Rum Delicious - Rum Balls

I'm currently in my home town of Warwick. I'm over at my mothers waiting for what looks to be an amazing Wagu Beef Thai Salad. In the meantime my sister and I whipped up some rum balls with some good old Bundaberg Rum! These will be the perfect after dinner treat... Though some didn't quite make the table as my mum's partner had 3 pre- dinner balls already.

Happy Baking x

Australia's own rum!!

Lulu's Birthday Carrot Cake

I decided to break the posts up, however the last post and the next one were actually all made in the one weekend. For this post though I think she deserved her own post as she is a big loved and demolisher of my baking adventures and her opinion matter very much to me. Also if I was to actually go into selling this properly she would be a model of my market.

This cake was for LuLu and once again LK helped me out with this as it was part of her birthday present. I actually can't take much of the credit for the baking of the cake as all I did was measure out the ingredients and LK did all the hard work, however i did make the cream cheese icing.

The birthday girl was over the moon with this cake which made it all worth while. 

Happy Birthday Lulu, and Happy Baking to all x

Cupcakes fit for a Vegan Surfer Blood

I am finally on my first proper holiday of the year and I'm currently sitting in Dubai airport waiting for my plane to be refueled. I have already completed the first 8-9 hours of a 25 hour journey, but a break from being on the plane is appreciated. Its also giving me the chance to write up about some of my last baking ventures from the last month in London before my trip back to Australia where I'm going to celebrate the Christmas and New Year break with my missed friends and family.

My housemate LK and I have been very fortunate this year with gig tickets, along with many other thing we can be thankful for. Our twitter friends Surfer Blood who are awesome band from Florida were kind enough to give us guest spots to the sold out Interpol gig at Brixton Academy. I have been listening to their album for a few months now, however was yet to see them play, and I was definitely not disappointed and I think you should all check them out.

Anyway to the baking. So Thomas from Surfer Blood is the main man behind the tweets and also a vegan. Since I like to take on a challenge I thought I'd give some vegan cupcakes a go. I never thought about how many ingredients have animal products in them and I was very weary whether the mix of weird ingredients; rapeseed oil, soya butter & milk, cider vinegar, ….. would actually resemble anything that looked like a cupcake or even taste like one.

Its hard to explain the taste of these, however you can definitely taste the difference in the mixture which tastes slightly like a vegetable based cupcake and was actually very light and fluffy which I loved. The icing pretty much resembled normal cream cheese icing, except made on soya butter. The icing came out a little runny, but we made at about 11pm on a Sunday after a very long weekend, so getting the texture right to pipe this icing was far from our minds, so icing by spoon was what they got.

I think the boys enjoyed the cupcakes and tweeted this picture at us after they went off stage…. thanks guys!!

The boys enjoying the cupcakes after the show

Happy Baking x

PS.  Hey Surfer Blood, if you are reading this, we are still waiting for our champagne :)

Guest Blogger - My Mum - Christmas Cake

I've finally convinced another person to be a guest blogger and this time its my Mum. She has blogged about her fabulous Christmas cakes which for the last 3 years I've had to miss out on because of the fact I'm in another hemisphere and all. This year will be different as I will shortly travel to the other side of the world just to be able to sample some of this fine cake which I miss thoroughly.

This is What My Mum Made

 

Well this is my first attempt at writing something that actually made sense. Lets see how it goes....

Years ago I decided to take over the role of Christmas cake maker. Looking though endless books I finally decided to try this one. It a recipe by little Scottish lady, who was and still is the matriarch of Australian cuisine - Margaret Fulton. This lady would immediately make me think of my mum Peg (if you didn't know Peg is also short for Margret) who was also a little Scottish lady who made lovely Christmas cakes, however she never gave me a recipe and alas with most knowledge has gone to the grave with her.

I don't know where to start with my cake as I moan and groan each year about making it. All that effort and time for one day a year and then by the end of the day everyone is to stuffed to think about having some. But the beauty of this cake it is meant too keep for sometime. I make it early in the year in either October or November, then the trick is to feed it regularly with a nip of spirits a couple of times a week, Brandy rum sherry what ever spirits you have.

When I'm mixing the cake I always make sure whomever is in the house at the time has a go at mixing it too as its quite a heavy handed job and then you will also get to make a wish too. And in the end the cake is made with love and I'm hoping that with a little piece of cake served, a little piece of love is served too.

To all my family and friends may you have the happiest Christmas ever....

Love Anne

This is my Mum's cat Miso.. so adorable I'd thought I'd share