love those cupcakes

Raspberry and chocolate cupcakes

I'm still experimenting with cupcakes and made these chocolate ones with raspberry buttercream which was a tasty combination of flavours. The little ones were chocolate mint.

                              

I had a bit more practice with the fondant flowers, too, which didn't seem so fiddly this time.

                            

Oh yes, I'll be incommunicado for a couple of weeks as I'm off on holiday to the casa in Spain. Will catch up on all of your blogs, and respond to being tagged by Gemma, when I get back.  Adios.

Something kinda ooh!

 The Gorgeous Girlie was home for the weekend.  One of her Christmas presents was a couple of tickets for a concert on Saturday night at Newcastle Arena and she asked me to go with her.  So, I went to see

Not that I'm a fan, particularly.  But it was live music, a great atmosphere and I got to spend the evening with GG. 

                                   

                                    

                                                

                                                              

                                   

We managed to resist buying flashing bunny ears.  But not these.

                      

 

                                                                             

A taste of the past

 From the age of eleven I went to an all girls grammar school where, from the second year, if you were deemed too stupid to learn a second foreign language (er, that included me), you had to do Domestic Science.  Or what was affectionately referred to as "Cookery".  I've checked the dictionary and domestic science is defined as  "the theory and practice of homemaking".  What this meant was that Wednesday afternoons were spent alternately learning the theory (stuff like what makes bread rise, which vitamins are in which foods, what's a carbohydrate, what makes an emulsion) and doing the interesting stuff..........cooking.   This is where I practised the basics of creaming, chopping, braising, beating and folding in, along with finding out the difference between a Bechamel, an Hollandaise and a Veloute.  Girls who were stuck with doing four years of Russian, Latin or German were so envious because, instead of taking home lists of verbs to memorise or passages to translate, we had stuff you could eat.  Well, mostly.  I remember someone forgetting the salt when we made bread and one year the Christmas cakes had a distinctly fishy taste.  (Something to do with what we were given to grease the baking tins, but let's not go there!). 

My mum had a copy of one of the recipe books which were kept in the cookery rooms at school, and which we used to pore over in those classes, and I've inherited it. I think Marguerite Patten was the Nigella of her day and this book probably featured in most kitchens, along with that stalwart, the BeRo book of baking.

                               

It lost it's cover years ago, and some of the pages are stuck together, but looking through it gives an idea of what people were cooking, I guess, in the 1960's and 70's.  I don't remember my mum serving us any of these hors d'oeuvre, though. 

                                 

But I seem to think we had a version of this. Sans pink ribbon!

                                

Television was playing a bigger part in people's lives, hence this section.

                              

There was the wonder of

                              

which was a little bit scary.  And the innovation that was

                             

Feeling nostalgic, I just had to make one of my favourites from those cookery classes - raspberry buns!

               

                               

Everything's coming up daisies

I've been messing about with sugarpaste, trying my hand at cake decorations. I thought I should start with something simple, given this was the first attempt, and so I went for daisies.  The results were a bit fragile but not too bad.  Of course, once the flowers were made I had to make some cakes to plonk them on.

                           

Daisies also featured earlier in the week when, for some inexplicable reason, I felt the need to make a tablecloth and napkins with some fabric I'd bought a while ago (with the aim of learning how to sew).  Now I know creating a tablecloth only involves straight seams but even that isn't easy for some people.  Anyway, the sewing is far from perfect and the napkins are not exact squares or even the same size but they'll brighten up the garden table (if it ever stays warm enough round here to actually have meals outside).

                            

I think that's enough creativity for one week.

D'icing with cupcakes

These are some of the cupcakes I made tonight as a birthday gift for someone who likes to have a little flutter at the casino occasionally (hence the poker theme).  What you can't see from the photograph is how very sparkly they are.  I used so much glitter, even I'm sparkling. 

                  

Where I live

It's been a glorious day here today with constant sunshine.  I decided to be a bit more adventurous with the camera and here are the results of some "snapping" of the views near home on the way back from work.

                      

                     

For this one I took Vanessa's advice, looked down and spotted this.

                      

Then I got a bit carried away and looked for interesting "material" in our neglected little garden, inspired by the fabulous photography I see on other people's blogs.

                     

                     

                      

This next one is a bird bath (though you can't actually see the bath part).

                      

And this is part of a fish pond.

                      

I thought I was being artistic.  The Boy thinks I've gone doolally tap.

Farewell cupcakes

The Gorgeous Girlie left her job yesterday and these are the cupcakes I made for her to take into the office as a farewell treat.  I experimented with buttercream flavourings this time.  The blue ones were Pina Colada flavour, the pink ones were strawberry, the yellow were apricot, the lilac ones were orange flavoured,the green ones were vanilla and the white buttercream was lemon flavoured.  The titchy cakes were for the dieters.  They were all eaten so I guess they were OK.