Hi guys, happy new year to you and your families.

Lately I’ve lost my blogging mojo but maybe with the new year and all I will regain it. I’ve also been super exhausted lately. Siobhan comes back from maternity Monday, though I’m off all week and I feel a certain duty to make sure everything is up to date and in the same way she left it. I’m not looking forward to going back to my old role at all. Time for a new job me thinks. Oh to not have to work for a living!

Plenty of things have happened so I will catch you up briefly. Saran, Sean’s sister, had a beautiful baby boy on the 17th of December a full day after she was induced! Mother and baby are doing well!

Introducing Jack Patrick Milane

Sorry about the poor photograph, I didn’t take it obviously *cough* Sean *cough*, he wasn’t so happy to be photographed, but I was happy to be holding him.

The next day, a full 8 days late, Nelia Lubar entered the world! Pics are to come but she is absolutely adorable. We went round to the birthing center when she was just 1 day old and again this evening. Lisal, the new mommy, is a much better photographer than Sean so will let her photo’s do her daughter justice. She put on the hat I made for her and apparently it’s a big hit. It’s the go to hat as it fit’s so well so I’m so glad. It’s a newish pattern for a new baby hat that will stay on a wriggly babies head. Think a cross between a bonnet and beanie. I didn’t think to write down the pattern but I am going to do her another, babies grow so fast! Once I do I will share the pattern.

I’ll round off this brief post with cupcakes I made for Lisal and Lee’s New Years dinner today….

…because everyone loves cupcakes

Pssst I made those flags. Real easy, rub-offs, ribbon and double sided tape attached to lollypop sticks.

Let’s hope theres another post from me this year hehe.

The carnage was too horible to photograph and I just don’t have the energy now any way.

What I don’t fail at though is folding paper stars:

I’ve made lots of these and will be selling them at the christmas fair. Speaking of which…

Click the image to enlarge

If the baking fails at least I’ll have something to sell lol.

Starry’s back, back again, starry’s back, tell a friend.

Yes I found my camera lead so I am extremely happy to have pictures yay! AND look what I have to share with you….

See those sprinkles? They’re Dr Oetkers Barbie sprinkles. They were hard and not that tasty so not that impressed with those. Still they look pretty and the edible sugar was pretty!

From this you would assume I have masses of free time and stuff. Um, no… Work has been a bit manic and I have been very stressed :(. Baking is very theraputic though and with a lovely BF to help with the cleaning up (and eating) it’s even nicer. Works a bit of a sod of late so pretty things cheer me up. The cupcakes were for my moms birthday. Which was last Sunday, mothering Sunday for all you Americans. Take a look at the rest…

I didn’t take that photograph by the way if it doesn’t look like my usual style lol, Sean did. I love those toppers. I didn’t have any letter cutters (Now I do, thank you ebay and Nigella) nor any piping bags (grrrrr ebay seller for not sending them on time). But they were just as effective imho. Cupcakes are all me, icing is courtesy of Betty Crocker, if you’ve ever tried to make butter cream without a mixer you appreciate why I used shop bought. Doesn’t taste as nice but still yummy. Making them rainbow was not so hard. Four layers spread across a cupcake liner…

Is it necessary to do a how to?

Bah! When it rains it well and truly pours down! This all happened Friday night when I got home from my day out and I had no electrics on my sockets. Few hours of stressing out, calling electricians and dead silence later the electrician arrived and fixed it in two seconds lol. However the problems did not end then. Losing power had thrown the router out of whack so I couldn’t get online. Trying to fix it I accidentally killed my PC. Don’t ask me how. So now I had no PC and no internet. For some reason pipex doesn’t have a quick dial number that works so I wasted a good few hours trying to get through to 150 when 150 doesn’t exist :|. I tried not to worry about it and just got on with having a fun weekend instead….

It was great fun! We went on a cupcake hunt in Greenwich, wandered around the shops in Canary Wharf and on the Sunday I went into London and was all touristy! Relaxed and had fun and the PC got fixed woohoo!

Greenwich Observatory

Aren’t those cakes gorgeous?

So then Monday I call pipex. They don’t know what is wrong but they tell me oh it will resolve in 24 to 48 hours. I just had this feeling that it would not get fixed so easy and I was right. A whole week without internet! Only reason I have net now is cos I am using the master tester account mwahahaha! To tide me over though at least I had my awesome swap package!

