Spiced Candied Orange Cupcakes

The sweetness of orange, thick juicy syrup, the sharp bite of ginger and hint of cointreau... You definately can't go wrong!! The smells coming from kitchen at the moment are simply to die for! So what am I doing? Experimenting!! I had a lot of oranges that were nearing their useful life and decided to try something a little different with them. Today I am making Spiced Candied Orange Cupcakes! OH MY are they delicious!

Now I need to fess up here before I go any further...this isn't purely down to my genius cooking skills (as much as I'd like it to be!) meaning it isn't ALL my recipe. It's a combination of a few I've found online (will post links back to the original as I go) BUT I have added my own little twists to make them unique and truly DELICIOUS! It combines some of my favourite flavours and I think for an experiment I can say it was a success! Enjoy!!  

For the candied oranges:

(click here for the original recipe) 

• 2 oranges
• 1 shot (30ml) Cointreau
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 sugar

In a small frying pan, combine the water and sugar and bring to the boil. Cut and segment your oranges as best you can, try not to have pieces that are too thick...I found this tricky so mine are various shapes and sizes! Haha Im not too much of a perfectionist though so it's all good.





I suck at segmenting!

Once your sugar syrup is boiling, add your orange slices, cointreau and ginger. Stir gently to combine and let simmer for about 1/2 an hour, stirring occassionally (carefully). The original recipe says 20 minutes but I found mine needed that extra 10 minutes. Your orange slices should be nice and tender but still intact when done. Remove slices from the syrup and let cool/drain on a wire rack. Pour the remaining syrup into a bowl and set aside... taste a tiny bit on a spoon....isn't that divine!?





NOM NOM NOM candied oranges!!!

For the cupcakes

Use your favourite basic vanilla cupcake recipe for this stage... there is nothing new or odd you need to add, just make and bake as usual! I've use the Taste.com Basic Cupcake Recipe today. Just a note if you do use this recipe...the batter will be very thick but when you cook it they even out and the tops round quite nicely :o) Mine are more giant muffins sized than cupcakes but oh well hehe!

For the Icing

One cup of plain 'ole icing sugar with 1/2 a tsp of ground ginger mixed in will make you a divine glaze! Now that syrup you set aside earlier? You'll be using that to mix your icing...Start with one tbs of syrup and combine with water little by little with the icing sugar slowly adding more liquid if needed until your mixture is at the right consistancy. You want it thick enough to coat the top of your cupcake but not so runny that it just falls straight off. Add in a tinsy bit of yellow food colouring... just for the aesthetics!

Top off each cupcake with a candied orange slice and CONSUME PEOPLE CONSUME! I'm not the best cupcake decorator... I'll admit! But they are DEFINATELY tastier than I've made them look here :o) Trust me!

I find they're the perfect combination of everything... love them!!!

Xx

Retro rollerblading, zombies and too many drinkies

Goodmorning guys!!
Be warned, it's a rambling post!



What a morning I've had! I forgot how much a few drinks affects me :p I only had 5 and I was so sick thismorning! Oh well...spose it has been a while :p I seriously needed the night out though, everything was getting to me the way everything usually does and it all just sort of melted away.. it was nice :o) Let's face it, every now and then you just need a drink or two. So to catch up on my weekend so far:

#1 My baked goodies were very well received on Saturday! It was a lovely little get together! It turns out my friend Tiffy is between 9-12 weeks pregnant :o) She is so excited to be a mum it was rubbing off on me a little!!

I love these! Whisk eggs, oregano leaves and cooked bacon bits together, poor into puff pustry inside a muffin pan. Bake for 30 minutes... TA DA! Except the wax paper stuck to them because I didnt have any greaseproof paper... so we ate a lot of it, but oh well :p

#2 Last night was Retro Rollin' in the 'Dale night at the indoor recreation centre... and I TOTALLY won best dressed!! I won a free movie pass, so that will be literally my ticket to Magic Mike next week tee hee! I most DEFINATELY suck at rollerblading....I'm not too keen on having wheels for feet but in saying that it had been about 12 years since I last gave it a shot, and I didn't fall over so I guess I wasn't tooooo bad. It was good exercise! I might head back next week and try and get a little better methinks... honestly I was embarrassing haha! It didn't help that a certain SOMEBODY kept skating past me making fun of me :p Then my hubby showed up and proved how awesome he was at the whole skating thing...and scared the pants of some poor girl on skates for the first time whom he whizzed past at some stupid speed. She squeeled and clung to the wall..It was a little funny.

