Cupcakes, Ponies and Christmas

I have mentioned before that my boyfriend and I house/dog sit several times a year, this time it is for three weeks at a lovely house with two Spoodle puppies. I love the dogs, but they are a lot of work, they have been barking a lot at night at possums, so I am feeling a little sleep deprived!

Also I am deprived of the internet there! I have had to travel home in order to catch up on my blogging; I will apologise in advance if I don't get back to you or don't visit as often as I would normally like to.
This will be our first Christmas away from home, and I have been missing the smell of our real pine tree that we normally get. But I consoled myself with a new pretty pink Christmas tree with the cutest new ornaments, cupcakes and My Little Ponies!

I love my fluffy white lights!

Isn't it lovely?? I am looking forward to the Christmas traditions we have like having my boyfriends sister over for gingerbread cookie decorating, and building the Ikea gingerbread house with my sister. I also plan on baking lots of Christmas cupcakes for my lovely workmates, I am thinking I will make gingerbread, red velvet, and peppermint candy cane flavoured ones, hardly original, but awesome Christmas flavours that I enjoy!!

Happy things to report:

• My mum has been allowed to put weight on her leg now, so that means no more crutches!
  
• I had a bit of a teary moment when I saw Cat's Little Miss Cupcake blog post, with my cupcake tote bag prize touring the beautiful city of Paris! Thank you so much Cat!
  
• The mermaid tote bag I made for Becky was featured on One Pretty Thing, thanks Rachel!
• The bird/turkish delight cupcakes I made were featured on Cupcakes Take the Cake! Thank you girls!
  

Last week of work before holidays! Woo!

Turkish Delight Cupcakes

Sorry I have been a little bit slack with posting lately. It's that busy time of year, when you spend all your spare time searching for perfect Christmas presents and recipes, writing Christmas cards, deciding on a colour theme for decorations, and dreaming up what the Christmas table setting will look like. For our family, we do not decorate for Christmas until after my sisters Birthday on the 1st of December, we don't want her celebrations overshadowed by Christmas goings on!

This year my sister turned 17, and made a very mature decision to hold a dinner party for her friends. She spent ages choosing what she was going to serve, and did almost everything herself.
I gave her a hand with decorating, her invitations where yellow, white and black with birdies, so we went with those colours and birds for the theme.

We had a table with nibbles, lollies, tea cups & cupcakes ready to go for dessert...

Photo by Caitlin

The table runner fabric was from Ikea, it was black & white with bird print, I bought a yellow fabric pen and added yellow accents throughout the print. The fairy lights strung above the table provided a magical atmosphere.

Caitlin asked me to make cupcakes for dessert. One of her favourite flavours of mine is Turkish Delight cupcakes, so naturally she chose them. I used the cutest black and white polka dot cupcake liners, and the sweetest ceramic mould to make the fondant birdies on top. I finally am a proud owner of a Wilton M1 tip, after visiting about 4 cake decorating stores, someone finally had one in stock! Oooh the swirls it makes are so so pretty!

Caitlin did such a good job, she worked so hard and it all went very smoothly, I was super proud of her. I was also very impressed with her group of friends, she has definitely surrounded herself with wonderful, kind, well adjusted people.


Turkish Delight Cupcakes - Recipe adapted from Women's Weekly Cupcake Cookbook
Makes 15 Cupcakes

Ingredients

1 1/2 Cup (225g) self-raising flour
1/3 cup (35g) cocoa powder
3/4 cup (165g) caster sugar
185g softened butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup (125mls) milk
1-2 teaspoons of Rosewater essence, according to taste
2/3 cup of Turkish Delight chocolate bar cut up into small cubes
1/3 cup of finely chopped dark chocolate

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/ 160C fan forced. Line holes of muffin pans with cupcake liners.
2. Sift dry ingredients into large bowl, add remaining ingredients, except the Turkish Delight and chocolate; beat with electric mixer on low until speed until ingredients are combined. Increase speed to medium; beat until mixture is smooth and has changed to paler colour.
3. Now add the Turkish Delight and chocolate, gently fold through the batter (I like to sprinkle mine with flour first to try and stop it all sinking to the bottom)
4. Drop 1/4 cup of mixture into cases. Bake for about 20 mins. Stand cakes for 5 minutes before turning onto rack to cool.
5. Frost as desired, I used a simple buttercream for these cupcakes. Enjoy!

Hope the rest of the week goes nicely for you all! I am so ready for the weekend already!