Check it out!

Had to make some cupcakes. The batter was a bit moist so note to self, when using foiled papers add more flour. Those sparklies are pretty cool huh! Don’t try and eat them alone though tastes like milk protein and your tongue goes funny :|. The most awesome part of my package was the Cup-A-Cake. What a great invention! Especially for people like me who take cupcakes to the movies hehe.

Thank you Hannah! You really got me down to a tee!

Also I know I’ve missed two more fridays but it was not my fault!. I am gonna post them during this week some time AND I will be giving away some of the things I make. So look out for that.

I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit :(. I’ve lost enthusiasm I think because it’s not quite how I want it right now but I’m not inspired to fix it… Hopefully I will catch my second win soon!

I haven’t forgotten the fat quarter project just it’s been so gloomy the past week not much oppurtunity for taking photo’s but I will write it up soon.

For now a recipe…

Sunny cupcakes with chocolate syrup frosting

Yummy!

Cupcakes Ingredients:

• 175g S/R or all purpose Flour (buy super sifted or sift)
• 150g Caster/Superfine Sugar
• 150g Butter or Cake Marg (I use Stork SB)
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• few teaspoons of milk.
• vanilla to taste
• food colouring (I used yellow and red)

Icing Ingredients:

• 60g Milk Chocolate
• 130g butter (130g is about 1 cup)
• 130g icing sugar
• 60ml (1/3 of a cup) double or heavy cream
• just under a teaspoon Maple Syrup
• and I put in a cap of cognac because I’m a drunkard j/k

Method

1. Add the flour, sugar, butter then eggs to your mixer. Mix untill smooth. Add your vanilla and then milk till you have a nice dropping consistency. In hotter climates you will have a loose batter. Add the yellow colouring to the mix and blend well, not too much colouring though you don’t want it flourescent.
2. Now fill a prelined tray with one table spoon full of mix each liner.
3. Now add a little more yellow and a drop of red to get orange if like me you didn’t buy orange colouring… I went for a sunset orange kind of colour.
4. Add another table spoon to each liner. You can be neat and try and get them smooth but I didn’t bother just dumped it on top! The cups should be pretty full.
5. Bake for around 12-15 minutes at 180c gas mark 4 or until well risen and brown.
6. Remove and allow to cool a few minutes before putting on a rack.

Now for the icing.

1. Melt the chocolate and add to the mixer with the syrup. While it’s churning and a little of your sugar then add the softened butter. If your butter is unsalted add a touch of salt.
2. Add the rest of your sugar and mix well!
3. Add the cream bit by bit while the mixer is still on. If needed add a little more sugar to firm it up. I added a little yellow colouring to get the caramel colour.

Two toned!

So much to do and not enough time… So what do I do? I blog! Actually I’m waiting for cupcakes to come out of the oven. Because I’m so tired though I’m making rookie mistakes :(. Oh well I’m gonna smother them in icing any who.

I’m not really looking forward to the party now. My sister and I had a falling out last night. She was sposed  to make a scrapbook for the bride to be and I was helping her, by helping I mean I was doing most of the work while she chatted, ate and drank. Well she’s had 3 weeks to make this thing and last night she is rushing to finish it. So I’m cutting and mounting photo’s then she has the cheek to moan at me it’s not how she wanted it! So I tell her do it yourself then! (Ok, maybe I didn’t use those words…) and she get’s in

a huff and leaves. By this time it was 9 o’clock, I had already made my gift, redid my gift cos I got glue on it :S baked and iced 50 sugar cookies, fed Ken and my sister trial cookies, been shopping to get ingredients and the icing bags I had to order in…. AND I still had to bake 36 cupcakes and ice them, relax my hair and iron my dress.

Grrrr so ungrateful! To top it off she never even said thanks for the work I did on it. I won’t go on about it but I am so annoyed it will spoil the day cos I know she won’t just let it lie… sigh! Oh wells.

I’m all done nowapart from getting dressed and icing cupcakes. The nozzle I ordered hasn’t arrived yet. If it doesn’t come before they have to be collected they’re just getting splatted quick fast lol. Ooh it just came right now this minute! Best go ice cupcakes! (The icing is so yummy it’s all I’ve eaten today :S)