This is the only photo I have of me before I went out...Im sure there will be more where I can show you my whole (prize winning hehe) outfit when the others upload their photos :D I went to Maccas for a coffee beforehand in my outfit... So many eyeballs look at you when you wear a swing dress in public!

And here is me taking a goofy shot of myself before I went to bed at midnight when I got home. Whilst drunk I had at the pub taken out my victory rolls and had super springy curlies..hehe! It was awesome!

#3 I will be finishing the AMAZING zombilicious prize for our 50 likers giveaway celebration today SQUEEEEEE I can't wait!!!!!!!! Stay tuned for that one peeps! I'll keep you updated on the fan page as to when that will happen.
#4 I seem to be coming down with a cold. I would attribute that to walking home in stockinged feet at midnight in an Armidale winter last night but I could feel it coming on yesterday morning, the walk probably didn't help though hey?
#5 I got woken up thismorning by the guy next door who decided that using a wood mulcher first thing on a Sunday morning was perfectly ok. GRRRRRRR man next door GRRRRR

 How was/is your weekend Beans??

When you'd rather be getting baked instead of baking

Let me be the first to say that so far TODAY HAS SUCKED CAMEL BALLS! I was happy, then I was sad, then I was ok, then I was depressed, then I lost focus, then I lost all will, then I gave up, then I ate junk food, then I went out and socialised a little and now I am ok again. Does that sound like a normal range of emotions for one person to go through in one day?? That's basically what I go through everyday...it's absolute bollocks. I felt like my mind and my actions weren't connecting and on more than one occassion I wanted to cry. At one point today I got extremely angry and then felt so lost because I didn't know how to handle it and that in turn led to more frustration. I tried playing music, I tried having a shower, my usual calming methods weren't having any effect :( I really wanted to crawl back into bed and hide under the covers but then I'd just feel even more frustrated that I wasn't doing something productive :/ Such are the stupid inner workings of my mind! I really wanted to be honest with you about my feelings and thought processes today, but the words are getting jumbled in my head and won't come out right, ARRRRRRRRGGG!!!!!!!

The plan was that I was going to get up thismorning, have a coffee, then get into the baking I wanted to do today. I knew something was wrong when I had no desire WHATSOEVER to cook anything! Normally cooking is my emotional safety net, it gives me comfort and calms me down; didn't work like today!!! Nothing turned out like it should have, which I HATE because less than perfect isn't good enough. AND I didnt even get to have my coffee! Some would say that was the problem and my day may have worked out had I not missed my caffeine fix. I doubt it though.

It was definately a good thing that my darling husband managed to escape work a little earlier today, I so desperately needed his comfort today. It's so fantastic when everything seems to be falling apart around you, nothing makes sense and you feel at sea that one person can turn the sun back on in your heart! It didnt help the fact that I was still pissed off at myself for my baking efforts though!

Those are my tim tam truffle pops. I have made these a million times  before but did they want to work out today???? NO! I have had no problems in the past making a white chocolate ganache as an undercoat on my truffles, it's always been perfect consistancy and covered beautiful. TODAY however, it was gloopy, yellowish and frankly looked like a form of bodily fluid (sounds great right?)

 
I managed to slop shop bought cake mix into bite sized patty pans relatively normally....

My cupcakes were a little less neat but hey, the batter mostly made it into the cups so ALL GOOD as far I was concerned.

My butter cake then proceeded to dismantle itself upon attempting to leave it's pan. It obviously no longer wanted to live and offed itself. Which was of no help to me!!! Hubby enjoyed eating the bits of cake anyway, so not a total loss.

This is my table BEFORE I started icing everything. My table is now covered in bowls of coloured cream cheese, icing sugar and crumbs. It's also 12.05am in the morning and I am not really in the mood to clean it. Looks like I get to make a mad cleaning effort first thing in the morning! I hate that!! I hate not being organised when I was meant to be!!

I made my mini cupcakes all pretty with blue and purple cream cheese icing

By this stage it was 5ish in the arvo, and I was going to make fondant roses for my bigger cupcakes but ran out of time and will power...so I made rainbow cream cheese icing instead.

These are my truffle pops in the fridge. I could only do half because the ganache kept dripping off so I needed them to harden before I could do the rest. I have not yet done the rest :/ So I guess I do that tomorrow too! I actually made them on sticks for the first time. And I had no styrofoam to stick them in so they're in a florist brick instead. The chocolate covers the horrid yellow white chocolate... so problem solved as far as I'm concerned.

