Our Little Princess is Turning One - Part 1 - The Invitations

I can't believe how quickly the past 12 months has flown by! Our little princess, Claire, is turning 1 in 10 days. This of course means that I am in the thick of the party planning. The theme for her special day is pink, of course, with lots of tulle and all things pretty.

Her invitations have been designed and made by the lovely and talented Claire from Scissors Paper Rock Designs. Claire made Lachlan's Lego Invitations and menu labels.

The brief I gave her was pink, princess and tulle. Here is the result.

We were so pleased with the finished invitations. They were exactly what we had imagined, the guests have all commented how wonderful they are.

I spent today fluffing tulle pom poms, which I purchased from Sharnel Dollar Designs. These too are even prettier in real life. I can't wait to put all the details together on the day.

Mrs KT :)

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I love a good chocolate chip cookie, always home made, not the supermarket variety. I have previously posted my favourite recipe. This morning whilst browsing my blog list I came across this post on How Does She? The perfect chocolate chip cookie!

Of course they looked very tempting, even at 6am! I had all the ingredients in the pantry, so off I went making a batch. The only modification I made was that I replaced the choc chips with milk couverture buttons.

The cookies are delicious. The recipe made 45 cookies, plenty to share around!

Bobbi-Jo provides a wonderful step-by-step recipe over on the How Does She? blog, so if you would like to try this recipe for yourself please head over there!

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs KT :)

Raspberry Friands.

Along with macarons, friands are a great recipe that requires almond meal and egg whites as the main ingredients. Today I decided to use up some more of the half a kilo of almond meal I bought to make the macarons at the weekend.

A few years ago, pre children, I went on a health kick and friands provided the "something sweet" part of this eating plan. Trish from A Dream House for Trish, was my wonderful personal trainer, so she will have a little chuckle when she reads about these I am sure :) Unfortunately, the healthy eating plan doesn't really exist so much for me now!!

I searched the internet for a recipe and came across this one for Raspberry Friands. I am wondering now why I don't bake these more often as they are so simple to make, taste delicious and even freeze really well.

Now onto the recipe.

Raspberry Friands

Makes 12

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup almond meal, sifted
6 egg whites, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup plain flour, sifted
1 cup frozen raspberries



Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C and grease friand pan.
2. Place all the ingredients (except raspberries) into a large bowl and stir until just combined.
3. Spoon mixture into pan, the holes should be just over half full. Top with 3 raspberries.
4. Bake for about 25minutes until golden brown. Allow to stand in pan for about 5 minutes then turn onto wire rack to cool.

I now have 6 egg yolks leftover, so custard will be on the menu tonight served with a warm friand. Yummy :)

Mrs KT :)

Macaron's - Take 1!

Macaron's are the "in" thing at the moment, every where you look there is a macaron. Seeing them created on Masterchef recently made me want to attempt making them. I have read a lot about them and they are quite a difficult dessert to bake successfully.

Before starting I consulted a couple of my close "cake" friends who had recipes and tips to share, so armed with the 5 ingredients I set about creating my first macaron's.

 For my first effort I was quite pleased with the end result, they are not perfect and I am not going to put Adriano Zumbo out of business anytime soon, but they are ok!

I filled them with white chocolate ganache which finishes them off nicely. They taste great and have the correct texture of a macaron.

There were a few that the tops cracked on, and I have since found out that this can be from over beating the egg whites or over folding the flour mixture or not letting them air dry for long enough before baking. For me I think it was over beating the egg whites.

I am hoping to perfect the macaron so I can use them on the dessert table at my little one's first birthday in a couple of weeks. I will attempt take 2 later in the week and will come back to let you know how they turn out.

If there are any macaron experts reading this, I would love you to share any more tips or secrets to baking the perfect macaron!

Mrs KT :)

A New Cake Stand.

I wrote a while back about my obsession with cake stands (you can read about it here ), after writing this my friend Gail put me in touch with a wonderful lady who makes pottery. I spoke to Rowena and showed her the type of stand I wanted and she set to work making one for me. Rowena showcases her fabulous work on Row's Pottery Shed. Please head over and check out her blog.

The stand arrived in the post today and it is exactly what I imagined.

The stand is going to take centre stage on the dessert table for my little girl's first birthday in a couple of weeks. The ruffled cake will look perfect on it!

The top of the stand has an impression on it, which is fabulous.

I made some mini chocolate cupcakes tonight for my son to take to preschool tomorrow, so thought I would take some photo's of them on my new stand!

 

Rowena provides a step by step on making the stand here, there are two different sized stands shown there too.

Thankyou Rowena for creating this gorgeous stand for me and adding to my growing collection of cake stands.

Mrs KT :)

Star Wars, Buzz Lightyear and A Ten Pin Bowling Alley!

Last weekend along with Lachlan's 7th Birthday Party, I had a couple of other cakes to create. My nephew's 8th birthday falls the day after Lachlan's, and he chose a Star War's themed cake. He had a whole set of figurines and chose his favourites to be placed on the cake.

The two tier cake was dark chocolate mudcake with dark chocolate ganache and fondant covering.

The next cake was for a lovely lady who was turning 40, Simone. She enjoys playing ten pin bowling. Her grandmother contacted me a few weeks ago and asked me to make a ten pin bowling alley for her.

I created a huge cake for the party. It was a moist buttercake with white chocolate ganache and fondant covering. The pins and bowling ball were made from modelling paste.

The last cake was for a young man turning 19. His mum contacted me and requested a Buzz Lightyear themed cake! This one was a lot of fun to make.

The cake was dark chocolate mudcake with dark chocolate ganache and fondant covering.

That brings to an end my mammoth August of cakes! I have a little break now until my little girl's first birthday in a few weeks.

Happy father's day to all the dad's out there today. 

Mrs KT :)

Lachlan's 7th Birthday Party - Part 2 - Candy and Dessert Table.

I am back today to share the second part to Lachlan's 7th Lego themed birthday party. (Read the other party posts here and here )The main feature of the party - The Candy and Dessert Table!

 

The starting point for the table was the covering. It was bubble wrap spray painted green to imitate lego building plates. Thankyou to Tracey for suggesting this fabulous idea to me!

The lego man paper dolls lined the edge of the table, the inspiration came from here .

The cake, cupcakes, cookies and cake pops were all made by me. The cake was milk chocolate and white chocolate mudcake. I hand modelled all of the lego blocks, logo, number 7 and name plate. The gorgeous cake stand was purchased from Sharnel Dollar Designs.

The cookies were vanilla sugar cookies with fondant icing.

The cupcakes were vanilla and chocolate sponge cake with buttercream swirls and fondant "7's".

The cake pops were inspired by these. The only difference is that I covered these with fondant.

There was also M&M's, jaffa's and red frogs.

And chocolate bars covered to resemble lego blocks.

The party boxes contained lots of great goodies including a lego ruler and lego eraser!

 The menu labels and party box labels were designed by Claire at Scissors Paper Rock. 

Here is the birthday boy, complete with lego man t-shirt to fit the party theme!

 

The party was a success, there was lots of lego building and fun had by all. I really enjoyed putting this party together for my little boy. 

I want to say thankyou to Claire, Sharnel, Tracey and Leanne for inspiring me and helping me along the way to creating this party :)

Enjoy your week.

Mrs KT :)