Cupcake bonanza

I think cupcakes are a little addictive - it's taken me years to get around to baking them, and now I've started I just want to keep making more! I do think its all related to being creative, that kind of like doesn't just end with paper and card but extends into all kinds of other areas too.

I spent a day at Blake House Craft Centre today which was really good fun - a good day out if you want somewhere that's not too exhausting but enough to do. It's a bit like Barleylands Craft Village if you have ever been there in Essex too, but this one is in Braintree. It has a maize maze which was fun, crazy golf, a tea room and lots of little shops, some crafty, some furniture etc. It's a nice afternoon out and we had good weather too.

So anyway, back to the cupcakes, these were some I made for my friend who only recently gave birth to a lovely little girl - these were the mummy treat to go with the baby presents!

I used a piping bag again and different nozzles, with some sprinkles. The nurses actually couldn't believe that I made them - that's a compliment!

Food, glorious food

So the cooking overload began last weekend and as well as cooking the carrot cake large cake, carrot cake cupcakes and also mini cupcakes, we decided to try cooking something new Saturday evening too! I wouldn't recommend doing all of this in one day though...

We made a buffalo mozzarella and tomato starter with balsamic vinegar and olive oil - it tasted very nice, however the 'drizzling of vinegar' needs some practice!

and then we went on to cook a seafood paella from Jamie Oliver's 'Ministry of Food' cookbook - this was yum!

Not bad for one weekend eh!

Chocolate swirls

More cupcakes from the last couple of weeks...

These ones were chocolate swirl cakes (I had no idea that you could make the swirl pattern in the cakes just by dropping chocolate mixture into normal cake mixture and only stirring it a little). I piped the icing again, this time using chocolate and vanilla buttercream icing, and this time added sprinkles to some of them. Yum!

More cake!

This weekend we overdosed on cooking and baking a bit, I think it's my new craze but I'm not sure how long it will last! We made ordinary sized carrot cake cupcakes but also these tiny, miniature ones which were just so cute, kids will love them. I've used a piping bag on the mini cakes.

We also attempted to make a whole carrot cake too - it turned out pretty well I think! And tasted very nice, so that was a good effort from us.

No crafting for now - I've been too busy baking...

For Dad

Here is the Father's Day card that I recently made (well, recently being maybe nearly two months ago!).

It's made using a Stampin' Up! image, Bazzill textured card with dots (yes, dots!) and some Making Memories little sticky letters. I'm a bit behind everyone else using these I think, but as I don't have to keep up with the craft trends anymore, I can do what I like and use any out of date craft materials I choose, haha.