Flower Cookie

A Flower for the cookie competition over at LilaLoa:

The Muffin looked at this and said, "Is it meant to be a sunflower?" I answered quite truthfully that I really didn't know what sort of flower it was meant to be, I just sort of let the cookie show me what sort of flower it wanted on it.

A bit of Springtime Sunshine...

Yes, while the Northern Hemispherical blogging world buzzes with pumpkins and falling leaves, down here in Australia we are halfway through Spring, and the weather is glorious!

As I look out my window, I see our lime trees springing once more into flower (seriously, these things do not let up - anyone have any New And Interesting ideas for using up lots of limes??). I see our rhubarb plant growing stronger, leaving behind the puny, spindly stalks that freaked me out so much in the chilly days of Winter. I see the dove that has its egg-filled nest in our kaffir lime tree, picking its way around the base of the tree for seeds (or bugs?) to eat. I see sunshine, blue skies, and butterflies. And dancing joyfully in the breeze, sending its heady scented invitation out to all the butterflies and bees that frequent its plentiful blossoms, I see this:

Lavender. Lots and lots of beautiful French Lavender. It looks beautiful, it smells wonderful - and if you're thinking dry, dusty pot pourri, that's not what I mean at all. You haven't really smelled lavender until you've smelled it growing in full flower on the bush, bathed in sunshine. It also attracts a delightful number of bees, and we love bees, not only for their cute fuzziness and lovely buzzy humming, but also for the work they do in producing the warm liquid gold that is honey. I loooove honey.

Which brings us, funnily enough, to Cupcake Hero: October. Melissa of I Dream in Buttercream is this month's host, having won the Caffeine contest. And she has chosen Honey as this month's theme ingredient.

Well, what could I do? Who am I to argue with an army of bees? Lavender and honey it is!

SUNNY HONEY CUPCAKES

Cupcakes (adapted from this recipe by Chockylit)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp dried lavender flowers
125g butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup honey
300g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg whites
1 fresh lavender flower head (optional - it gives the syrup a nice freshness, but isn't 100% necessary, so don't panic if you don't have it growing)

Modus Operandi
Process sugar with lavender flowers in a food processor until lavender has been powdered and dispersed amongst the sugar.
Cream butter with 1 1/4 cups lavender sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and egg yolk. Add honey and beat well.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt together, and add this and the milk to the butter/sugar mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk and mixing after each addition.
In a clean dry mixing bowl, whisk egg whites to soft peaks.
Fold egg whites gently into cake batter until incorporated.
Scoop batter into cupcake papers, and bake at 175 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Meanwhile, place the remaining 1/4 cup of lavender sugar into a small saucepan with 1/4 cup of water, and bring to the boil, stirring. Add the fresh lavender flower, if desired, and remove from heat. Allow to cool until cakes are out of the oven but still warm, and then brush a little syrup over each cupcake. Note: this recipe makes MUCH more syrup than you will need. How much syrup you use will determine how prominent the lavender flavour is in your finished cupcakes, so if you're not accustomed to using lavender in cooking, go easy the first time (or even better, do one and eat it to test how lavender-y it is, before going ahead with the others!) Reserve the leftover syrup as some will go into the frosting, and the rest you can use for something else. Hmm... lavender sorbet? Ooooh, now there's a thought...

Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting.

Lavender & Honey Buttercream (all mine)
Ingredients
250g butter
250g icing sugar
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp milk
Lavender syrup, to taste.

Modus Operandi
Cream butter and sugar until very pale. Add honey and continue to beat well. Add milk and a couple of spoonsful of lavender syrup, and beat until fluffy. Taste and add more syrup if desired, remembering that you want the lavender flavour to be subtle in the frosting, as you already have it in - and on - the cupcake.
Pipe a swirl of frosting onto each cupcake, and sprinkle with picked lavender petals if desired.

Et voila!

Now, it might seem I've been going on about lavender a lot, and you might well be thinking "yeah, but the theme ingredient is honey". But the truth is, these cupcakes would make Winnie the Pooh proud. They are a very honey-ey affair indeed: warm and sweet, with the lavender playing a lovely fresh floral counterpoint.

