Showering a friend with sweetness

A few weeks ago we through a baby shower for my manager at work. She has been an inspiration to me and many others I work with and we wanted to show her how special she was by throwing a party for her and bub. I've been saving this post until Baby Stalley was born... and we just got the news that he arrived. So a BIG congratulations. We cannot wait to give him cuddles.

Oozing with caramel

It's baking time with my little boy again. I asked him on the weekend what we should bake. His first response - CHOCOLATE CAKE! He then got the cookbook we used last time and pointed out the chocolate mudcake we made. Wanting to mix things up slightly, I told him we'd make some chocolate cupcakes instead. Not wanting to be boring, I decided to take them a step further and make a caramel for the centre and frosting. The result was an oozing caramel from the centre and icing of the cupcakes.

I love these afternoons with my little boy. It's a great way for us to do something together and get our hands dirty. He loves to help mix and add things to the bowl, and his favourite part has to be licking the beaters and spoon (and if he can, the bowl) when we're finished!

I did leave a few cupcakes without caramel centres for my sons lunchbox. I didn't want him jumping off the walls at daycare and coming home in a horrid mode (moreso than usual). A success all round!

Muffins, stick bread and birthday cake

Some weekends I am so busy I barely have time to prepare dinner, other weekends I seem to spend all my time covered in flour and popping things in and out of the oven. This weekend was the latter.

Friday evening I made a light dinner of coconut prawns with a crunchy salad and afterwards felt like something sweet, so threw together a coconut cake. Then Saturday morning my breakfast plans changed at the last minute (by changed I mean I read the text message wrong and was a week early), so went home and made some lovely pumpkin, blue cheese and candied walnut muffins for my friend, who I was due to spend the rest of the day with. Saturday night I was treated to some outback delights with damper cooked camping-style over an outdoor fire. I've never been a camper but really enjoyed sitting in the backyard, drinking Shiraz and eating freshly cooked (occasionally burnt) damper covered in golden syrup. Sunday I had another friend come over. It was her birthday the weekend before so wanted to treat her with something tasty and made a Caramel Mudcake, the recipe I got from a cookbook I got "free" when donating $2 at the checkout of my supermarket.

Even though I seemed to have the oven running half the weekend, I feel really refreshed and happy with my baking efforts. I even squeezed in a trip to the supermarket where I stocked up on heaps of fruit and vegies for the week, and went to a local kite festival with my three year old boy. Now it's time to kick off another week at work... and maybe another week of baking!

Celebration cheesecake!

My friend recently got married over in Fiji and last night was the first time I saw her since she changed from a Miss to a Mrs. Something was in order to celebrate, however being a Friday I was again lacking ideas and energy/time. The last time we caught up we chatted about cheesecake. I remembered making the Nutella No-Bake Cheesecake for my brother and his girlfriend a while ago and it was super fast and easy. On my way home I picked up the few ingredients I needed and went home to prepare. As I started making it though, I decided I wanted something different and suddenly craved caramel. So switched ideas and started making a caramel sauce. Before long dessert was ready and in the fridge to set. 

Dinner was a middle eastern inspired vegetable and chickpea stuffed eggplant (with some champers to celebrate). After dinner we busted out the wedding photos, all 800+ of them. It was so lovely seeing their day through the photos and the excitement and love they shared for each other. With so many pictures, we decided to stop half way for dessert. It was so creamy and smooth, and the caramel made it super rich. I found it hard to finish mine, however it was the perfect sugar kick to continue looking through the rest of the photos and amazing stories from their time away.

This is such an easy dessert, I think anyone could master it (even you Ms Borgna...). I think next time i make it I'll try a fruity flavour, maybe a mango or passionfruit. ENJOY.

A confession and chocolate

A small confession to start with - I use to work at The Cheesecake Shop. This was my first job and it was much better then working behind a counter of a greasy fast food chain. I got to decorate cakes and write messages for special occasions. Instead of smelling like chicken fat at the end of the day (like some of my friends did), I smelt like cream and sugar. This was my first introduction to baking and working with food. It was a few more years before I started my own baking and getting excited about food, but I will always remember my time there as a nice introduction.

The reason I bring this up, is I got to try many different flavours and types of cake while working at the Cheesecake Shop. I have never been much of a nut fan, so I always surprised myself when I tried the pecan pie and then want more and more. The gooey filling with the crunch of the pecans lured me in and was even more amazing when heated up in the microwave for a bit. I haven't worked at the Cheesecake Shop for about 7 years, and since then rarely gone in and had their cakes. A few weeks ago I was given a slice of caramel pecan pie (not from the Cheesecake Shop) and the memories of eating pecan pie and all the cakey goodness came back to me. I decided to make my own pie, which of course meant adding chocolate. So here it is, my homage to my days at The Cheesecake Shop and Pecan Pie!

