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Tracy’s Bookclub 50th Birthday Cupcakes

Jul15

Tracy's Bookclub 50th Birthday Cupcakes

This year is a big birthday celebration for Tracy from our Wednesday scrapbooking group and she has had fun celebrating with her family and friends.  The week before the big day was her bookclub week and Shaunagh asked me to do cupcakes for the bookclub evening to celebrate Tracy’s 50th.  I made pistachio and honey cupcakes in lime green and purple cupcake holders and then used the same colour scheme for the decorations.  I combined bought flowers from Baking Bitz in Randburg with my own lime green roses on these cupcakes and added the pearls to complete them.  Glad you all enjoyed the cupcakes girls and look out for Tracy’s big 50th birthday pictures from our Wednesday morning scrapbooking gang!

BBC Lifestyle Baking Mad Cupcake Competition

Jul14
Honey & Her Cupcake

Honey & Her Cupcake

BBC Lifestyle launched a cupcake competition as they launched Eric Lanlard’s new show in South Africa, Baking Mad.  Every entrant had to enter a picture of themselves with their cupcake and their cupcake recipe.  Having just started baking again after being off my feet for 2 months I decided to enter this competition.  Being my usual undecided Leo self I got my friends to vote for the best cupcake between, Honey and Pistachio, Pink Pepper and Citrus, Orange Velvet and Amarula Cupcakes.  There was a mostly even vote for all these cupcakes with the votes for the Honey and Pistachio just topping the others so I went with photographing this cupcake.

Honey & Her Cupcake

Honey & Her Cupcake

Off I set with my cupcakes, camera and matching lime green jersey and arrived at the Memory Shed at Weltevereden Farm for Lisa Nadene to take some photos of me with my cupcakes.  As usual Lisa has a great eye for settings and she chose to shoot these photos of me behind the old car on the farm.  I must mention that I am not easy to photograph as everyone knows as mostly I am either talking too much or showing off way too many teeth in photos and then I get hugely self conscious and don’t know what to do with myself at all.  If I had been wearing a hat I would have had to take it off to Lisa that day for capturing such fun shots of me, looking actually quite good and my cupcakes looking absolutely brilliant.

Honey & Her Cupcake

Honey & Her Cupcake

Thanks to Lisa and her patience we had 90 photos to choose from and we picked the 7 odd best ones and then I chose from those the one to enter for the competition.  It still took me ages to put my entry through as I kept thinking what if I don’t make it to the 10 finalists?  Eventually I thought what do I have to lose by entering and I plucked up the courage and sent through my entry.  Ok I didn’t make it after all that to the top 10 which I would have loved to but what I learned from the experience was priceless.  I learned that my fans love my cupcakes as I had all the votes back within a couple of hours of sending out my question to them and they were all so supportive of my entry with their enthusiasm and impatience to know the outcome of the competition.  I overcame my fear of failure in other people’s eyes as I entered the competition knowing that hey my cupcake might not be chosen even though it looked and tasted delectably yummy.  To top it all I had such fun with Lisa as she painstakingly took these photos for me with as much attention to detail and pride to how they would turn out as I put into every cupcake creation.

Honey & Her Cupcake

Honey & Her Cupcake

The top 10 finalists can be seen on the BBC South Africa Website http://www.bbcsouthafrica.com/cupcake-competition and I look forward to seeing which recipe Eric Lanlard chooses to bake on his show.  Thanks again to everyone of you for your support and especially to Lisa for a photoshoot I will always remember and for such beautiful photos I will always treasure and blog of course!

Honey & Her Cupcake

Honey & Her Cupcake

Cupcakes (Lisa)

Photography ( Lisa Nadene)

Monkeying around with these Cupcakes!

Jul13

Monkey Cupcakes

When Tersia asked me to do these monkey cupcakes for her baby shower I was intrigued by her  naughty monkey theme for her party.  She had collected soft toy monkeys for her baby boy’s room and she wanted a monkey theme for her baby shower.  These monkeys were a tricky task at the time for me not being 100 % back into the swing of my baking but I really wanted to help her as she was recommended to me by Hester and she had seen my cute smurf cupcakes and knew she wanted cute cupcakes for her friends attending her baby shower.  I knew I couldn’t make all these monkeys myself so I asked Paige if she would help me as she is beautifully artistic and has a great eye for detail.  I was delighted when she agreed and with no help from me she handmade these 25 naughty little monkeys.  On seeing them I fell in love with their naughty expressions and gorgeous faces.  If you look closely you can almost hear what they are thinking.   Congratulations Paige, you just made your debut  as a sugar artist with these crafty little guys!

