Coffeeshop failure, pineapple flower success!

A little while ago I was asked by a coffeeshop owner to bake some of my cupcakes for them so they could see if they wanted to buy them off me and sell them in their store. At this point i think i was very lucky that i didnt widdle myself on the spot. Ive been so bored and have wanted to bake, but not eat all the baking, so i figured this would be perfect! I went into the shop with a list of cupcakes i can make (which i spent aaages preparing excitedly) and handed it over. The lady looked at it and said "oh, i dont care what you make, make anything, except peanut butter, i hate anything with peanut butter in it." i should have known from that moment something was wrong and that i should not even attempt to do business with these people, i mean, who doesnt like peanut butter baked goods?? I tried to talk to her about what prices she would be looking at paying, how many a day they would want, just to get an idea whether i could do this but she brushed me off and said she would see me the next day with my samples.

So i rushed home and made three of my favourites, black bottom cupcakes (chocolate cake with a dollop of cream cheese baked into the middle, nummers!) cookie dough (you'll just have to wait till that one comes, trust me though, it's worth it!) and hummingbirds. I was up till midnight, i was exhausted, and still had to decorate them the next morning. But i was still excited and my keen-ness kept me going. All that left the second i turned up though. Before she even tried my cupcakes or even really looked at them, she told me that the prices i was asking were too much, and they were really just looking for a colourful, plain cupcake for kids. I looked over at my hours of baking, my 30 dollar investment, wasted. I wasnt trying to rip her off, i was asking less that what i sold them for at the markets, i figured out i would be making less than 10 dollars an hour even at the price i was willing to sell them at. I left them with her though and told her to get back to me. I know it sounds like im a horrible baker in denial, but really they were just looking for a wholesale seller who could afford to sell their cakes for peanuts. I asked around and everyone that has met this lady agreed she was scary, wish i knew that before! But oh well, all an experience! Plus it inspired me to make these super pretty pineapple flowers I found in martha stewart's cupcakes. Totally worth it just for that. (Did this make me sound bitter? I meant to sound all 'whatevs' about it but reading over it, eep, i smell bitter... whoops)

Here are my lovely samples all ready to go in my lovely cupcake courier, which i would marry if it were legal.

And here are my lovely pineapple flowers all close up. Stylin' no?

And an aerial shot for reference later.

Dried Pineapple Flowers

Martha Stewart Cupcakes

Makes 24 flowers

2 large or 4 small pineapples, peeled (I only bought one pineapple, and because it was my first time giving it a go, i admittedly only got like 5 decent looking flowers. If you need alot of them, and youre unsure of your cutting skills, probably get 2 pineapples)

Preheat oven to 110C. Line two baking trays with baking paper. Use a small melon baller (or in my case a knife) to remove pineapple 'eyes.' Use a large sharp knife to cut pineapple into very thin slices. (I thought i wasnt cutting mine thin enough but just did my best, and they still worked really well, so dont freak out if yours arent paper thin, when they are dried out they shrink down a fair bit.) (Here is where im going to reference the aerial shot. My pineapple slices were all smooth and round, but i wanted them to look more like petals so i cut triangles out of the edges, i think you can see this best on the left flower. Up to you if you want to do it, i just like it this way!).

Place slices on baking trays. Bake until tops look dried, about 30 minutes and flip them. Bake until completely dried, about 25 to 30 minutes more. (Go a little more or less depending on thickness. Mine were done on the second side after like 20 minutes, so you just have to keep an eye on them). For curved flowers place them in a muffin tin, otherwise just leave them on a wire rack. (I dried mine on a rack but they still dried curved up). Once cooled, flowers can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.

jersey caramel cookies and the fimfam, a lovely mix.

