oh - and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Some Lime&Cerise cupcakes I made for a friend's birthday on December 20. I am soo annoyed with myself for not taking better/more pictures of these cupcakes - they were gorgeous! Lime and vanilla flavoured cupcake with lime meringue filling (bright lime green, flowing out of the cupcake.. why oh why didn't I take a picture) and white chocolate flavoured frosting. My friend is christmas obsessed and every year she had a different colour theme - this year it was lime & cerise! Thus - the lime & cerise cupcakes. I figured lime tastes like lime and cerise tastes like pink white chocolate! I packaged them up in a white paper box with lime&cerise ribbon - they looked very pretty and I'm sure my friend was very glad to receive them. I think they would have been one of my best cupcake creations!

Have a very happy and safe New Year tonight wherever you are - its a quiet one for us!

xxxM

baking with a buddy

I had this week off work and I planned to do lots of baking but it didn't quite end up as planned. I ended up looking after a friend's daughter, so it wasn't the most conducive environment for the kind of baking I had planned, but still we managed to have some fun.

K and I decorated some gingerbread men and xmas trees, and baked a banana cake for my neighbour - with chocolate icing. K got a wee bit carried away with her decorating and some of the gingerbread had more icing than biscuit!

We made extra banana cake mixture so we could also make a small cake for D and some cupcakes for K to take home. The cake was extra moist and bananaery so we didn't even ice them.


The baking was Monday, we went to Wellington Zoo yesterday. Sadly my camera died just as we arrived at the zoo so I don't have photos of all the animals we saw (haha!) but we did have a great time. K got to feed (and get slobbered on by) a giraffe, we met Tahi - the 1-legged Brown kiwi, and generally enjoy the beautiful sunny day.

here is a pic from my last Zoo visit:

It was the first time at the zoo that I've actually made an attempt to go to all the guided talks. The talks were good - and I was pleasantly surprised that every Guide talked about only using FCS (Forest Stewardship Council) approved wood. Apparently, all construction at the zoo uses approved wood to ensure the wild habitats aren't being destroyed to provide the wood and paper products. To be honest, I think it went over most people's heads - they were too busy keeping an eye on their kids in the hot sun. I'd like to be more environmentally responsible in such things, I hate to think where some of our wood products come from!

D and I were planning to go camping tomorrow (after I work tonight ~ urgh!) but I've just realised I'm on call for work, so going too far out of Wellington probably isn't a very good idea. We're still going to look for a campsite very close to the city (with cell coverage) but its likely we'll be staying home! If our backyard was flat - we could camp at home! hehe.

I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying beautiful sunshine and a happy holiday season.

xxx M

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a fantastic, sunny, and safe Christmas. D and I didn't get up to much, we went to the in-laws' house for a BBQ Christmas lunch. It was a really nice day here in Wellywood, we both got burnt a little. We got a digital photoframe from D's brother (we all buy for 1 person), which was a pretty cool gift I thought. From the awesome Ree, I got my very own Aiko plush rat! I declare it the coolest thing ever. Photos to come!

D and I didn't really do presents this year, we just spent some money on camping stuff so we can go away in February. Speaking of camping, we are thinking we might do a "test" camp this weekend! At the moment we are thinking Lake Ferry. If it works out well, we might go there for our week long camping trip. Its only about one and a half hours from Welly so if I have to go into work I won't have to drive for hours! (More about WHY I would do that later).

Anywho, I'm off to bed. D is watching the football with relish - the outcome could easily affect the Phoenix' position in the league. I'm a little melancholy tonight after a dismal baking failure. I was *trying* to make a delicious treat that I've been wanting to make for aaages and this particular recipe had the added bonus of Sconey being able to eat it (being gluten/wheat/dairy free). I'll give it another go tomorrow I think. I plan to do LOTS of baking and cleaning this week. Trying to make a to-do list, 'cause otherwise the days will just disappear! I've got Monday and Tuesday off work (D is working). I'm working New Years Eve though - start at 2am on the 1/1/09! The joys of end of month processing!

Wait! Didn't I say I was going to bed....

xxM

white fluffyness

I baked some chocolate cupcakes with white fluffy icing for work yesterday. D had a shared morning tea and my work colleagues always appreciate my baking! D wanted chocolate cupcakes with caramel filling and white marshmallowy icing. (To be honest, it sounded gross to me! too sweet!) I topped with a choc-covered coffee bean. They turned out alright, I added coffee to a standard chocolate batter for extra richness. I then made a caramel filling from condensed milk - but due to time pressure I was a bit lazy and didn't pipe it in after baking. Instead I folded it in with the batter. I immediately regretted this when I realised it had just sunk to the bottom.

I'll definitely pipe in after baking next time!! The other mini-diaster was that I didn't beat my first batch of icing enough. When I got up in the morning the fluffy icing had kind of lost their piped shape .... so there was a mix of melted looking and pretty. (Second batch I obviously whipped enough!!) They still looked OK....

