Scrap room & Kitchen!

Hi there

Well finally I have made it into my scrap room, I have done a canvas for a friend who has helped me,he wouldn't accept any payment, so instead sent me his wedding picture to scrap.  Not that he has any idea what scrapping is!
The canvas is meant to be red and I might yet rip off the scrapping and paint it red as with the Distress inks I just couldn't get it to go red enough.  They live in Australia and trying to get a colour scheme or idea out of a bloke is really hard work!  I rang his mum in the end and decided on red but it really looks pink. Anyway here it is:

I just hope that they will like it?
Also I have been playing in the kitchen again, the family is complaining because I bake to much, I need to find a rest home that will let me at there ingredients and kitchen for a day and I could try all the recipe's that I want and hopefully get the "trying" things out of my system!
Here was a couple that I did last weekend, this is a Black Forest Brownie, you guessed it made with a cake of Black Forest chocolate, very rich but the kids loved it!

Then I wanted to make these lemon curd meringue cupcakes and they were YUMMY!

The kids and hubby didn't like them so I gave them away, but mum, dad and myself liked them very much!
And this weekend my new book "crabapple cupcake" arrived so i tried the Vanilla recipe with the chocolate fudge icing, i saw a technique on the Internet where you split your batter and colour it (i did chocolate) and then layer it in your cupcake - so what the heck, gave that i try and this was the result:

 The kids thought i was a genius lol - short lived by the way.  Their verdict on these was "ok" but we prefer the normal recipe!
So these are heading off to work and to mum and dad for the second opinion!
But am sure they will also head off in the lunch boxes as well!
Well that's it for me, nothing else to report!
Hope you all have a fantastic week and thanks so much for stopping bye :-)

Playing in the Kitchen again!

What a weekend this one has been.  I was making cupcakes for Bo's daughters 13th birthday party and it was the biggest DISASTER I have ever had in the kitchen and to top it off hubby was in there taste testing and asking me what I did wrong and did I put all the ingredients in?  Then he thinks it needs more butter (there is NO way it needed more butter) please imagine someone who does not really bake much taste testing and making suggestions - I held my cool very well, whilst making faces at Natasha (the birthday girl!) so I put more flour in and tried to cook one again and bearing in mind this is a triple batch!  Nope still no good, so 4 mixtures later, two cakes of chocolate and I figure out that instead of putting in two thirds of a cup of sugar i was putting in one and two thirds.
Now to my defense I have been struggling with sleep for months and I even when to the doctors last week for some sleeping pills which didn't work, so my head has not been clear - so I will blame the lack of sleep!
But in the end we got there (this photo was taken off Tarsh face book page - thanks Tarsh)

I did however want to have a play with a Chocolate cake wrap (the love hearts around the cake) so I made this:

I had also brought a pen of sorts so I used that and make the butterfly's and the words out of coloured white chocolate.  I was a bit impatient (I know so not like me lol) and took the cake wrap off a bit early so the wrap was not as shiny as it should have been.  But with Chocolate gnache in between the layers all over the cake and then chocolate around it how wrong can it be lol.

Abby went to school dressed as a ninja - she just dressed in stuff we had had home but I thought she did a good job, will have to get back to scrappin and scrap this:

Well that's about it from me - go the mighty All Blacks for later tonight, and I hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

Thanks for stopping bye!

Rachel

Another Week gone!

I hope you all had a relaxing weekend?

Now before I start I would like to tell you a bit more about The Creative Cake Academy in the UK.  This was the last post where I made these:

I have been very fortunate to have Ann the wonderful lady from The Creative Cake Academy ask me if there was anything that they could do in there instructions to make it easier - and apart from the yes please - just hop on a plane and pop over answer, there were only a couple of little things that I suggested and Ann didn't think I was thick and popped them into the instructions.
And apart from getting all the instructions, detailed list of materials and wonderful links to U tube tutorials to help you, you also can e-mail them direct with any questions and trust me - they are super quick to get back to you with an answer.
I would highly recommend this as a way to not only make lovely cupcakes but a great way to learn extra skills.
And if you are a visual person (like me) there are some fantastic pictures and the u-tube tutorials that will help you through the workshop along with the great instructions!

Now my daughter saw some cookie monster cupcakes on the Internet and I left her to it and this is what she came up with:

 lol I think the swirl ones are because she got sick of piping the dots, but i thought she did really well.
I also made some cupcakes as a trial run - got a birthday party to make for, for this weekend, can't give them a new recipe if I haven't tried it!
Cookies and Cream cupcakes!  I got the recipe from Bakerella blog and have been wanting to try them for some time, now confession time - I missed out the milk from the batter but I think it just made it more like a chocolate cake and a little less "light" so the Oreo cookies that are in the bottom of the cupcake didn't rise to the surface when I cooked them like hers did - but hey they still tasted pretty good.
Here is a picture:

Janine and I ran the Lovelock memorial "fun" (yeah right!) 10km run on Saturday - now my prerequisite was it was not allowed to be hot, no wind and prefer no rain but I can run in the rain!  Poor Janine was not feeling well and at one stage i didn't think she was going to be able to continue but we did the run in 57 mins so I was pretty happy with that, and pleased to have it over as it was a warm strong nor-wester blowing and it was a hilly route!
Today I did part of the garden and boy do i hate gardening - man I need a Gardner, we also went for a walk and it was FAR to hot - here is where I was thank full we were not running in that heat today!

Well that's about it for me, hope you all had a great relaxing weekend and are ready to face the last week of term for all you teachers and kids out there.

Have a happy week and thanks for stopping bye.

Take care
Rachel