High Tea!

Kara had a marvellous idea, and a high tea was organised! Complete with pretty tea cups, delicious morsels of food, a beautiful garden in the sunshine, and ladies in dresses and hats!











Anita made this selection of tarts, custard and mini pavlova!


Fancy sandwiches by Kara

Lemon tarts

I made these strawberry macarons. They were filled with strawberry almond buttercream.  They didn't quite work as well as my test batch, but they still looked pretty and tasted quite yum! (Will have to keep practicing!)


Those are my choc caramel brownies that are out of focus.... they were nice and gooey!

These little scones were great! I think I need the recipe!!

I also made these little lemon cupcakes!

We only slightly over catered.... (ok, there was heaps of food left over!), but maybe all of the guests just under ate :-) .  Look forward to the next one!!!!

baking - zucchini cake

Another way to use up excess Zucchini!!

I hadn't really considered using zucchini in something sweet, but I found this recipe on Taste.com.au (click to see the recipe), and decided to give it a try!  The result was a deliciously moist and fruity cake!  It was super simple to make, just mix everything together and bake!

a couple of notes -

• The 250g of zucchini mentioned turned out to be one large zucchini.  
• I am not a fan of raisins, so I just used 300g of sultanas instead of 150g of raisins & 150g of sultanas
• My loaf tin was longer than the one the recipe specified, and I found the cake was cooked after just under an hour.
• I needed a bit more icing, because I smoothed it over the sides instead of just letting it drip.

Cupcakes - Chocolate & Vanilla

I made these same cupcakes for 2 different events that we had, both on the same weekend.

ingredients for cupcakes


250ml cream

220g caster sugar

2 eggs

225g self raising flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons cocoa powder


preheat oven to 180c and line your muffin tins with cupcake wrappers (makes about 18 cupcakes).



whisk together cream, sugar and eggs until well combined. Gradually add flour and beat until smooth, add vanilla. Take half of the mixture and put into a seperate bowl.  TO the remaining half, add the cocoa powder and mix well (add a little milk if the mixture gets too thick)

dollop alternate spoons from each bowl into cupcake wrappers and bake for about 20 minutes (keep an eye on them!)

When cakes have cooled, ice with vanilla icing (icing sugar, a dab of butter & hot water), then drizzle randomly with melted dark chocolate (I melt in the microwave, them ut into a plastic bag and snip off the corner, for easy drizzling)

Baby Shower Cupcakes for Gina

For Gina's Baby Shower, I made Vanilla Cupcakes iced with chocolate buttercream.  These are very easy to make, and the result is a nice light, fluffy cake!

ingredients
250ml cream
220g caster sugar
2 eggs
225g self raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

preheat oven to 180c and line your muffin tins with cupcake wrappers (makes about 18 cupcakes).

whick together cream, sugar and eggs until well combined.  Gradually add flour and beat until smooth, add vanilla. (you can ad whatever other flavour you prefer - e.g lemon zest, or orange zest instead of the vanilla).

spoon batter into the paper cases and bake for 20 minutes - the cakes will be a lovely golden colour.

to make the chocolate butter cream, melt 120g dark choc and allow to cool.  Beat 150g softened butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add 160g icing sugar and continue to beat, till you have a very light and fluffy mix, add a splash of vanilla and the cooled melted chocolate, and mic until well combined (and still light and fluffy of course!!). Put into a piping bag and ice the cooled cupcakes.

Gina had some very cool cupcake toppers, which made the cupcakes look a little bit fancy schmancy!!

and while we are here, how about some more baby shower pictures.....




on the left are some vegan chocolate truffles - I need to get the recipe for these because they were great!




this guacamole was delicious!!

.
I ate too many of these crunchy felafel!



meatballs!!



pretty sandwiches!!

Morning Tea - Cinnamon Tea Cake

Is there anything better than the aroma of warm cinnamon? This is a simple cake - quick and easy to make, that tastes absolutely delicious!!

ingredients
60g butter or margerine (softened)
1 teaspoon vanilla (extract)
150g caster sugar
1 egg
150g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup milk

extra butter - melted
cinnamon sugar (made to the ratio of 1 teaspoon cinnamon to 1 tablespoon caster sugar - I always keep a jar in the cupboard!!)


preheat oven to 170c
grease 20cm round cake tin & line base with baking paper

beat together butter/marg, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Ad egg and beat well. Add (sifted) flour & baking powder with the milk. stir.

put mixture into cake tin, and bake for approx 30 minutes. Turn out, and flip back over so the top is at the top!!  Brush the top of cake with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

enjoy while still warm, and remember the times when your Gran used to make a cake just like it.