Depsite my disappointment, it seemed everyone loved them. D got rave reviews from his dept, and one of my colleauges declared they were the best thing ever (and ate two!). I didn't eat any - for two reasons; I'm trying to be good, and they were waaaay too sweet for me.

Also from my recent cupcake exploits, I baked for when the in-laws came over. We had a BBQ for D's birthday. When I asked what cupcakes he wanted - he said purple with butterflies. I'm trying to reassure myself that he was thinking of our niece... (hehehe). So that's what I made!

I've been thinking about cupcakes a lot lately. Not eating them, creating them. It seems it is an affliction that has affected many many others in recent times. I can spend hours perusing cupcake blogs. I'm seriously thinking about trying to join Iron Cupcake or Cupcake Hero. Both are monthly challenges to bake cupcakes with a particular ingredient....

December is such a busy month, so far I've been to 6 christmas functions. I'm all christmas'ed out. (Though that won't stop me baking gingerbread this weekend...).

Some of our babies are leaving us on Saturday morning. Its going to be kinda sad, I've grown really attached. We are keeping a couple (read: three plus mum), but I'm very impressed with our ability to resist keeping them all. Two of the boys aren't going to their new home til early January so we'll have them for a wee bit longer.

OK, very much my bedtime.

x x M

i'm back already..

more snaps of our perth trip

Scarborough beach at sunset:

While in Perth, D and I did quite a few touristy things while Paul was at work. Including - a trip to Rottnest Island! Rottness is out in the Indian ocean off the coast of Freemantle. It was an awesome ferry ride - in fact I spoke to both mum & dad while on the way out (cheap mobile phone deal) as we were bouncy up in down in the waves - it was so rough. D got a little seasick - but I was loving it.

We rented a couple of mountain bikes and biked around Rottnest Island. It is beautiful. The weather was fantastic. This is the view from the spot we stopped at to have our picnic lunch:

and a shot of the pier where we hung out ready for ferry pickup - the water
was so clear and you could see schools of fish


perth at night from King's park

D has morning tea this week and I want to try out some new frosting ideas, so I'm off to whip up some cupcakes!!

xxM

how long has it been?

Yeah - I've neglected this blog for ages.... you know what.. I'm not even gonna go there. Lots has happened since my last post in April (?!) and I couldn't begin to cover it all.

In 1o points:

1. We lost many of our furkids. We are now down to three permanent residents. However, that said, we've just taken on a foster - pregnant female (was) ... so we currently have Shi (mummy) and her ten darling 5 week old babies. They are separated now (rats become sexually mature at 5-6 weeks, so we separate a bit before 5 weeks to be safe). We're trying to adopt out as many as we can - but I think we'll keep a couple + mum.

2. D and I went for a trip (in Sept!) to visit my brother in Perth. We had an awesome time, and also saw the Phoenix play (read: horribly lose) while we were there.

spooky pic of my bro @ Freemantle prison on a night tour!

the beautiful Combo

It certainly gave D and I inspiration to do a whole lot more "real" travel when work and finances allow!

I promise I didn't make him carry the bags alll the time!!

3. I got a new job... or perhaps two new jobs since I last posted. I'm still within the same company, but I've now moved to IT. Which is amusing for some, as I'm not exactly an IT guru. I'm doing ok - and really enjoying the change. There are some big changes afoot in my company - so its an exciting time to be involved.

4. I'm still Guiding.. its been a full on year and I'm really proud of our girls. We've been on two camps this year and have achieved so much! We awarded four senior Guide awards and our unit has grown from 20 at the start of the year to 35! This is awesome - go Girl Guides! Its especially cool because this year we celebrated 100 years of Guiding!

5. D and I have the camping bug I think! We've been slowly acquiring gear so that we can go away camping on our own! Our car getting broken into and all my camping gear getting stolen didn't help matters - but we're getting there. We've got leave in Feb next year, so hope to go away and "rough it" for a week.

6. The whole weight-loss thing isn't going so well right now... I was really good, but I rolled right off the wagon! Back on I jump - I'm back at the gym and trying to eat well - December is the worst (yet best) month!!

7. I've still been baking up a storm and have had some great success with new cupcake variations. I'd like to get into the habit of baking a new thing once a week... so I can take pretty pictures and feed my work-mates!

chilli-choc cupcakes with chocolate ganache icing


birthday cake I made for a colleague's daughter

8. I've bought D a couple of cook books (I know, I know, gifts for him that are really for me!) and we're trying to cook two new things a week. Its been fantastic and we feel all chef-y! I definitely need to make/find us some funky aprons to style us right.

borscht (beetroot soup)

sweet potato frittata

9. I removed my 101 list... it was big! and long! I think I need a shorter list - both in term and number of items. I haven't deleted the list - I still want to work on it - but it was daunting and made me not visit my blog. So watch this space for my new short term goals!

10. I finally gave in to Facebook - so if you know me in real life - look me up! I hear its cool to have lots of friends. I've even uploaded some photos.....

That my dears, is it for tonight!

x x xM