Christmas Creations

I have been making a few different things in the lead up to Christmas.....




Easy Christmas Cupcakes - I made my stand-by vanilla cupcake recipe, and iced them in green and red icing, topped with stars I made by colouring some fondant icing, and cutting with cookie cutters





Iced Christmas Cake - I made the cake as per the recipe here at the 120 dollar food challenge blog and had my first go at icing a Christmas Cake.  We are yet to crack the cake open, but I was quite impressed with how it looks! (I did not use brandy or rum - I only had vodka)





Chilli Jam -  I used up some of the chillis that are growing quite prolifically in my garden and had my first attempt at bottling something! I used the recipe from Nigella Christmas, the only change I made was that I added some garlic to the recipe.

Pumpkin Cupcakes - for Halloween!

We had a lovely time at a Halloween BBQ with friends this year!

We carved some pumpkins, which looked rather impressive when all lit up!

The pumpkin innards were put to great use on these delicious pizzas, expertly cooked on the bbq by Kara. 

Anita made us all individualised graveyard chocolate mousse!!

My contribution were these Pumpkin Cupcakes... the recipe goes a little like this.....

ingredients
1 cup cream
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
approx 500g butternut pumpkin (this weight was with the skin & seeds still attached)
approx 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2  teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon "apple cake" spice mix

first remove skin and seeds from pumpkin and chop the pumpkin into small cubes.

In a saucepan, place chopped pumpkin, and about half of the cream. add 1 tablespoon maple syrup and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon & 1/4 teaspoon "apple cake" spice (or just use some nutmeg, or whatever other spice you like).  Cook over a gentle heat until pumpkin is cooked - you need to puree it, so make sure it is well cooked.  When cooked, puree with a stick blender, or similar. set aside to cool.

When the pumpkin mix has cooled, get on with the rest of the recipe.....

Preheat oven to 180c

Combine remaining cream, eggs, sugar, maple syrup and spices and beat well.  Gradually add the flour and stir till well combined.  Stir through pumpkin puree.

Spoon mixture into cupcake trays lined with papers.  Bake in oven approx 20 minutes. But check on them as they may cook a little more quickly.

Let the cupcakes cool.

Then ice with the icing of your choice - I made a simple icing of icing sugar, margarine, a little maple syrup and cinnamon. And coloured it orange.

To decorate, I melted some dark chocolate and piped it into slightly dodgy looking shapes that vaguely resembled spiders.

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)