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National Chocolate Cupcake Day!

Oct18

Today is National Cupcake Day.  I was informed of this via Cupcake Project one of the brilliant blogs I follow.  I am pleased that I am not the only cupcake lover to have not known what an important day it was today.  I made these cupcakes shortly after I attended the Good Food and Wine Show and just haven’t blogged them yet as I wanted to let you know more about the amazing story behind this Madacasse chocolate.  The story may have to come later but in the meantime here are some pictures of the most delicious cupcakes I have made yet.

Madacasse Pink Pepper & Citrus Chocolate Cupcakes

Madacasse Pink Pepper & Citrus Chocolate Cupcakes

 

I fell in love with the wrapping and display of this chocolate and when I tasted it I was totally hooked.  Produced in Madagascar this chocolate delights all your senses and I couldn’t wait to use it in a cupcake.  I chose the pink pepper and citrus Madacasse chocolate and melted half a bar into my icing.  It turned the icing into a beautiful rich chocolate colour and I topped off the cupcake with a square of this heavenly chocolate.  The comments from my testers were that it had to be the best cupcake from my kitchen yet and if I had a choice of one cupcake to take with me to a desert island this would be the one!  If I was on the island I would probably put in a request for one of these in my glass bottle.  I wanted to surprise you with this cupcake but what better day to blog this on than today!

Madacasse Pink Pepper & Citrus Chocolate Cupcakes

Madacasse Pink Pepper & Citrus Chocolate Cupcakes

Bowl Them Over Cupcakes

Oct18
Cricket Bat & Ball Cupcakes

Cricket Bat & Ball Cupcakes

 

I made these cupcakes on Saturday for a little cricket fan who was turning 7.  I was given this order at the last minute so to save time I iced the cupcakes white and added a patch of green ‘grass’ icing in the centre of each one.  I bought the cricket bats and balls from Kadees in Fourways and added them as the final touch.  Hope your birthday was a hit Travis!

Cricket Bat & Ball Cupcakes

Cricket Bat & Ball Cupcakes

 

Sewing Box Cake

Oct17

Once again it was time to celebrate the birthday of another scrapper at The Memory Shed at 2nd Cup.  We celebrated Hayley’s birthday on Wednesday with a cake and the usual array of presents.  Hayley loves colour and drawing and basically doing anything crafty.  She has a great knack of matching bright and wonderful colours in any project she does and is brilliant at whatever craft she tries from mosaicing to scrapping, drawing and painting.  We brainstormed and came up with the idea of a sewing  box cake for Hayley to celebrate her birthday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

 

I made a round cake and a small rectangular cake for the sewing box.  I used a chocolate transfer sheet to finish off the top and sides of the box which was not easy but the end result was edible and effective (note to self I need to practise this technique!)  I made a little sewing spool and needle from sugarpaste and then added a number of pink and green sugarpaste rosettes with different centres.  Hayley is brilliant at sewing her own unique rosettes so these were a tribute to the one she makes.  We had great fun celebrating with you Hayley and hope you did too.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Sewing Box Cake

Sew Hayley!

Cupcakes2Go For Ceire

Oct11

On Monday our beautiful daughter turned 13.  Teigh, her brother, insists that she has been 13 for a while  as she is already so grown up in so many ways.  She was leaving on a school camp on Monday morning so she wasn’t with us for the day to celebrate her birthday.  It didn’t seem to phase her too much on Monday morning as she met her very excited friends on the field before they got on the bus.  Ceire thought it would be a great idea to have cupcakes for her to take on the bus to celebrate her birthday so I made these smaller but really cute cupcakes with jelly beans on for her to celebrate on the bus.

Cupcakes with Jelly Beans

Cute Birthday Cupcakes2Go

I packed 75 dinky little cupcakes2go in boxes and I hope that the girls and teachers on the bus enjoyed them!  

Cupcakes with Jelly Beans

Cute Birthday Cupcakes2Go

Home Sweet Home for Michelle’s Birthday

Oct6

Michelle is a very good friend of mine (not only because she loves my cupcakes) but also because she is such a generous and genuine person.  She has all the character traits of a fantastic friend as she is kind, helpful, a great listener, loads of fun and a great wife and mother too.  When I was going through ideas for a surprise birthday cake for her there were so many different ideas I came up with as Michelle loves nature and beautiful and creative things.  I decided on this Little House and Flower Garden cake as I found a delightful pan to bake the cake in and it was appropriate for her with her doing renovations to her home at the moment.  Maybe we can do another one for the house-warming Michelle!

Little House & Flower Garden Cake

Little House & Flower Garden Cake

I baked a square cake and iced it with Michelle’s favourite coffee icing.  I iced the 2 house cakes together with the same icing and then placed them on the cake with lolly stickers in for extra support.  The roof I iced with the same coffee icing and then used green icing for the grass and caramel sweets for stepping stones.  I added a sugarpaste door and shutters for the windows and then added sugarpaste window boxes with red flowers and ‘planted’ pink and white roses and flowers in the garden.

Little House & Flower Garden Cake

Little House & Flower Garden Cake

We celebrated Michelle’s birthday at the Memory Shed and once again it was the perfect setting and perfect group of scrapbookers for Michelle to celebrate another year being wiser.

Little House & Flower Garden Cake (Michelle & Lisa)

Little House & Flower Garden Cake (Michelle & Lisa)

 

 

 

Summer Loving

Sep27

On Saturday we celebrated Heritage Day here in South Africa with hundreds of South Africans dusting off their braai tongs after a long winter to do the traditional South African thing and braai!  After a few weeks of gorgeous warm spring weather it turned nippy on Saturday but can’t imagine that it put a damper on any Heritage Day celebrations.  What better way to bring the South African summer sun to the party on Saturday then with these Summer Loving Cupcakes.

Cupcakes with suns, bikinis, towels & beach balls

Here Comes The Sun!

All the decorations were made from coloured sugarpaste.  I embossed the bikinis with an embossing sheet and added a small flower for detail.  The pink towels I cut out rectangular pieces from sugarpaste and then embossed them with a heart cutter.  The yellow and orange towel is my favourite and that I made using an orange rectangular piece of sugarpaste to which I added yellow flowers.  I rolled the flowers into the orange piece and the result was a really colourful beach towel.  The suns I made using 2 star shapes underneath a flattened round piece of sugarpaste.  Below they don’t have the finished eye detail but I added that with my Nicoletta pens for the finished cupcakes.   With these gorgeous colours who wouldn’t want to celebrate our gorgeous sunny South African heritage.

Summer Loving Sugarpaste Decorations

Summer Loving in Sugarpaste