Rainbow-ness!

So yeah... I dont even know where I'm really going with this anymore... Im uber despondant, my brain is frozen and the pinched nerve in my right shoulder is giving me hell. I am going to bed, that was my day basically, I'd elaborate, or be less vague and more descriptive my ability to formulate sentences has temporarily scampered. I should have given up around midday and had a beer instead.

Night all!



Fondant Rose Coloured Glasses (and hands!)

Do you have something that you do when you're feeling anxious and stressed? Some way of relaxing yourself when you're tense? I wish I knew my 'thing' that I need to do to be calm when I get that way. You would think after so many years of anxiety and depression I would have developed some kind of coping mechanism...sometimes small things work for a while but then I find the effect wears thin and I need to find something else. I guess that means I haven't found anything truly effective yet! When all else fails, a hot shower and a warm drink usually does the trick, I have even found crochet to be very relaxing for me!

 One thing I do enjoy to settle down a little and calm my nerves is try something new! It gives me something to focus on, and oddly enough instead of frustrating me when I get it wrong the first time round (and that happens more often than not!), I just seem to keep at it then all of a sudden it comes together and I feel so much better! Gives me a sense of accomplishment when everything else seems sort of hopeless.

 So tonight when I found myself feeling particularly stressed and hormonal and awful and just plain tense (no reason...sometimes I just get this way, the hubby is also out thisevening so I don't have my normal comfort cuddles to go to!) I thought I'd have a dig through the pantry in search of some fondant. It's my little sisters' 19th birthday this coming Sunday and hubby and I are making a trip to the coast to see my family. I thought how nice it would be to make some mini rainbow layer cakes with fondant roses with us as a gift! I haven't really made roses before, I tried once with a soft icing sugar mixture but found that wasn't very effective so last shop I made sure I bought some white icing. So I popped a Disney movie on (A Bug's Life, one of my favourites) set about making a right royal mess!

everything is all set up and ready to go!

Im in my element around mess!

Making the petals

Here are my roses in the making! Not too bad for a first attempt!

An awfully grainy self portrait of my somewhat slightly less stressed self!

My lovely pink food dye stained hands!

12 lovely little pink roses!

The excess icing sugar I can dust off later when they've set

I won't make the cupcakes until tomorrow, I don't think my patience would hold out that far tonight! I'm not sure how I'm going to make them yet, or what the end result will be but tomorrow is another day and I'm sure after a good nights' sleep I'll be more willing to tackle the things I need to! Now I'm off for a nice hot shower which will hopefully ease the rest of the nerves that are niggling at me and then it'll be time to settle down under a blanket with some wool and a crochet hook. Dear oh dear my brain (and my hands now!) can be a mess sometimes!! BUT I have learnt a new nifty little skill, it could do with some perfecting but it still feels great to have given it a try :o)




p.s after I finished the roses and was about to go to bed, I decided I wasn't tired and made these too

Easy Rainbow Layer Cake

You might notice my blog has changed a bit! I have spent all day working with my digital scrapbook bits and peices and putting together my new background and everything so here it is finally, I hope you like it! It still has some tweaking to go yet but I will hopefully have it all done during the week.

Now...to the recipe!

I'm certainly not going to claim this is my recipe because it's not, but for those of us who dont want a fandangled recipe where you need palette knives, egg whites at room temperature and mix masters then this is for you! It's basically a case of throwing everything together...the real effort comes from waiting for each layer to cook, then having the patience to let it cool and repeating the process over another 5 times :o) It's a FANTASTIC cake to make while you're doing other things though! If you're really lucky you'll have a larger oven and more than one cake tin! I made mine between doing loads of washing and tidying my craft room. And I have to say that all that work is most DEFINATELY worth it!! The finished cake stands just under 4 inches high, so it's not too big or too small and perfect for sharing!

The actual cake recipe comes from here at Best Recipes.com for Plain Cake and all I did was double the quantities of everything so I would have enough batter to make a 4 inch high layer cake.

Divide your batter as evenly as you can in 6 bowls and add your food colouring being sure to mix the colour in thoroughly. As for how much to use, it depends on how bright you want your cake, just work with a little at a time to get it right. Don't go too pale though as your colours will fade a bit in the oven. I went with yellow, orange, red, purple, blue and green for mine.

