When school went back and I began studying, free time was a little scarce for making things, so here is everything I made from February to April!

1. Taylor Swift Eras Outfit
   

I made a skirt and a top with a satin lining and an overlay of sparkly tulle. Of course, I also made about 20 friendship bracelets! The top and the skirt were made just by trial and error – measuring my body, sewing, trying on, etc. There’s a zip on the side of the skirt and on the back of the top.

2. Baby-boy cupcakes

A dear friend who was due with a baby boy in May had a baby shower, so I took the opportunity to make these ruffly buttercream vanilla cupcakes.

3. Bunny Bags

I made 10 Easter bunny bags for the little people in my life for Easter – a great stash-buster if you have an ever-growing fat-quater stash like me. You can find a tutorial here.

4. A Lemon Meringue Cake

I made this cake from Clare Saffitz’s book Dessert Person and it is delicious!

5. A Lambeth-Style Cake

This cake was for my niece’s 2nd birthday – strawberry flavour inside so it was super pink!

6. A Busy Board

James and I put together this busy board as a gift for my niece and she loved it! Lots of things to zip, spin and play with.

7. Ceramics

I tried my hand at wheel-throwing as a birthday activity and I am totally obsessed. Will update with pictures of finished pieces once I collect them.

So the whole baking deal has taken a bit of a back seat as we’ve cut sugar out of our diet, but I’ve been working away in the kitchen, trying and failing to find baked goods just as good as the sugary stuff. Just in time for Australia day, I’ve made fabulously tasty, refined sugar free Lamingtons. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Sponge
Three beaten eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
150g butter
3 tablespoons Rice Malt Syrup

Coating
I cup coconut oil
1 cup powdered cacao
2 cups no-sugar-added desiccated coconut

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
With a saucepan on low heat, combine Rice Malt Syrup and butter until melted.
Place flour, eggs and liquid mixture in a bowl and mix together with a whisk until combined. The longer you whisk, the more air and therefore the fluffier your sponge will be.

Line a loaf tin in baking paper and pour mixture in. Place in the oven for 15 minutes, or until you can press your finger in the middle and the cake bounces back. The sides should begin to be a golden colour.

Meanwhile, mix coconut oil and cacao in a bowl until smooth. This is quite a dark mix, so if you (or the people you’re serving to) like it things a little sweeter, add some stevia to taste. Place coconut in a second bowl.

Take the sponge out of the oven when done, and place on a cooling rack.

Once sponge is cool, cut into fingers (approx. 16). Coat each sponge finger in the cacao mixture, then roll in desiccated coconut.

Keep in an air-tight container in the fridge until ready to serve!

Mine curve down at the sides, but if you prefer a less “rustic” look, you can square off the edges before you dip ’em in the coating.

Let me know if you make your own and I hope you have a good Aussie-Day break!

So my bestie just had her Kitchen Tea and I thought it was a good excuse to take a bash at a bouquet of cupcakes!

Super simple and super effective. Here’s how to make ’em:

You’ll need 15 cupcakes (it’s an awkward number I know, but my 1 dozen cupcake recipe tends to stretch itself to 15 so see if you can do that with yours too!) I tend to prefer vanilla because they show up less than chocolate with lighter colours.

You’ll also need about a batch and a half of buttercream, split and coloured into the different flower colours you want to use. I’ve chosen yellow, orange and pink to match the “citrus” decoration theme of the party.

You’ll also need a styrofoam ball and a pot/bucket thats a little smaller than the diameter of the ball. The ball I’ve chosen has a diameter of 15cm.

You’ll need some green tissue paper in a suitable hue to match your colours, some tooth picks and piping bags & nozzles.

First up, pop your ball into it’s container. Space 15 toothpicks spaced evenly around. I found it easiest to poke one in the middle at the top, then poke in two more in line, either side, to create five toothpicks in a line. Then, three fit in underneath that line on each side, with another two on each side at the bottom.

Then, start putting your cupcakes on the toothpicks. You’ll need to re-angle, change positions and even add more toothpicks in as you go. I found that the ones at the bottom generally need two as they’re working against gravity. 

Then you’ll have something that looks kinda like this ^^^

As you can see, there’s some white parts poking through and ruining our bouquet illusion. This is where the tissue paper comes in! 

Chop your tissue paper into triangles. Or squares. Or pentagons – it doesn’t really matter, they just need to be in little chunks.

Holding a piece or two in the middle, scrunch the paper up until it looks kinda leafy and then poke a tooth pick through the middle. The paper will sit in between the cupcakes without the toothpick but as the cupcakes are removed it’s good to have the tissue paper secure.