To me, they Taste Like Sunshine.

My Biggest Morning Tea...

... to raise money for the Cancer Council!

The morning was a great success - everyone had fun, and we raised over $350 - not bad for a little party (just some family and friends)!

Anyway, I thought I would share photos of some of the goodies I made for the morning tea...

Lime sugar cookies (our lime trees are going berserk at the moment - anyone have ideas for using up masses of limes??)

Which is best - single daffodil, mini blossoms, or yellow outline?

Macarons in three flavours: the white ones are plain with coffee buttercream, the purple ones are plain with blackcurrant & white chocolate buttercream, and the pink ones are rose flavoured, with rose flavoured white chocolate buttercream and each topped with a sugared rose petal.

Yummmmm...!

Cupcakes - chocolate mud with dark chocolate ganache and a piped royal icing daffodil.

Decorated sugar cubes, again with daffodils (the Cancer Council uses a daffodil as its symbol, hence my rather extensive use of it on the day). This is the first time I have decorated sugar cubes, but it won't be the last. Has major wow factor - everyone was blown away - and it's really very easy - result! :o)

Tiptoeing through the TULIPS.....

Okay, so once again I haven't posted for ages. Hopeless, I know. And despite the fact that very likely the only person actually reading this is my mother, I am hereby making a... well, let's call it a New Financial Year's Resolution, to post here more regularly. I'm going to aim for once a week. God knows I bake often enough, I just never seem to get around to loading the photos up and writing something. But I have an excuse this time, I swear...

Some time ago, my very good friend announced her engagement to her man, and asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. In a fit of insanity following the joyful announcement, I also eagerly volunteered to make the cake. For the wedding. That I was a bridesmaid in. Having never made a wedding cake before. Hmmm....

As it happens, it actually wasn't a total disaster (huzzah!). However it did mean that I was rather insanely busy in the weeks leading up to the Big Day (which was earlier this month). And what was I busy with, you ask? (apart from dress fittings, phone calls about flowers, emails about shoes, the hen's night, the kitchen tea, and baking the actual cake itself, of course)? TULIPS, I answer. Yes, the bride and groom wanted gumpaste tulips on their cake, which is fine, except I've never made wired flowers before, so I was VERY stressed... I immediately turned to that font of all knowledge, Google, for inspiration, and after perusing several different methods suggested by many different cake artists, I sort of took some of all their tips on board and then winged it.

.

The first decision I made was that I really did not need to do all the little stamens etc inside the tulips, as the bride and groom had stipulated that they wanted the tulips almost closed. So a) it would have been a waste of time as they wouldn't have been visible anyway, and b) these were after all my first ever wired flowers, and I was nervous enough as it is without having to think about stamens, thanks. So I went with the solid-cone-of-gumpaste-in-the-middle method (yes, that is a technical term, people. You may use it if you wish). I then wired the cone, marked it and left it to dry. Then I glued the inner petals straight onto the gumpaste cone using egg white, and left that to dry whilst I made the scary bits - the wired petals. After some swearing etc, I managed to get the hang of poking the wire into the teeny ridge along the centre of each petal, and of veining the petal without having the wire poke through; and after a few failed attempts with aluminium foil, I finally had the idea of laying each petal over an egg to dry. This worked, and gave a nice shape, I think. Then I just needed to tape the outer petals on (which took a LOT longer than I thought it would - is this normally a slow process, or am I just really bad at it??) and my tulips were ready to be dusted, steamed, and left for a final drying. I was pretty happy in the end, I think they're not too bad for a first attempt!

Anyway, here is a photo of the final cake. All four tiers were fruit cake, iced with white sugarpaste (no marzipan).

So, in conclusion, it is in fact possible to be a bridesmaid and make the wedding cake too. It helps if it's fruit cake (no last-minute baking). And it's absolutely necessary to be able to deliver it the day before the wedding. And if one didn't have a two-year-old to look after at the same time, I'd imagine the whole thing would be... well... a piece of cake... ;o)