Sex and the City

Well, as I have said - any excuse to bake - so I made myself a Birthday cake! hahaha. But I didn't know what to do - there are quite a few cakes that I would like to try, but they are mostly children's cakes! I am a huge SATC fan, so decided on a bit of a SATC theme. If you are a fan, hopefully your will 'get it'!

It is no where near perfect, but I didn't stress over it - it's only for me! I made a huge mistake, and ended up having to put the ribbon border thingy on the lid of the 'shoebox' which looks silly - but the actual bow, I was going to put that on. I was also going to put the lid on on an angle, but forgot *doh*. Ahhh well - my customer is happy with it hehehe.

The photos aren't real good - hoping to get better ones tomorrow in daylight.

So here it is!

'Shoebox' - chocolate mud cake, vanilla buttercream crumb coat, fondant covered and ribbon, gumpaste bow.
'Manolo Blahnik heel' - just made the shoe up - gumpaste.
'Fendi purse' - also made this up - gumpaste.
'Love keyring' - from the movie - royal icing.

Australia Day

Any excuse to bake! Last night I tried out a new cupcake recipe, and this morning I thought I would turn some into lamingtons! Soooo yummy!

It worked out really well, as when you make the normal slab cake, then cut into squares - you end up with crumbs everywhere and in the chocolate icing. With the cupcakes, they held their shape - no crumbs in the icing!



Mmmmmm



I had some Betty Crocker icing in the fridge, and thought - I have stuffed my diet already with these - why not ruin it some more hahaha So sliced them in half and spread some icing in the middle.



At the moment I have lamb roasting in the oven. About 1.5 hours before we want to eat, I will steam some veges, then throw them in with the lamb until golden. Yummo!

A week or 2 ago I made a lamb stew in the slowcooker - I just haven't gotten around to posting these yet. It was nice - might be a bit bland for some - but for us it was good.

I chopped up some onion, celery, carrots, beans and potatoes.



I got this lamb roast, as it was the cheapest cut at the time



And chopped it into fairly large chunks



I then put some flour, salt and pepper into a freezer bag, threw in the lamb and shook it up to coat. Then I browned the lamb in a pan with some olive oil:



Throw it all into the slow cooker with some beef stock and tomato paste



Cook on high for about 5 hours or until potatoes are tender

My... Sausage rolls?

Thought I would try something different for dinner last week - I had some mince, some veges, and I found some puff pastry in the freezer. So I made some 'sausage rolls' - they were very yummy.

We are very fussy eaters - don't like herbs/spices/hot things etc - so if you make these, you might want to add garlic/herbs etc. We also won't be having these very often, as the puff pastry has quite a bit of fat in it - darn it!

So I just chopped up some onion, celery, carrot, beans, potatoes - in fairly small pieces, and also got out some frozen peas and corn.



Put a small amount of oil in a pan, cook the onions a little, then add some mince and cook through. Then throw in all of your veges - mix through.



Add some salt, pepper, tomato sauce. I think I made up about 2 cups of traditional gravy, and just crumbled a beef stock cube into that. I think I then had to add more water as the veges cooked. Cook until veges are tender - because I chopped the potatoes so small, I think they were ready after about 15 minutes.



Once cooked, I let the mix cool right down so it didn't make the pastry soggy.



Get your puff pastry sheets out to thaw about 5 minutes before you need them. I just tried all sorts of shapes - triangles, small parcels, medium sized roll, large roll etc. Place them on a tray, brush with milk, and put in a hot oven (200deg fan forced) until golden.



Ok, so I am not very good with quantities LOL With my recipes, I usually just throw this and that in - bit of this - a spash of that. With this, you can basically make up any sort of mince and or vege mix, roll it in puff - yummo!

Igglepiggle & Makka Pakka

I haven't done any cake decorating since Poppa's birthday! I felt like cooking this afternoon, but had no eggs or butter (trying to diet!). So pulled out some icing and tools and made some icing characters from 'In the Night Garden'. They aren't quite right - colouring and scale, but they are ok. Might make some of the other characters tomorrow.