What Laura Made: June 2012

Pick-n-Mix Cupcakes

We all have those containers at the back of the freezer, for me it's small left over bits of icing. So every once in awhile to clear the freezer, only to fill it with more icing, I bake off a few cupcakes and this is them.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with a mixture of Buttercream, Peanut Butter & Cream cheese icing.

Happy Baking x

Post edit: few comments I got back today about my cucpakes :)

"Must compliment you on the Guinness and peanut butter icing cupcakes. Luvly"

"Those guinness and peanut butter icing cupcakes are AMAZING :)"

"OMG The Guinness and peanut butter cupcakes are amazing!!!"

Two Hemispheres, Two Weddings & 228 Cupcakes!

This year I have been lucky enough to have attended two weddings already and to say the least, they couldn't have been any different from each other. The great thing about them was that it is so lovely to see each couple spending their special day the way they wanted too, surrounded also by so many family and friends.

They were literally on the other side of the world from each other, with my brother's wedding in Australia basked in 24 degree heat at New Farm Park and my boyfriend's brother getting married in a quaint church in the English countryside in the pouring rain.

What made the occasions special for me was both couples put their trust in me and was asked to do their respective cupcakes for their big day.

So Congratulations to Tim and Bri...

The Happy Couple - trust me, I know my brother.. that's a smile!

My littlest sister (but by no means the shortest) helping set up

The cupcake team.. including Tracey who came to my recuse
when my icing recipe decided it didn't want to work in Aus.

Trialing my own creations

Champagne and a cupcake... yes please!

Even Daddyo got in on some cupcake action

And Congratulations to Kevin and Georgina...

The Happy Couple... does the church look familiar to anyone?

G was very brave and baked this
the day before her wedding...
does this windmill look familiar to anyone?
PS. the windmill moves... freaking cool!

The wedding theme was Steam Punking, hence the cogs!

The cutting of the cake & the cutest bridesmaids ever

The first official taste test...
I think they were okay as he had 2!

K & G's first dance... a very impressive salsa dance!!

Happy Weddings xx

Pimms Cupcakes for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Parade

As luck would have it, I am fortunate enough to have a friend who lives on a house boat on the Thames near St. Katherine's Dock. For the most part, spending time on her boat is pretty amazing, especially since her view is of Tower Bridge. But what is even more fortunate is she decided to host a party to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and we had front row seats to the Queen and the 1,000 boats that joined her parade.

The celebration flags of all the boats on Lulu's moorings... so pretty!

Apparently the moorings in which she is located would be a high terrorists threat and therefore each boat was only allowed 15 people. We all had to show ID on arrival and had our own wrist bands. It was like getting into a private club and as much as I felt sorry for all the people who had probably lined up for hours and stood standing in the rain; I was a little bit smug walking down the jetty past them all.

Proper security for the boats...or making sure we aren't up to no good

The boat we thought the Queen was in

For the occasion I decided some festive cupcakes would be in order and a few days earlier I stumbled across this recipe from Lay the Table for Pimms Cupcakes. I was a bit sceptical about putting cucumber in buttercream, but the way the cucumber, mint, orange and strawberry came together it actually did taste just like Pimms.

Cucumber

Strawberry

Mint

Orange

Festive cupcakes ready to be dressed

All four icing's ready to be piped

Besides the torrential rain that began when the boats started to pass by, it was a fantastic day... actually to be fair the rain didn't bother us one bit and we persisted in the rain with our plastic cups full of champagne.

The boys sneaking onto another boat to use the BBQ

Lulu's boat name.. m/v Onderneming

And thank you to Miss Lulu for hosting.. she was definitely the hostess with the boat-ess!!

Happy Jubilee x

These guys thought our party was the best and came and joined us for a beer... or rather paddled off with some!

Thomas Miller Social Tapas Evening

This year one of my new years resolution was to learn more baking skills and so I jumped at the chance when our companies social committee put on a Tapas Cookery Evening at the Open Kitchen in Hoxton.

On arrival we were greeted with a large grass of sangria and toasted almonds. From there we were taken up to the kitchen and introduced to chefs and split into teams of two to work on a different recipe each.

Spanish Cheese

Washing and drying of the olives

Simple but delish

Since I didn't have to much to prepare, I got to go check out what everyone else was up too. This is one of the chef's teaching his team to do a Spanish omelette and check out his glasses beard combo...amazing!

a perfect Spanish omelette

so simple, just photo and eggs... many many eggs!

Next up were the stuffed mushrooms. I gave the girls on this team a hand... so many mushrooms to fill.

stuffed mushrooms, ready for the oven

I am really funny about my seafood, its weird as I think seafood looks and smells great, but I'm always really funny about how its cooked etc. I finally tasted mussels a few years ago and I can eat a few, same with oysters. However prawns I just can't get over the texture; the way they "pop" in your mouth when you eat them, yet I still love the idea of them and also weirdly love to peel them, which my dad has already appreciated. All the seafood tapas on the evening looked great...