Cake cake cake

Tis the theme of my 26th birthday, I reveled in cup cakes for the whole week, every where I went I was confronted by this delectable treat, I had cup cakes for breakfast, it was great!

I dragged Alex to Patisserie in Illovo last Sunday, go there! Its wonderful!

So many options...I have to go back and sample some more...

Hmm cheese cake...my favorite!

I went with the granadilla cheese cake, it did not disappoint! The best cheese cake I've had. I was happy because their cakes are frozen and then thawed, which made me skeptical, but the cheese cake was good in both consistency and taste. Alex ordered the cookies and cream cake and that was unfortunately a bit dry, but I must eat more cakes from there to make a proper judgement :D

What's this? My boss' wife made me cupcakes for my birthday! What a treat ^_^ and she blinged it up with all these sprinkles and edible glitter! They know me so well.

A cupcake smorgasboard! Tarryn also gave me cupcakes, these awesome rich chocolate and mint ones with  a gooey caramel centers omnomnonmnom... I also made cupcakes (the yellow one in the back) they are lemon poppy seed with cream cheese icing. My first time! I think they came out nicely, and the recipe (here) was quick and easy. Personally I would use less sugar next time and maybe more lemon zest, because I like a super intense lemon flavour. I used a standard cream cheese icing, but I think I will try the icing with the recipe next time (it uses lemon juice! More lemony-ness! raaa!)

Love is...

...waking up at 5am to make cookies for Alex. I was too gatvol last night to make them, plus we were meant to have a scheduled power outage sometime after 10 pm so the possibility of  the oven dying with half baked cookies inside just stressed me out (the power ended up staying on for all the hours I was awake though, curse you! I procrastinated for no reason!)

I found the recipe for these cookies here. They are indeed easy to make! Just take them out after 10 mins (unlike me) even if they feel spongy in the middle - they will harden as they cool. They hold their shape quite well, just don't make any indented patterns on them (hearts in my case) because those will disappear. But the raised little hearts I made with left over pastry came out really nicely :) Next time I would make it with less sugar, especially if you are going to use icing as well. You could probably add all sorts of awesome things to the basic chocolate cookie dough - almond flakes, coconut, orange rind?! Nonetheless, these cookies are much better than the ones I made last year, heehee I'm improving!

Happy love day :) I totally ate 4 "reject" ones for breakfast, and showering everything with colourful sprinkles made me very happy :) bake these cookies! They make everything better!

Baked goodies to feed my fat...

Nomnomnom cheese and bacon muffins! Not bad for a first try, though they could be more cheesy, will try with maybe a strong cheddar next time. I followed this recipe.

Last night I made cinnamon bread - I left my dough to rise in my car...it was amazing! I have never felt anything so soft (except for maybe new born guinea pigs). But as can be see, it went a bit downhill on the baking...I forgot about it and it got burnt on top, but it is still delicious! (something with so much sugar and butter in it must be). I followed this recipe, her blog is great.

cookie stories

Me and Alex made cookies on Saturday, we were like little kids (well more than usual) with play dough! Looks like we have a talent for designer cookie making :) now we just have to work on the taste...I think what we did was accidentally make pie pastry in cool shapes.

Sunday baking!