New skills and how to pipe two toned frosting swirls

You know, like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. ~ Napoleon Dynamite

I'm not sure I've actually done any tutorials on this wee blog yet.  Am just a wee bit skittish about calling this a tutorial as such - "tutorial" implies that you know what you are talking about, and since I don't most of the time let's call this is more of a sharing of a neat trick or a cool new skill I learnt: Two-Toned Frosting Swirls.

And as we all know, mean frosting skills are up there with nunchuck skills. 

Speaking of tutorials and mean skills, we've just had out first week in neurology!  While they haven't let us loose in the hospital quite yet, we've gotten to interview and examine real live patients!  It's been awesome, learnt so much, tried and failed to not gush like a total fangirl watching the consultants do their thing #suchanoob (oh yes I did just hashtag...)

Anyways I digress.

I've ooo'ed and ahhh'd over this gorgeous rose tinted frosting effect for ages but never actually tried it.  Most tutorials I'd looked up on the web called for gel food colouring and I never got around to ordering the stuff online (lazy, I know!).  But then my husband got a job at Colgate Palmolive and I was tasked with making some toothpaste themed baking to celebrate, so with my good old kiwi number 8 wire hat on I nutted out a way of making the effect without forking out for the fancy colouring.

Sticky Date & Dulce de Leche Cupcakes with Homemade Dulce de Leche

He has fallen from the donkey, but has found a date ~ Iranian Proverb

Like the man who finds a date on the ground (2 minute rule right?) I also completely subscribe to silver linings.

Take this weekend for instance.  I was up in Auckland briefly to visit my husband.  The weather was gorgeous: sunny and warm, we had all these grand plans of doing lots of exciting things and eating yummy food but alas, I ended up with the nasty head cold making its rounds in Dunedin and spent most of the weekend in bed with a box of tissues.

The silver lining however was having my darling husband and his family look after me and keep me all snuggley and warm and topped up with paracetamol and decongestants.  Sooooo much nicer being sick when surrounded by loved ones than alone in freezing Dunedin and having to walk to the pharmacy for meds.   I'm beginning to see why men are tempted to pull out the man flu.

The recipe in this post however, has nothing to do with colds or donkeys, but everything to do with dates.  Dates and Dulce de Leche to be precise with these Sticky Date & Dulce de Leche Cupcakes with Homemade Dulce de Leche which I made as part of my cupcake renaissance.  

Now I know I tend to gush about things I like but seriously, these cupcakes are spectacular.

They are quite simply, amazingness in a cupcake.

Beer o'clock: Chocolate Guinness Ruffle Cake with Salted Caramel Whipped Ganache Frosting

He was a wise man who invented beer ~ Plato

I'm a beer girl.

Yes yes being a little Asian girl I'm not exactly your stereotypical beer guzzler.  Not that I'm a huge drinker mind you.  Hardly.  Just like your stereotypical little Asian girl, I am a complete lightweight.  A pretty cheap date.  But give me a cool refreshing beer on a hot summers day and I'm a happy chappy.  Give me two and I'll probably be under the table.

Now, there are beers, and then there are BEERS.   Guinness, the infamous Irish dry stout, falls in the latter category.  Big, bolshy, in your face beer.  A meal in a glass.  Liquid bread.

Being such a lightweight and thus naturally preferring lighter wheat beers and largers, stout has never been my cup of...beer.    And on top of that, beer and chocolate is  not exactly a combination that screams delicious.  But when my Mum fell in love with this Chocolate Guinness Cake I knew I had to try and recreate it for her.

Weddings weddings weddings and a lemon raspberry & yoghurt roses cake with cream cheese frosting

Goin' to the chapel and we're 

Gonna married,

Goin' to the chapel and we're
Gonna get married
Gee, I really love you and we're
Gonna get married
Goin' to the chapel of love   

~ Dixie Cups

Wedding fever is in the air.

Now go on, admit it, you watched The Wedding too didn't you?

I swear I wasn't going to.  I was going to resist the hype.   But then, like millions of others all around the world, I got totally sucked in.  The outfits! The hats! That dress!  It's the water-cooler topic of the year.  Everyone has an opinion, from the Pippa vs Kate debate to that hat worn by a certain princess.  It is everyone's fairy tale and a bright happy moment in these tumultuous times.

For me, I have a double dose of wedding fever.  Not only was there the Royal wedding to obsess about but my own wedding is in *eek!* two and a half weeks so I most definitely have wedding on the brain.  I'm sleeping, eating and breathing wedding.  There is just so much to do!  So many decisions to make!  It's like the proverbial eight headed monster - you tick one job off the list and two more sprout in its wake.

So seeing as getting married is what all the cool kids are doing these days, it made sense to have a wedding-ey theme of Love & Marriage for the last round of Baking for Hospice.  For Round 15, I made Lemon Raspberry & Yoghurt Roses Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - it's an incredibly moist tangy lemon cake dotted with bright bursts of raspberries and covered in cream cheese frosting roses.  The rosettes idea is so gorgeous and so easy to do, had I not already baked my own wedding cake (sneak peek to come), I would have been happy to have one just like this on the big day. 

Black forest cupcakes with flour frosting for Dad

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. ~ Clarence Budington Kelland

I'm gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you'll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father
That loved his daughter more than I love you
~ Paul Simon

 
It's Father's Day today in New Zealand.  A lot of people will associate Father's Day, with buying CDs, socks and ties and cooking Dad a steak dinner. 

I was a Daddy's girl so for me, Father's Day is remembering how great my Dad was, how much I miss him and how lucky I was for all that he taught me, sacrificed for me and saw in me.  Dad made me believe I could do anything but was proud of me just the way I was.

He's been gone five years now and while time does smooth over some of the sadness, certain days, like birthdays, special occasions, and of course, Father's Day, are just a bit harder. 

So to cheer myself up, I decided to make Black Forest Cupcakes with Port because black forest gateau was Dad's favourite dessert.  

Malteser Cupcakes

Someone once said that the cupcake is merely a vehicle for frosting.  That is certainly the case for these Malteser Cupcakes.  This malt frosting is out of this world.  I ate it by the spoonful.  It tastes exactly like the inside of a Malteser (or 'Whoppers' in the US) so if you are a fan of those little chocolate covered malt balls you have to try these Malteser Cupcakes!

Sauvignon blanc cupcakes with raspberry cream cheese frosting

Everyone knows that strawberries and champagne are a match made in heaven.  So why not make strawberries and champagne cupcakes?  Unfortunately, strawberries are out of season at the mo and it seems we drank our last bottle of bubbly a little while back, so making do with what we had/could find, I made Sauvignon Blanc Cupcakes with Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting.