Monte Carlo is more than a place

Another post of something that links to my childhood food memories. It's a similar story to my Kingston Biscuits post, the Arnott's Monte Carlos were always popular among my family. I was also excited to see them in my lunch box at school, especially if they got a little soft, as the jam in the centre would be a tacky and I could chew it for longer. I also loved opening the two biscuits up and trying to get equal cream on both sides to eat individually.

But why make Monte Carlo biscuits now, you ask. Well, all week my morning coffee shop have had the nicest looking biscuits on display. They were thick and crumbly with either a buttercream or cream cheese centre. The girl who works there said they were going to have Monte Carlos tomorrow and that set my brain on the path of how I would make Monte Carlos. So, last night with no "treats" for my sons lunchbox in the cupboard, I decided to make some Monte Carlos. Enjoy.

Moving sucks, cupcakes don't!

My brother and his girlfriend are in the process of moving house. Everyone knows moving sucks. Packing everything and making sure it gets from one place to the other safely is not fun, especially when you have been living in said place for many years and have accumulated many unneeded items. I wouldn't call my brother a hoarder... because he's not, but he does have a lot of books, DVDs and "stuff". To make it worse, my parents recently cleaned out our old bedrooms and made him take a lot of his old things (better known as crap) home with him. Now they are packing and tossing and getting ready for their new home. So when I get a text requesting cupcakes, I immediately get into the kitchen and prepare an impromptu afternoon tea.

Mixing the need to provide a good dose of energy (in the form of sugar of course) and a civilised afternoon tea, I decided to make a jam drop inspired cupcake. A chocolate cake base with a surprise raspberry jam centre, vanilla swiss buttercream icing and a freshly baked jam drop perched on the top. It had height, it had flavour and it had the right amount of deliciousness to keep them going for (hopefully) the rest of the week as the pack, sort and toss. Good luck guys!

Something sweet to celebrate Mum

Last weekend, I asked Mum what she wanted for Mother's Day. As always, her response was "Don't buy me anything." We all know that you MUST get something though, and why shouldn't you. Being a Mum myself now, I can understand all the stress and craziness Mums go through and they deserve a day to be celebrated. So, with that in mind I wanted to make something special for my Mum.

We've put Mum through a lot over the years. I don't think you could call us bad kids, we just knew how to "work" Mum and played her... shortcomings. She's the smallest in our family but she moves fast. I like to think she shuffles around the house because she walks fast and does everything quickly. She's also the most prone to stress, so we've used that to our advantage. I remember we'd all gang up on her at the dinner table most nights and tease her so much that you could see the stress starting to build. Then there were the teenage years, which are awful for all parents. I remember having huge fights with Mum, probably over something extremely trivial, and sulking in my room. The sucker my Mum is would always come up to apologise. I'd ignore her and be awful until she felt so bad that she generally back-flipped on whatever we were fighting about.

My Mum is an amazing women. Along with my Dad, she raised 3 children while working full time, getting to the top of her field and being completely respected (and I hear from some people, feared) by her colleagues. My Mum is my role model. Thanks for everything Mum, enjoy the tart!

Christmas surprise cupcakes for the office

Today is my last day of work for the year. It's been a pretty big year starting with the floods that hit Brisbane, the manic clean-up, a new boss, two changes in job title, as well as lots of laughter, a few fights, tears and craziness. So how do we cap it off? With cupcakes of course. 

To say thanks to my workmates for putting up with me, I made some special Christmas surprise cupcakes. The surprise, my Christmas Cherry Jam from the weekend. The jam provides a tantalising sweetness to the cupcakes, perfectly offsetting the buttery icing. ENJOY and THANKS!

A very jammy Christmas

I think I have already mentioned my plans to bake for as many gifts as I can this year. With a week until Christmas, I really have to get moving.

We are doing a type of Secret Santa this year with my husband's family. This post is kinda breaking the surprise (if he or the family reads this post), but one of my people is my Grandfather-in-law. He's a vegetarian and quite hard to buy for (don't worry, was not planning on getting him a chunk of meat, just thought I'd throw that piece of trivia in there). Last year I made him some chocolate sauces and they were a winner. So this year I decided to try jam. At the markets yesterday there were boxes of delicious looking cherries. I hate maraschino cherries or anything cherry flavoured, but I love a juicy, fresh cherry. They are perfectly in season at Christmas, so by default, are the traditional Christmas fruit. So when deciding on a jam flavour, how could I pass up cherry?