Then using a lightly greased 9 inch standard cake tin (I only have one so this, and I will be honest, a very slow process) add your first colour and bake at 180 degrees for 15 minutes (my oven is electric, you might need to adjust the cooking time for a gas oven). It's only a thin layer so you may need to spread out your batter with a spoon before baking.

Allow to cool, re grease your pan and pour in the next colour, bake for 15 minutes and repeat with the remaining colours. Once they're all cooked, you can stack the cakes up! I used a bit of icing sugar mixed in water to 'glue' the layers together but you can use the same frosting as the outside of the cake (getting to that bit!) in between if you prefer. Some recipes say to not stick them together and to just use skewers to hold the cake up then take them out when ready to serve but this cake won't stand very tall so unless you want to make a super cake you wont have to worry about that.

Also, other recipes may say that you need to cut the tops of each layer so that it sits perfectly flat but I didnt worry too much about that.

As for the frosting... I just used this recipe from Taste.com for Easy Butter Icing Recipe and doubled it so I'd have enough icing for the cake but found I had too much left over so I would probably only make a third more than the recipe says so you're not wasting it :o) And how un-Martha am I? I just used a kitchen knife to frost my cake AND I didnt even give it a crumb coat! The icing covered up the colours underneath just fine too in case you're wondering!  If you would like to crumb coat it though, frost it all over thinly and allow it set, then frost again over the top of that. This gives a thick coat to your cake, I personally don't like it but it's all up to you!

That's it! That's all it takes! It's pretty simple and looks AND tastes amazing... I thought about writing this post for the cake yesterday when I made it but figured there are plenty of recipes for this online and didnt want to feel like mine was a bit average but what the heck! Enjoy! This recipe is for two of my readers (oh gosh I never thought I'd say that!) so I hope it all makes sense guys! Any questions just ask, I don't bite :o)

Monday 12/03/12 Housework huh?

Don't you just love it when you're renting and you get that letter in the mail saying your home is due for a property inspection? Our place is not so much messy but just crazily disorganised! We still have boxes we haven't unpacked from when we moved in (3 months ago) that just have no where to go and although we've been culling as much as we can to make it fit it just seems never ending! Our last apartment was a lot bigger but had no yard so we gave up the space for the yard we now have so we could have our dogs...it has definately been worth it! But now I have only a few days to get everything sorted! Eeeep! In a way it's a good thing as it gives us the push we need to get things done and finished up in here but there just seems like so much to do! So as far as housework goes, I always need a list.... and besides, doesn't it make you feel like you've really achieved something when you can tick it off and write a big fat DONE next to it? Well I don't know about you but it definately makes me feel better. (I just realised I've been touch typing this... I didn't realise I could do that? Amazing what loads of time on your laptop can do for you! There you go, I've picked up a skill haha).

That said, let's put todays list in type so I can stop procrastinating and get to it. Ohh my hungry little caterpiller fabrics I ordered just arrived!! Ok yeah... NOW I will stop procrastinating and get on with it

1. Get through the washing pile. That is something that never seems done, but I am in truth SO CLOSE to the end that I might as well see it through and for the first time in months actually have empty baskets!! The day isn't looking so good for washing but I'll do what I can with it *fingers crossed it doesn't rain*
Ok so I got halfway through that...dang spiders kept finding me and crawling on me! BLECK


2. Make the bed. Yes that is trivial but I actually very rarely do it, and I really should start making it a habit....exciting list right?! It gets worse....
10.51am HAHA done! hmmm not much of an achievement there though

3. CLEAN MY CRAFT ROOM I have been putting that off for days...it is a MESS and a half in there, im almost too scared to open the door and go in!
4.55pm  and it's finally clean!

The top of my storage drawers *insert ashamed face*

This is what my desk looked like before I got to it!! I told you it was messy!

After I got through all the mess and my shelves are finally organised!!

One clean desk!!! Yay! I seriously can't believe I let it get so bad!

There is a floor under there....somewhere

And now there's a floor!

4. Make more rainbow cupcakes. Not really necessary but heck it was fun!!
4pm I decided to make a rainbow layer cake instead... just one more layer to go and then the icing! NTS next time get 6 cake tins and a bigger oven and do it all at once.... 1 cake tin + 6 colours = a looong time in the making!

5. Sort out the crap in the loungeroom so we can get the boxes unpackes. Our loungeroom is where random stuff goes to collect dust...stuff that doesn't have a home, or a purpose really, but we dont know whether to throw it out or not...Im sure you have stuff like that. Well, today I'm gonna have to deal with it!
4.50pm well, I managed to get a few boxes out of the way (and into my craft room actually, now that there is space!) and a few things cleared. Hubby will help me with the rest later one (hopefully!)
And that should do it for today!

