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...