:

395g sweetened condensed milk

2 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1 cup of coconut

1/2 cup of quick oats

1/4 cup of crushed peanuts

After whisking the egg whites until soft peaks formed, I folded in the sweetened condensed milk and vanilla extract before adding all the dry ingredients. I placed heaped spoonfuls of mixture onto oven trays lined with baking paper, ensuring they were 2-3cm apart, and baked for 10 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 200oC. 

Caramel cookie heaven...

 

Orange and coconut cakes...

I've always underestimated oranges but I've recently discovered they are such a versatile and abundant fruit! I already use them in dressings, drinks and sweet treats, but you can concoct aromatic tea's, fragrance chicken and fish or add fresh segments to salads for a juicy twist. YUM!

To make these little cakes I soaked some coconut in orange juice for 20 mins to re-hydrate it, then substituted half the wet ingredients needed for a vanilla cake mix with the orange juice I drained from the coconut. The rind of any citrus fruit holds so much flavor so I added the zest of 1 whole orange to the mix as well as the re-hydrated coconut.
10 minutes in a hot oven was enough time to ensure they were golden on the outside and moist on the inside :)

Floral on floral...

There's a bit of a theme running through my kitchen/lounge room at the moment... might be a bit obsessed with everything floral.

X O X

The wondrous world of wrapping...

 DIY wrapping doesn't have to be expensive, start with a theme in mind, whether it's a colour tone, patterned piece of wrapping or a pretty piece of ribbon and build on from that. I generally dig around in my craft box and visit the $2 store for resources!

Too much chocolate!

 How to get rid of too many Easter eggs 101...

Melting chocolate centre, fluffy chocolate cake, gooey chocolate buttercream, popping candy egg on top... enough said.

Easter cookies...

After making a batch of cookie dough this morning I seasoned it with cocoa powder, cinnamon and ground cloves for some Easter inspired spice! I rolled out the dough and after using an oval shaped cookie cutter, I squashed up one end of each cookie to make them look more like an egg!

Then I popped them onto a lined baking tray for 10 mins in a hot oven.

My Easter inspired icing decorations :)

X O X