Surprise, it's a birthday cake!

Another birthday, another layer cake. I really wanted to bake a caramel cake for my brother's birthday on the weekend. I searched the internet for a caramel cake recipe that looked delicious and wouldn't take four hours to bake. I then thought about how I could add texture and found a simple honeycomb recipe that would be delicious between the layers of my caramel cake. Once I had finally decided on what to make, I got baking. The first thing I did was make the honeycomb... first issue, no honey. However, I had treacle, so thought "why not give that a go?" It looked ok, a bit darker than honeycomb, but didn't foam up the same way and wasn't crunchy, so left that. Then I went to start on the caramel cakes. I pulled out all my ingredients to find I had no more brown sugar. So, with treacle-comb unsuccessful and no brown sugar for a caramel cake, I decided to go onto plan B... a white and dark chocolate layer cake. 

I don't know how my caramel cake would have turned out, I'll probably tell you next brithday, but I can tell you the white and dark chocolate cake was delicious, and even more special with the white chocolate buttercream! 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!

Third cake of the week

Today is my brother's birthday and he's turning 30 (dirty 30!). He is one of those big brother's who is over protective and always looks out for his little sisters - sounds cliche, but that's who he is. He is impossible to buy for, as he just buys whatever he wants himself and isn't fussed with other stuff. So, I decided to make something special for him - chocolate sour cream cupcakes with a chocolatey-raspberry cream cheese icing. We had lunch plans, so Reuben and I baked them in the morning just in time for lunch (actually, we were late because I lost the keys somewhere in the house while I was rushing to leave - that's another story). We finally got to the restaurant and as I was getting out of the car I fumbled and dropped the tin causing all the cupcakes to flip and go everywhere in the tin. I managed to salvage them using a knife in the restaurant - whoops. I don't think the messy presentation put anyone off though. The cupcakes were crumbly and moist and the icing was sweet with a lovely hint of tart raspberry. Happy Birthday bro, couldn't ask for a better brother!

My brother and I riding "horses". Possibly aged about 4 and 2.

An abundance of raspberries

At the markets yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see fresh raspberries. What was even more exciting though was the sign under them reading: 3 punnets for $5. Now, how can you pass up an offer like that?

There are so many things you can do with raspberries. I contemplated raspberry stuffed profiteroles, white chocolate and raspberry cake, raspberry jam, or something simple like a raspberry smoothy (very likely will also do this one). In the end though, I decided the best match for raspberries was chocolate. So, this weekend we are enjoying some choc-raspberry brownies. Let me hear you say "Mmmmmmmm".