A few months ago my mum found this recipe in the sunday paper by donna hay, it seems kind of un-donna-ish; jersey caramels dont scream class to me but hey, im not classy and am in no place to judge donna so i cut it out and saved it. I wasnt just saving it for any time though, i knew that if i baked this and my cousin wasnt around to eat them all, well, he might just never let me see his beautiful little kiddies again, and i just couldnt have that. so i held onto the recipe untill they came up for a visit. it sure was tough though. Finally the other week they came up and graced me with their super energetic presence and i greeted them with hugs, cheek pinching, and the only thing they really wanted, cookies with jersey caramels in them. oh and dont judge your cookies by mine, i got distracted (as per usual) and overcooked them a little. my peeps didnt seem to mind though, and we managed to eat a fair few of them before my cousin's middle child heath came and ate the jersey caramel out of the middle of all the leftovers. i can tell my cousin is a real dad because he ate the soggy chewed caramel-less biscuits heath left behind, ah, love.

day 2 of their visit we made our way down to the park. heres my little toby, not so little anymore.

An action shot of heath, his whole life seems to be an action shot, not sure if i have any photos of him not moving!

And my little goddaughter ruby doo, i put her on the roof, she seemed pretty okay with it.

Oh yeah, and the cookies i was talking about before! Donna's didnt spill over like mine, but i kind of like them like that, derish!

Caramel Cookies Donna Hay Makes about 16

Ingredients

• 60g unsalted butter (i always just use normal butter, its probably an offence punishable by death in real baking kitchens so yeah, shhh, dont tell donna) (and possibly a little extra butter, see note in method)
• 1/3 cup golden syrup
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups self raising flour (after months of using american and english recipes, i was so excited to actually be able to use self raising flour again!)
• 8 jersey caramels halved (or if you can't get jersey caramels, just use any soft, chewy caramel lollies)

Method

• Preheat oven to 180C. Place the butter, golden syrup and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool.
• Add the flour to the butter mix until a smooth dough forms. (My dough was really dry and crumbly so i just melted a little more butter and added it a bit at a time till it stuck together. As you can see in the picture they were still a little dry so i guess a little too much is better than not enough).
• Roll tablespoonsful of dough into balls and place on baking trays lined with non stick baking paper. Press to flatten and top each with half a caramel. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are golden.

oreos and cheesecake and 21st birthdays, oh my!

So the other day was my sister’s boyfriend’s 21st. I’d already bought him an early birthday present in August (a 10 bucka copy of hotrod) but decided it wasn’t quite enough so I thought i’d give him the gift of cheesecake, martha stewart style. I got martha stewart’s ‘cupcake’ book a little while ago and have been using every excuse possible to bake the hell out of that book, its awesome, i want to bake pretty much everything. I’ve only baked like three and my oh my, it was a sin martha was ever jailed, how dare they take her baking abilities away from the world?? psht, whats a little insider trading when there are oreo cheesecake cupcakes to be baked!

One thing I have to say about martha’s recipes is that they always make ALOT. Doing the shop for these cakes was a little embarrassing, a kilo of cream cheese, two boxes of oreos, wow. I tried to work on my “dont worry, it isnt all for me, its a present!” face in the mirror before I went to the shops but it was too specific so i just settled for my “someone else gave me their shopping to do, what a crazy list huh?” look. No one actually cared though so it was okay. Just like when i was doing my shop for my baking stall at the markets, oh, i thought there would be gasps as i put all that flour in my trolley, at least an interested look, turns out everyone is just interested in their own shopping, sigh, what a world we live in. Okay back to it, here are some visual aids to help you to realise just how much you want to get your oreo cheesecake bake on.

The oreos, partway through me smooshing them to pieces. Well actually i just chopped them with a knife but i still kind of smooshed.

It’s no seafoam green kitchenaid (swoooon) but it mixes a kilo of cream cheese like that! (thats around where i clicked my fingers, didn’t you hear?)

In go the cookies… I didnt crush them up too much, if you do you just get the idea there are oreos in there, i wanted it to be all about the oreo goodness.