Sugarpaste Monkeys

These cute monkeys jumped from the photo shoot on my book straight onto delicious chocolate cupcakes iced with a creamy vanilla icing and were delivered in time for Tersia’s babyshower.  I had such a wonderful email response from Tersia which I have quoted here as it was the perfect thank you to Paige for all her time and enthusiasm creating these characters for me and for Tersia.

“The monkeys were great!  They have stolen the show.  I  put the cup cakes on a cup cake stand in the middle of the table, and the people couldn’t stop looking at them.  Almost nobody ate their cupcake at the restaurant.  Everybody asked for a “doggy bag” to take it home and show it to their family first.”

Monkey Cupcakes

Sugarpaste work (Paige)

Photography (Lisa)

Pink Pepper and Pink Roses for a Family Memory!

Jul13

Pink Pepper & Pink Roses Cupcakes

It was such a great evening Saturday 2 weeks ago when Eddie and I were invited to a delicious dinner with my uncle Dieter, Genee, Pete, Gill, Brendan and Christen-Jenna.  It has been a while since we were able to catch up with family and we were able to share family news, reminisce and generally enjoy each other’s company.  Genee is always a gracious and gorgeous host and her delicious roast dinner reminded me of the beautiful roast dinners my mom would prepare so lovingly and with a great deal of food-fussing about for us.  I wanted to make  really pretty but fun cupcakes for Genee so I chose the pink pepper and citrus chocolate iced cupcakes that I have made before and added a pink rose and pink pearls to her cupcakes.  Dieter has always been a chocolate lover and I remember him eating all the desserts I made when I was a child for family gatherings.  He always had high praise for everything I made so I love him for that as I am sure there were times when not every dessert was up to scratch.  For his cupcakes I added a piece of the Madacasse Pink Pepper and Citrus chocolate that I had melted into the icing.  We enjoyed a beautiful dinner finished off with these cupcakes so once again thank you for inviting us to share in more family memories.

Hydrangea Cupcakes for Lisa (TQO)

Jul9

Hydrangea Cupcakes

A few weeks ago we celebrated Lisa (TQO)’s birthday – TQO short for The Quiet One!   As per our usual Wednesday scrapbooking birthday celebration it was anything but quiet and we celebrated Lisa’s birthday with the usual array of gifts, blowing of candles and an assortment of delicious goodies to eat accompanied by much laughter and fun.  Lisa (TQO)’s presents were unusual this year as she requested pritt glue and crayons for the pre-school children  she teaches at the children’s home.  I have to mention here that Lisa (TQO) apart from being the life and soul of any party or celebration she attends is also an inspiration in the humble way she shares her ideas, time, knowledge, recipes and laughter with us and always makes us feel that life is a total blast.  She opened her presents of pritt glue, crayons and stickers with such excitement knowing how much joy the children were going to get from using them.  While I was off my feet I kept myself busy exploring new cupcake ideas and I chanced on a youtube video one afternoon in which a delightful Anh demonstrated how to pipe a hydrangea cupcake.  She did go one step further and place the cupcakes in a bouquet but due to time limitations on my feet I didn’t try that. For really clear instructions visit Anh’s youtube demo on Sonata 333.  I mixed violet and royal blue icing into a piping bag  and piped my version of a hydrangea for these cupcakes and topped each one with an embossed white butterfly. Lisa Nadene took  this pretty photo of the cupcakes that portray the colour and joy that Lisa (TQO) brings into the lives of everyone she meets.

Chocolate & Cappuccino Cupcakes for Father’s Day…

Jun18

Chocolate & Cappuccino Cupcakes

Yesterday we celebrated Father’s Day in South Africa and I made these rich chocolate and cappuccino cupcakes to say thank you to Eddie for being such an amazing husband and father to our 2 children.  I couldn’t slave over a hot stove and cook a brilliant meal with only one fully functioning foot and even a batch of cupcakes these days is a challenge.  I stuck to my yummy chocolate cupcakes and added a cappuccino icing and Toblerone and Nestle Cafe Latte chocolate pieces to top them off.  They turned out deliciously sweet and chocolatey.

Thanks Eddie again for being an awesome dad for the last 18 years and for being the most supportive and loving husband for nearly 22 years now – you are just the ‘bees knees’ and we love you!