It's currently 10am in the morning... I got a LOT done on Friday so I know I can do it all, I just lack Fridays will power! Ok... here goes!

p.s I really hope the neighbours are out today because I've got my music on and it is LOUD :p

Super Colourful Crazy Coconut Cupcakes!! The Finished Product

Ta Da!!

Just out of the oven and looking pretty groovy!

The artist in me sees those bold unblended colours and thinks how fantastic that design would look on a dress! There you go! Cupcakes can be inspirational!

Nice and innocent looking now aren't they? ;) Hubby and I are helping family with a garage sale tomorrow, I made these for some fun sustainance...can't wait to see my victims take a bite!

23 and 26 are just numbers...we're really only 10 at heart

My hubby and I are really just bigs kids. Would you believe we listen to The Best of Disney when we wash up together and sing at the top of our lungs, raid the kids movie section at the DVD rental store and spend a lot of our time together having epic Uno challanges (the last one went for 2 days..it was 52 to 57 I think) and playing Just Dance on the wii? Well it gets better because now we have officially for the first time made rainbow cupcakes! We'll be very skilled in the ways of entertaining children when we get to that stage...so let's just call all this 'research'  

I wonder how they'll turn out?

Do you and your SO have little fun quirks that you do together? A mutual love of Disney brings people together ;)

Look out world! Cake making here I come!

The beginning of a new year can hold a lot of new promising ventures, but none as rewarding as the ones you achieve through hard work and peserverance and reaching the end with pure satisfaction! This year I have resolved to reach and try all those things I think I have a knack for! Sounds pretentious doesn't it? What I mean is, I get great enjoyment out of a great many things, but very rarely have time to dwell on that feeling and just go with the moment and see what happens! My mind gets in the way with thoughts of failure, and 'what-ifs' (we all have those Im sure!) and the project is stopped before it's really gotten off the ground! So I have made a list of resolutions to follow through with and see what the end results are! As someone who has never really had a career path and no university training, I feel like the years are sort of drifting by without purpose. I know I want to establish myself as something...i just don't know what!! My husband is a very supportive and loving man and has encouraged to do what I enjoy from the beginning and has been there the whole time giving me positive feedback and being honest with me about my ventures. It's that love and support that makes me want to do something that not only I can be proud of, but that he can be proud of too...as corny as it sounds (and believe me, it is VERY corny), he tells me constantly that when I am happy, he is happy. Me and my past experiences haven't quite convinced my mind of the full truth of the matter yet... I know he means every word of it but my negative cup half empty attitude gets in the way! Silly I know, but that's part of being in my skin and having my mind! So what are some things that have always been pipe dreams that I feel I should try?? Well...cake making is definately one of them!! I have always admired the artistry that goes into cake making and decorating, such skill and beauty!!! I don't claim to have either of those things but something keeps nagging at the back of mind saying 'try it try it try it!!'. I have never used a sewing machine in my life, I got given one and right off the bat I knew what I was doing...heck! I'm even sewing myself a costume and I've had it little under 2 weeks! i dont know what happened there but Im going to keep at it! How many things did I handstitch before I had a sewing machine?? I handstitched tote bags and even made myself a skirt and they all turned out fantastic! Ok so sure sometimes I'd sit there for a few hours with my head in hands because I couldnt work out which way a peice of fabric should have gone but I did get there in the end! So that' why I think I should give cake making a go...I have the patience, I have 50 new different chocolate moulds given to me as a gift so why not try them out?

I would like to perfect my sewing too. The problem there being that we dont have a lot of money to keep getting fabrics to practice with...let alone buy all those lovely ones that people like to buy and make things out of...which is a little upsetting but we manage. My aunt gave me the idea that as a chef (she is of course, not me) that I should sew knife-rolls and take 5 or so to RSL kitchens, cafes, restaurants etc and see if they want to buy them. I had never thought of that but there is a perfectly good idea!

I should really try and perfect being a wife too...my cleaning skills are awful!

But making cakes is definately something I want to try..and it doesn't have to be expensive! Wouldn't it be nice to get the word out where I live and have a steady little income from cupcakes? *sighs dreamily*.... I thought the same way about my craft too...which in reality isn't really that successful...but back to the point, I enjoy it therefore I should try it!

Besides! if I practice too many cakes and no one wants them, well my husband and I will just have to be very fat and content =)