Okay so this next photo is good for several reasons. all the paper cases look pretty together you can see the oreo surprise at the bottom (shh, dont ruin the surprise for anyone else) you can see how high you’re meant to fill them, though i reckon you could even go a little more, i just got nervous) After they were all baked i got too excited by how cool they looked from underneath that i forgot to take a photo of them from above… lame. But heres the good part, when you cook them theyre just setting so they dont rise at all really, so they end up looking pretty much like they do before they go in to oven, so woo, it doesnt matter that i forgot, hopefully…

I only have two cupcake tins and so very lilttle patience, so I just got a brownie tin, put some oreos on the bottom and spread the leftover mix on top. I left the oven at the same temp and cooked it about half an hour i think? i should have paid attention. But yeah, just keep an eye on it, give it a poke, if its firm it should be good to go. I have to say that i kind of preferred this to the actual cupcakes. I havent had cheesecake in a while and the cupcakes themselves were very cheesecakey, which can be awesome but this was good because it had a thinner layer of cheesecake. Each to their own.

Now the recipe says to cool the cupcakes in their tins, then store them in their tins till serving. I think this is silly, i left mine in the tins for like ten minutes then checked them and the tins looked like this. Soggyyyyy. So i took them all out and cooled them on wracks then put them in containers and left them in the fridge. I was scared they would collapse or something but they were fine. Silly martha, so overprotective of her cheesecakes.

Okay now try and say that this is not supercool. I want to hear someone say it, i really just dont think anyone could. I dont even think it matters that we dont have a photo of the top of the cake, this MORE than makes up for it, right? yes, right!

So in conclusion, I’ve been told the cupcakes were a hit, they got a little slimy on top but my people didnt complain, i just worried. I would definitely make them again, theyre just a little different to the usual cupcake and yeah, awesome. Please enjoy them, care of martha!

Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes Martha Stewart, Cupcakes Makes 30

Ingredients

• 42 oreos (or the like) 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped
• 910g cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar (i used castor sugar but im sure normal sugar is fine)
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs at room temp lightly beaten (ive never really gotten the whole room temp thing when it comes to eggs. i never actually do it and it works okay…)
• 1 cup sour cream (ive never made a cheesecake before, the sour cream freaked me out a little but it was good!)
• pinch of salt

What to do with it all

1. Preheat oven to 135C (seems super cold, i was worried i had converted it wrong, but hey, all was good!) Line standard muffin tins with paper liners, place one whole cookie in the bottom of each.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually, add sugar and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.
3. Drizzle in eggs a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.
4. Divide batter evenly among cookie filled cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer tins to wracks to cool completely. refrigerate in tins at least 4 hours, remove from tins just before serving. (Or be a rebel and do like i did! I know, im wild.)

baking: my blessing, and my curse. my super delicious curse.

So many nice, non fattening, portable hobbies out there. I look at those people on the bus, doing their Sudoku, looking all content and relaxed, all those people of an afternoon going for a run. Hobbies you can do almost anywhere, almost anytime. I was even one of those people once, I gave knitting a go, I would knit of an evening while watching telly, while talking with my roommates. It made me happy, then I realised that I had twenty scarves and lived in a climate that never really got past light jacket weather. Then I found that ‘500 cupcakes’ book and went ‘oh fun!’ I didn’t even care that there weren’t REALLY 500 cupcakes in there. However many there really were they were pretty fun. I thought the baking phase would pass, I starved it with 18 months in Japan with no oven, then I went mad on it, with a weekend filled with baking for a market stall I booked at the last minute but no, the baking hobby is like that guy that turns to liquid metal in terminator. I can’t remember the end of that movie, he might have died at some point, but from the parts I saw, he was really hard to kill, so yeah, thats my simile and im sticking with it. So i’ve decided to just embrace the baking. It’s causing bit of a rift between me and the old jeans I can’t fit into anymore but hey, who needs jeans when you have baked goods. (Oh god, I just pictured myself saying that again in like five years, when i’m one of those people who has to be moved out of their bedroom window by a crane, maybe i should rethink my attitude towards the jeans??) Hopefully this blog will be a step in the old jeans wearing direction. I’m hoping that by sharing my favourite recipes with you guys, I can live vicariously through the baking you guys do and maybe not bake so much myself? Fingers crossed.