Carrot cake cupcakes

very yummy, simple carrot cake recipe with crushed pineapple which really makes them moist and tasty.
look at the gorgeous cupcakes on her site, you will wish you never did! 

ive never made carrot cake before so i didnt expect it to quite so full of carrot and empty of batter as it turned out but i think thats how they are supposed to be. and i actually followed the recipe on this one!

baked to perfection! (in my cute new heartshaped cup cake holders)

voila! for the icing i mixed cream cheese with honey because i dont have anymore icing sugar and it tastes pretty divine.
happy baking :)

Lemon and almond ginger pinwheels

look at these beauties! the recipe i started from is here but i really used it as more of a guideline. crisp outside, softer inside tastes like ginger biscuits and lemons and almonds all rolled into one. (scuse the corniness!)

  

These biscuits take time because you have to let the dough get cold in the fridge and freezer. so do it on a day youre busy at home.
here is the revised version of the biscuits i made, they are delicious. i only changed this cookie recipe because the one i was following was a bit wierd so i added a few things. also, i like lemons and i like spicy biscuits, so my recipe is made for me. if u dont like these things just add less to decrease the flavours.

Lemon and almond ginger pinwheels:


25 biscuits


Ginger dough
· 2 tbsp softened butter
· 2.5 tbsp sugar
· 2 tbsp honey or molasses
· 1 large egg yolk
· cup flour
· half tsp ginger
· half tsp cinnamon
  pinch salt
· pinch nutmeg
· pinch mixedspice


· Lemon dough:

· 2.5 tbsp softened butter
· 2/3 cup sugar
· large egg white
· 1tbsp grated lemon rind, 2 tsp lemon juice
· few drops vanilla extract
· 2/3 cup flour
· pinch salt

Method
· 1. To prepare ginger dough, beat butter and sugar. Add honey and egg yolk; beat until well blended. Add flour, ginger, salt and spices; stir with a whisk. beat at low speed just until combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap; chill 30 minutes.

· 2. To prepare lemon dough beat butter and sugar. Add egg white; beat until blended. Beat in rind and vanilla. Add flour and salt to butter mixture; beat at low speed just until combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap; chill 30 minutes.

· 3. Unwrap ginger dough. Roll ginger dough between sheets of plastic wrap into a rectangle (8mm thick). chill 10 minutes. Unwrap lemon dough. Roll lemon dough between sheets of plastic wrap into a rectangle (8mm thick); chill 10 minutes. Carefully stack ginger dough on top of lemon dough, leaving a cm border along one long edge. Starting with the long side without a border, roll up dough. Seal edges (do not seal ends of roll). Cover with plastic wrap; freeze 30 minutes.(seriously 30 min or until really hard)

· 4. Preheat oven to 180°c.

· 5. Unwrap dough. Cut with a sharp knife into 20 slices (about 1cm thick). Reshape rounds, if necessary. Arrange slices 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake, 1 batch at a time, at 180° for 8 to 9 minutes, take them out even if they arent brown, take them out! Cool on wire racks.

rolling the doughs together

yummy pinwheels ready for the oven. do not cut your cookie dough log into slices unless it is rock hard

ps. these biscuits have the Ben stamp of approval, which means theyre pretty tasty!

Mugly cake mistake




oh it started off so well, almonds and everything



i used this recipe because i didnt have eggs or butter but wanted chocolate cake.

 if you must use it and i say must because you should make a real cake instead,

but if you must use it, then i must tell you that it is possible to make a delicious 

cake without these 2 vital ingredients. take this recipe and triple the sugar, milk

and add a lot of almonds, if you have any real chocolate on hand it probably

wouldnt hurt to melt it in there.

so promising it looked, so tasty it wasnt.
the revised recipe would be:
5 tbsp flour
2 tbsp cocoa
6 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. baking soda
tiny pinch salt
Mix these ingredients together and add

9 tbs. milk
1 tbs. oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla
2 tbsp roughly chopped almonds


microwave for about 2 min or until cooked

mm..




and thats where it ended. they are now sitting in the sink and ben and i are playing rock paper scissors to decide who has to clean them up!
happy mugging!

 



Birthday cakes, biscotti and fig preserve

Had a spurt of baking now that the kitchen is clear of flatmates. they are away because its august and august means everyone is on holiday in rome. half the shops around work are closed! back to the cake, this is Anne's birthday cake (a work colleague), it is her birthday tomorrow and i decided to start the celebrating early. because, thank goodness we dont work on saturdays!

used the Hershey black magic cake recipe because it is the best.

this is biscotti. i decided that since im in rome i should stop buying it and start learning how to make it myself. i know, it looks a bit strange but its going to be biscotti. i used an italian recipe and apparently traditionally it should be made without butter, only egg. and this was what i decided to do because you see i didnt have any butter left after the cake... so i used this recipe here and added lemon rind, cinnamon and roughly chopped almonds. it was very yummy

see it turned out okay

last but not least... the fig preserve.
i have been watching the fig tree we pass on the way to work everyday, for a sign of ripeness. today they were still as small as usual but i looked closer and some of them were splitting at the ends. so i picked a few and they were ripe! the tree is ina parking lot so im not sure whose property that would make the figs but theyre mine now. maybe theyre poisonous?



after reading a few recipes on preserved figs. i used some water, added some sugar, boiled it up, added some lemon pieces, cinnamon stick and popped them all in a leetle pot to stew away. stewed for a while then poured it in a jar...



and now im waiting for it to cool so that i can feast!!!

and all the while leetle diego was playing happily around my feet. little monster