Here's to the Mummy to be!

My dear friend Lisa is about to have a baby. A few months ago in a flurry of excitement, another friend from work and I decided we NEEDED to throw her a baby shower (as she was avoiding having one at all). How could she miss having a heap of people around telling her awful birth stories, or playing games that would make a non-pregnant person churn, or stressing over whether people will turn up... doesn't sound all that awesome now I think about it, although it was!

We were a little slack in organising, however pulled it all at the last minute. We had many grand plans with the styling and decorating, but in the end decided simple was best. I also had a disaster day in the kitchen. The food I have baked perfectly a thousand times before stuffed up and the food I usually have trouble with was amazing. I even made two batches of sugar cookies, both for some reason came out of the oven crystalised (any tips onto why would be great). I ended up making two batches of cupcakes (not all successful), caramel tarts, custard tarts, sandwiches, avocado and tomato bites, and roast pumpkin and onion jam tarts.

Lisa was a beautiful Mummy-to-be and we had a wonderful morning. I can't wait to meet the little man! Counting down the weeks.

Lazy weekends call for baking

I love lazy weekends. I don't get them often as I have a toddler who is so full of energy I sometimes wonder if I'm feeding him crazy pills! On the few weekends I can get him to have a midday nap, I either take advanatge of the quite time and also take a nap or or flip through a variety of cookbooks to dream up my next baked treat.

The weekend just passed, I decided to bake instead of sleep. It rained all week, so something sweet was definitely in order. I had a few bananas left over from lunches so thought I'd do something with those and mix it with either chocolate or caramel. I started flipping through some books I'd borrowed from the library as well as searching some of my favourite recipe sites and found a recipe for a Banana Caramel Cake - so caramel won over chocolate!

The original recipe called for sliced bananas on top of a caramel cake, however I'm not really a fan of the texture of baked bananas so I went with a more traditional style banana cake and incorporated the caramel sauce. While baking this cake the house filled with a glorious fragrant of sugar, bananas and warmth (yes, that is a smell!). Then once it came out of the oven, I realised this is the perfect afternoon tea/dessert cake!

There are a few treats you can make that work as a sweet afternoon tea cake or a decadent dessert cake. This cake serves both purposes. At room temperature it is a moist banana cake with a sweet caramel topping. Heated up slightly and served with fresh cream for dessert, it is a sticky, rich cake that smells divine! ENJOY!

Bake-off challenge for charity

Friday at work we had a departmental bake-off challenge to help raise money for the Cancer Council. It was organised for Marketing, HR, IT and Payroll to bake-off against each other for the chance to be crowned Master Chef. We had a few weeks to prepare, so there was some healthy competitor gloating. With a few people boasting that they would be a contender for the crown, I took it upon myself to really show off and make something that would look and taste AMAZING! I asked for a bit of advice from people at work. The lady from HR who set the challenge said in her experience, chocolate always comes out on top. Then I asked my friend, who just yelled SALTED CARAMEL. She has a sort of salted caramel turrets. I took both these bits of feedback on board and knew what I had to make - Double Chocolate Layer Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream and Ganache. And guess what??? It was a winner!!! After the other departments have their battles, the winner from each area will bake-off against each other to determine the company's Master Chef. Might need to start my research for that one - will need to be spectacular!

My trophy

Something sweet to end the week

Whoopie pie, Moon Pie, little cakes with a cream filling... whatever they're called, they are cakey and delicious.

I have been wanting to try Whoopie Pies again for a while, after my last attempt resulted in flat pancake like things.

I also thought it was about time I baked for my work mates again, as the past few weeks have been exceptionally stressful and hard. I asked one of the girls what flavour she felt like and she immediately yelled back at me "SALTED CARAMEL". The challenge was set. I started looking through my favourite blogs for salted caramel posts and found a recipe for Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Salted Caramel Buttercream. YUM.

A visit to the library for some cake

Did you know that you can get cooking books out from the library? It seems like an obvious thing to assume, or know, but it hadn't occurred to me that this was an option. For years my parents have been taking my grandmother to the library every Saturday morning to get a selection of audio books for the week. After the library visit, we join with them for breakfast. This week, I decided to meet them at the library with my 2 year old. As my Mum was showing my son the children's section, I had a browse and to my excitement, the library had a really good collection of cooking books, two of which I have wanted to buy for ages. The first is Maggie Beer's Harvest and the second Adam Liaw's TwoAsian Kitchens. As soon as we got home from breakfast, I started to have a read and got so excited about Liaw's book, I tweeted:

Baking update

It's been a while since I last posted, however I haven't stopped cooking. I think I may have even worn out our oven, as we had a gas leak and had to replace the pipe running under our house as well as the oven, which I absolutely loved. So, now we have a new oven and a lot of posts needed to be updated. Enjoy.