Cupcakes {guest post by cathy}

I love baking. A few weeks ago I made these cupcakes(photo)I was a bit skeptical about whether my family would like them or not but they were a huge hit they were absolutely delicious This is the recipe for these delicious cupcakes.  

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking soda, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (4 ounces) European-style unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
1/2 cup  cocoa powder, sifted (or another good-quality cocoa powder)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180  degrees C. Line a standard cupcake pan with 12 baking cups, and a second pan with 6 baking cups.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt on a sheet of wax paper or parchment paper.

Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer or hand-held electric mixer. Beat on medium speed until fluffy. Stop to add the sugar; beat on medium speed until well incorporated.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing slowly after each addition.

Combine the vanilla extract and milk in a large liquid measuring cup.

Reduce the speed to low. Add one-third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, then gradually add one-third of the milk mixture, beating until well incorporated. Add another one-third of the flour mixture, followed by one-third of the milk mixture. Stop to scrape down the bowl as needed. Add the remaining flour mixture, followed by the remaining milk mixture, and beat just until combined.

Add the cocoa powder, beating (on low speed) just until incorporated.

Use a standard-size ice cream scoop to fill each cupcake paper with batter, so that the wells are two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes (start checking at 15 minutes) or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

Frost with Icing of Choice and Enjoy

Hi I'm Cathy I blog at Pink Lemonade and I love Chocolate, Jesus, Blogging, Photography and Cooking. Find me Here

hot and spicy

Paprika Chicken Curry

Curry paste

Ingredients: Onions, garlic, chili, celery, ginger, star anise, peppercorns, garam masala, paprika powder, curry powder, tomatoes and vegetable oil. (with this curry paste recipe, there's no set amounts as it all depends on how strong you want the flavour to be. just be yourself and use however much you want, tasting along the way.)

Method: Chop onions, garlic, chilli, celery and ginger and cook slowly in a little oil, along with the star anise and peppercorns. When golden brown, add the tomato and spices and cook until tomatoes are soft. Blend till smooth and then pass through a fine strainer. Store in an air tight container covered with a little oil in the fridge.

Method

Brown enough diced chicken for your family in a pan with oil. Then add as much potatoes and sweet potatoes diced to the chicken mixture. Cook everything together until cooked through. Add as much curry paste as you want to the pan, mixing everything through. Let it simmer for awhile. Then add a can of coconut cream and cook for fifteen minutes on low temperature, stirring every so often. Serve immediately with steamed rice and poppadoms.

I made a curry yesterday for dinner. It was quite delicious and I even used home made curry paste that I saved from a previous cooking class, so I'm quite proud of myself actually. Feel free to make it. I know the instructions are not that detailed, but that's ok. This is just a curry where you add as much of this or that as you want.
Be yourself and enjoy cooking.
That's what I did!
xoxo

arty wedding cake

This year I've been continuing with monthly art lessons, and a couple of lessons ago, the project was making a cake. But not an edible delicacy. A cake using only craft materials. And it had to look as real and edible as a normal cake does. So I decided on a wedding cake design (obviously) and after much hard work and persevere, this is the results I got...

The basic structure is made out of foam. The 'icing' is some sort of a something that is runny when you spread it, but dries pretty quickly once left alone.

I spent ages on making some gorgeous roses out of plasticine, but while my cake was at the art workshop for a couple of months, they sort of disappeared! I was immensely a little disappointed, but the cake still looks ok without them I think : )

And I couldn't resist taking some photos of India's wedding cake as well. Her art creations are almost always the best out of every one's in our class, and I must say she did quite a good job on her cake.

The bride and groom are made out of clay and painted. She spent ages on it!

Yeah, it was one of my favourite art lessons ♥


Oh, and I found this leaf in the garden when I was packing up from the cake shoot.

What do you think?
No, I didn't paint it pink, it was just like that.
Now isn't God pretty amazing to have created that!

xo

p.s. do you celebrate Halloween? we don't and i know it's not an Australia thing to do, but America and England tend to make a big thing of it. oh, and i did notice when i was in Tasmania at Halloween time, that it seemed to be everywhere.
do you get into the whole spirit of it or is it just not your thing?
interested, that's all.

my cake's kaputt

"Hello followers! How are you all? I've missed you. I've been away on (another) road trip to Canberra! And a 4 day long holiday with relatives in Noosa after that. Rather tired at the moment. Did you miss me?"

Yes, I'm back in the blogging world once again! *sigh* It's good to be back : )

The holiday was very educational, but tiring. ' Lots to do in such little time' would have been our motto! But out of the road trip we got some nice photos.

along the way to canberra, we stopped at places to do with astronomy. they set up the planets and there size and distance from the 'sun' (which was a big telescope).

a funny photo in the mirror in one of the astronomy museums

sophie and i feeding the giraffes carrots at western plains taronga zoo

at the war memorial in canberra. all the poppies that people had put on their friends and family who had died in the wars.

the pool in the middle of the old building

in front of the big 'dish'! an amazing radio telescope thingy that i didn't really understand at all : )

outside the war memorial. you can just see parliament house in the distance

the little buildings set up at cockington green. so cute!

loved them!

hey cutie

We happened to be in Canberra when the yearly flower festival is on called Floriade. (which happens to be the biggest in the southern hemisphere). It was a.m.a.z.i.n.g. Love, loved, loved it!

they smelled beautiful

missy had to pose with my sunnies!

all the children (except for india) dressed up in different period outfits at the old parliament house in the heart of canberra

on a particularly windy day in woolongong

: D

Another educational, interesting, challenging and fun road trip! But let's say goodbye to them, for we won't be doing another trip for a while at least. Time to relax a bit and not have all the holidays filled up, says I!
And a big round of applause for the wonderful guest posters who kindly contributed to Roses and Bluebells! Unfortunately again, one of my guest posters did not post at all. It's the second time that's happened and it's can be unhelpful with getting out of date with the other posters etc. : (
Oh well.

Oh, and it was Mum's birthday yesterday, so I made her a lemon cake. To cheer up her day a bit. Think: Everyone sick with fevers and cold except for the youngest two, stuck at home all day while Dad goes to work! Not the ideal birthday. And the annoying thing is that something went wrong with the cake too! It kind of fell apart. (don't ask me why. in the book, it doesn't mention anything about it falling apart and the photo of the cake looks amazing!)
But I did take some photos of it any way...

and this is the same cake in the recipe book!

See what I mean?

I'm disgusted, really. (if you want to try your luck at it, then here's the recipe and more photos.

K, that's all from me for now. See you all lovelies and I hope that there will be the giveaway post up on Roses and Bluebells by Saturday or something. It depends on a few sponsors and how soon they email me as to say if they're definitely sponsoring. But yeah, something you don't want to miss, so keep an eye out for that : P

xoxo

p.s. the wedding is in 4 days!! i'm so excited. there will be many photos from the day i'll post for you all to see, i promise. i still find it hard to believe that i'm being a bridesmaid! really special...