A selection of goodies

Here is how the treats looked when I laid them out in work the other day. I think everbody was happy campers after eating that lot!!

Smarties Rocky Road yum yum yum!!!!!!!!

My new cake server doesn't leave my side......or rather , the pavlovas side! He he he he :)

Thanks Melody :)

What a lucky lucky girl I am to have a friend like Melody :) Just look at what she gave me for a gift last week for no reason whatsoever!! She said she saw it and thought of me...how cute. I just adore it. Now I have no excuse not to bake a cake when someone is coming over, a cake server like this just HAS to be shown off!!! x

Operation cupcake!

Well as I was telling you I had a work lunch to bake for and I also had a birthday order for a dozen cupcakes so it was all about the cupcakes Thursday night in our house! This is a selection of the decorated cupcakes, I had great fun with the sprinkles, glitter dust, candy hearts, marshmallows and melted chocolate as you can see. Part of the birthday order was for seven of the cupcakes to spell out the name Georgia as it was a gift for her so I set about customising.....

....first of all I melted some white chocolate and set it in heart shaped mini silicone molds. Once they were fully set I melted some plain chocolate and pipped on the little letters to make up the name. Then all I had to do was place the little hearts onto the swirls and decorate them.

Here they are packed up and ready to go. To make up the dozen I also included some chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and pink glitter dust and candy hearts, Vanilla frosting with gold stars, yellow frosting with coloured candy circles and vanilla frosting with pink heart sprinkles.

Its hard to see the detail close up when the cupcakes are packed together in a box so here are a few photos.

Well you just cant have pretty cupcakes in a not so pretty box so I bought a plain box and fancied it up myself with some cupcake stampers, glitter, a felt heart, a nice pink ribbon and a handmade gift tag :) Now , at last it was all ready for the birthday girl!!!

A busy few weeks

OK OK I know .......I have been brutal for blogging these last two weeks but in fairness I have been flat out and haven't have a minute. I had to bake for a Charity coffee morning for Alzheimer's , a work doo for 70 and then I had a cupcake order for a Birthday!Phew!!! Oh and to add to that we were working on nulaskitchen.com and launching it online........so am I forgiven yet??! So how about I show you exactly what was taking up all my time..........

One of the goodies I made for the charity event was bite size banoffies! I piped fresh cream over the banana and...

......added some grated chocolate and a chocolate baton. Then...

....popped them into some pink cute cake cases. Then for some cupcake making!

I just did a selection that way everybody is happy. Here is a close up of a few...

The Nula Cupcake hahaha!

A chocolate and pink frosting with pink glitter dust and a pink chocolate handmade heart.

Some of the cupcakes packed up and ready to go. Apparently all the goodies went down a treat and plenty of money was made for Alzheimer's :)

Some dessert anyone??

Well it all started off with a full fruit dish ha ha ha...but it actually really did. I got up this morning and thought what could I do with all that yummy fruit?? :) I decided to make a fresh fruit salad and then got a bit carried away....... so I chopped, peeled and prepared some fruit... pomegranate, apples, plums and a pineapple. I was left with a lovely looking pineapple shell so I filled it with the fruit salad and served it with cream...then I decided I wasn't quite finished as I had some fruit leftover and had Janey, Peter and Finn coming over for a cup of tea and a catch up so...I whipped up a pavlova....



I covered it with cream, filled it with the fruit, pipped more cream around the edges and drizzled melted chocolate over it all....yummy! Even with the four of us (and actually with Gareth and Peter its really six!) I had loads leftover so I dropped some in to our neighbours and best Betty sitters Leonie and James! I think the neighbourhood was well fed tonight !!

Trying out a new recipie.

OK so Gareth has a charity coffee morning coming up in his work so I was thinking of what I would bake.....everybody loves Rocky Road so I thought....how about combining Rocky Road and a cupcake??Yummy :) I was googling for ages for inspiration and I found a cupcake with caramel frosting with marshmallows, melted chocolate, caramel sauce and chopped nuts. The frosting was made with a basic butter cream flavoured with caramel essence but after looking everywhere I discovered you cannot buy caramel essence here! So I was gonna have to make it from scratch.....here is how it all went...

A bit of this and a bit of that...the basis for the frosting...

...mixing up the vanilla cupcake base.....

...you cant really see from the photo but the mixture was so so yellow because I made it with a totally free range egg my sister brought me up from her chickens...

Here are the little vanilla bases all ready to be frosted.

Here is one frosted with the caramel frosting and decorated with my new edible glitter dust. I went on a little shopping spree in a baking shop today. I got this glitter dust in gold and pink(obviously!!) and some new nozzles for my piping bag and cookie cutters :)

Here are three different variations I did on the caramel frosting....plain caramel with glitter dust, Rocky Road with melted chocolate and caramel sauce, grated chocolate with a chocolate spiral.

This photo includes another topping...melted chocolate with glitter dust. You could make up different combinations all night really!

This is what Gareth was then faced with for the tasting test...I wanted to know which was his favourite combination but after getting through half the plate he said he loved them all!! Gosh doesn't he just always say the right things!! I still haven't tasted one..its funny how after you spend so long making them your not even in the mood to eat them yourself afterwards :)

Béibhinn comes to visit.

My favourite little goddaughter came to visit me yesterday after her swimming class. She was in top form as always and had great fun playing with her uncle Gareth :)