Once you’ve put all the “leaves” in it should look something like this ^. Try to have the paper lower than the cupcake cases when they come in contact with the sides. This just helps when icing not to get the icing on the tissue paper. 

Then it’s time to start icing the cupcakes. I’m using a closed star tip to make roses by keeping my swirl low and even, but there are plenty of other flowers you can create with different tips – if you’re keen for some variation have a look on Youtube or Pinterest.

Then add you second colour in…

And your third!

And there you have it! A bouquet of cupcakes!

And in action…

I’ll take any excuse to bake cupcakes, and putting a little surprise inside has always been an ambition, so what better excuse than to make these  Surprise Valentines cupcakes!

What you’ll need;
A cupcake tin,
A small cake tin,
A fondant roller or rolling pin
A serrated-edged knife
Patty pans
Food colouring
A piping bag and nozzle
A heart-shaped cookie-cutter
Some white fondant
A batch of butter cream, coloured with your colour of choice.
A batch of cupcake batter.

The cupcake batter I used was my favourite – made from scratch. This technique works just as well with a packet mix too!

You’ll need a flat and clean surface to work with your fondant on, I used a piece of baking paper for easy clean up.

I chose pink food colouring and these pretty pink patty-pans.

I used a disposable piping bag and a large-star tip. This just adds a bit of extra flair but if you don’t fancy yourself the piping type you can try: spreading on your icing with a knife, or using a zip-lock bag as a make-shift pipping bag.
Also, I only used the smaller heart as it fit well inside the cupcakes so be careful of size.

This batch of butter cream suits 12 cupcakes and is made from using a whisk attachment to combine 225g of butter with 5-6 cups of icing sugar (adding in a cup at a time).

The size of cake pan doesn’t matter ,you just need to make sure you can fit in 12-15 of your hearts once the cake is baked.

Start off by colouring half of your mixture. I like to add quite a bit of colouring as when you bake a cake, it tends to lighten in colour.

Pop your coloured cake mixture into your small cake pan. Put it in the oven at the recommended temperature for your recipe, however the time it takes will depend on it’s thickness. Mine took about 15min all up but it’s a good idea to keep checking as it bakes.

Once it’s out and all goldeny-browny-pink on the top, let your cake cool in its pan. Then remove and place on a plate. Pop in the freezer for about an hour so that it firms up and is easy to work with. Then slice off any brown from the top and the bottom of the cake so there’s only pinky-goodness for your little hearts.

Then cut out as many hearts as you can so that you can pick and choose your faves.

Fill your cup-cake cases up to a third with batter.

Pop your hearts in facing all the same way so that you can remember the bast way to bite or cut into the cupcakes. If those you’re serving them to take a big bite out of the side they might be a bit confused at the rectangle facing back at them!

Then fill the cases up until they’re 2/3rds full, making sure to place a dollop of batter right on top of the heart. Bake with caution – again checking as they bake. Mine took about 12 minutes. (Oh, and don’t worry about the hearts re-baking, for some reason when you place cake in batter, just the batter bakes)

When they’re out they’ll look something like this ^^^ you can see a little dip where the hearts are which is totally fine. If you can still see some heart poking out, it might be worth covering the cupcake with a thin layer of un-coloured buttercream so that the pink heart can be separated from the pink icing and you can get the full effect.

Once your cupcakes have cooled, it’s time to ice ice baby.

Snip the point of the piping back off and put the tip inside before putting your piping back in a glass for ease.

Then top it up with the buttercream and twist the end when your done.

You want to try to press the buttercream down as you go so that it’s not all airy like this. The more air bubbles means the harder it is to pipe smooth icing.

To make the fondant heart-toppers, place your fondant down on a surface dusted with icing sugar/corn starch. Roll with a rolling pin, rotate the fondant, roll, rotate, roll, rotate, until the fondant is about 2 credit-cards thick.

Cut out more hearts than you need as some are prone to breaking/turning out ugly.

Then place them on a flat surface, in a dry room. Drying them out for 24 hours is best, but they should be firm enough in an hour or two, depending on their thickness and the humidity. 

Using a medium amount of pressure, swirl the piping bag around the cupcake and into a point -it’s far easier than it looks! Keep all of the cupcakes facing the same way as when you baked – that way you can remember where the hearts inside are!

Put a fondant heart on inline with the heart inside. I told those eating this batch to face the heart towards them and bite in. If you can’t tell people as they eat, hopefully that will be their instinct anyway!

The finished product!

And, on the inside…