Pretty Strawberry-Vanilla Cupcakes.

Catherine, the amazingly fantastical BUGS poster maker, requested 18 strawberry-vanilla cupcakes for her friends birthday and of course I did!

Take a gander. I used chocolate and vanilla icing while decorating the outside and it went surprisingly well.
Of course that's my laptop on facebook in the background...

Now, how about that strawberry filling...

- CUPCAKE DIVE! -
Shall we invert the colours??

The Biggest, Chewiest, and Most Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever!

These cookies are just fantastic. I'm a huge chocolate chip cookie connoisseur and besides PC decadent cookies, these are now my new favourite. They're just so big and yummy.

COOKIE-HANCE

I didn't make these for anyone but me. I had a real itching to have some cookies around the house. Unfortunately they only lasted 3 days... I only made 14 and I shared... kinda.



Visual Noms!

Cupcakes and Muffins

How do you take a regular muffin and jazz it up? You add a splash of colour and a dash of flavour. How do you take a regular vanilla cupcake and send it back to the 70's? You tie dye it!

I made my whole wheat fruit fiesta muffins and let me tell you, not only were they fantastically delicious, but they were pretty looking too. See?


As for the cupcakes... unfortunately I never remembered to snap a photo but no doubt I'll make them again. I'd love to taste them and see how they worked out. It's true though, tie dyed cupcakes. 4 colours, one cake... pretty awesome. Add some neon blue icing and bam, you're set to have a rainbow party in your mouth. It helps that it tastes good too!

These two were for my friend Alex, who was shamelessly promoting me to his collegues at work.

Dinners for one that could feed four - part two!

Day 2 Day 2 woohoo.

On the docket today - 2 utterly fantatsical chicken dishes. Both of which have an under lying lemon feel but they're not lemon chicken.

Dinner 3: Taragon Chicken Casserole.

Can you guess whats in it? If you guessed Taragon and Chicken... you're bang on. I'm so full of whit, I know. There is also green beans, leeks and lemon in the dish. It smells fantastic, tastes amazing and made my belly grumble. It doesn't yield as much as I thought it would be it will definitely be more than enough for one person for one meal.

My food just loves the camera!


Dinner 4: Chermoula Chicken with Tomato Pilaf

What's chermoula chicken? People don't give their dishes fancy names for nothin'. The Chermoula is a rub like paste from South Africa so as you can assume, I didn't make this one up. The rub consists of a load of cleansing ingredients such as lemon, garlic, cumin, paprika and a few other things. The tomato pilaf has helped me get over my fear of eggplant. It's just so strange looking and it has a faint but funny smell. It could be that the eggplant in this case is roasted and when mixed in with the pilaf it takes on a very sweet lemony eggplanty tomato-y taste. I really don't know but I do enjoy it now.

Feast your eyes on this beauty (oh yeah, that's right I said it.) !


So that is that for now. Monday I'm taking off Tuesday I will be making some muffins and cupcakes for an order, Wednesday I finally have an interview in the morning and then that night will consist of cupcake frosting and making dinners for Thursday - Saturday.

I guess I should clean up and start that meal plan hmm...

Ah the life of me.

Dinners for one that could feed four - part one

Saturday Saturday...

What a day to spend in the kitchen. It was absolutely beautiful outside today. Nice and bright, blue skies, warm and uber fantastic. Did I go outside? Naww, it's over rated. Farthest I ventured from the kitchen today was to go on the balcony and let the wind blow through my hair for a bit.

Only 2 dinners today. 2 more tomorrow morning. A meal plan have I still to plan. Ah well. So check it out... I'm quite impressed with myself.

Dinner 1: Vegetable Beef Stew

Really nothing fancy. You've got some beef, potatoes, corn, carrots, onions, garlic, basil, pepper, bay leaves, and a few other things. Throw it all in a slow cooker and let it cook for 6 hours and man you are set~!

Dinner 2: Chickpea and Tomato Bulgur Pilau

Slightly more fancy but instead of using bulgur wheat I used quinoa. It's better for you and locks in a load more of the flavours that are in the pot. I stole a spoonful of this and oh my god, it was so good. I'm not a huge fan of mushrooms in fact I hate them passionately. I think they're gross. However, this dish may have very well changed my mind. The texture of the mushrooms changed a good bit and made them more similar to that of a tomato rather than just gross. As a result I really liked them. The chickpeas add that perfect sort of squish crunch that you would expect from this type of meal. Also, this was very satisfying for a vegetarian meal.

Photos are essential for the vicarious eater.

Lemon Lemon Lemon.... mmmm Lemon.

In approximately 3 minutes from now my Lemon loaf will be completed. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. I'm just making up my glaze right now and I seriously cannot wait so I can throw the excess mini muffin loaves I've made into the oven so I can eat them!

I'm far more impressed with this attempt at loaf making. No explosions, no spills, no heart attacks. Works far better in my opinion.


Oh it looks so nice! I really hope she likes it! It's for a friend of mine who used to be my roooomie. Oh it's taking so much effort not to just cut into it and start eating it. It just looks so yummy. I'll have a mini version of it and let you guys know for sure how amazing it is.


I've squeezed lemons before but I never really realized how much juice you can get out of one. Its definitely a good thing, I had much more glaze than I thought so now I'll have some for my muffins too. I hope it worked properly and got deep inside the loaf instead of just hanging out on top.

Between writing this out and waiting for photos to upload, I had a mini muffin loaf. Deadly. Like pure heaven in your mouth. The loaf itself isn't as lemony as the ones from the specialty shops or grocery stores but then again, it probably has half the amount of sugar too. The glaze definitely added the extra lemon kick it needed. Perhaps next time I'll add more lemon. Still super good though.

See See?

Banana Maddness - Day 2

Last night I made Katie's whole wheat banana muffins with crumble topping. They were fun to make mainly because I've never made the crumble top before. It was certainly an adventure among other things. No exploding but pictures I do have!


I was a little surprised about how much they settled after I took them out of the oven. By settled I mean they kind of shrunk back up almost like a balloon deflating. Could very well have been my imagination. Ah well, they seemed to be a big hit with the BUGS crew so I am happy. Hopefully that means a few more orders.

The crumble actually worked much better than I thought it would. Stayed on relatively well and surprisingly enough didn't get all over my stove. Oh yeah, here are some photos!




Speaking of orders. 1 more came in for 12 vanilla/vanilla cupcakes and 12 fruit fiesta muffins. Not until next week though. Should be fun. They're for work at a friend of mines so hopefully the word circulates around there and the inbox gets a few more messages.

Up next LEMON LOOOAF!