Tag: cupcakes

baking

You’re a cute l’il pumpkin, aren’t you?

wittychild

I don’t hate my job, per se.  I do, however, hate that the eight hours per day spent at work, plus travel/preparation time, is severely cutting into my crafty time.  Hmm.  Maybe I’ll enjoy it even more if I don’t get to do it all that often.  Or maybe I can learn to cleverly invest my paycheques and retire within the next two years, thereby freeing up all sorts of time.  Or not.  In the meantime, if they’re happy to pay me to hang out in the office, being helpful and productive and generally not screwing things up too much, then I’m happy to be there.

One thing I definitely love about my job, though, is the Bake Day Club.  There are about 20 or so of us now who take turns bringing in delicious home baking (or even purchased donuts; we’re not picky) every Thursday.  This week was my turn – my first time.  Eek!  It had come out some time ago that I do the whole vegan thing, so I was super determined to prove to everyone that I can bake just as well as they can, without the use of dairy or eggs.  I whipped up a pan of Cranberry Lemon Zing Oat Bars from Kris Holechek’s The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes – a crowd-pleaser if there ever was one – and these little gems:

Top-down shot:

How autumny!  (Thursday being the first full day of fall, of course.)  These are a variation on the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.  I left the chocolate chips out, replaced them with ground walnuts, and added a little extra ginger, nutmeg, and cloves (about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon of each) to give them a spicy pumpkin-pie feel.  Oh, yes, and used mini-cupcake pans, obviously, instead of standard ones.  People kept asking if I had baked them from scratch, and no one thought to ask whether there was, you know, like, tofu or something in there, ick.  Yay!  Chalk up another victory for tasty vegan baking!

Despite the aforementioned time crunch and sad lack of craftiness, I have managed to finish a couple of UFOs (or does that make them FOs, now?).  Stay tuned….

baking

Some day we’re gonna marry and you’ll be my pineapple queen

wittychild

Nothing outstanding today, sorry.  This isn’t even the first time I’ve made them.  But summer’s rapidly approaching, and nothing is quite as refreshing as a Pineapple Right-Side-Up cupcake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Aren’t they adorable?

They look all fancy-like but are actually ridiculously simple.  And straight out of the fridge…mmmm….that delicate blend of spice and fruitiness can’t be beat.  And who couldn’t use a little extra Vitamin C?

baking, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Birthday Bonanza

wittychild

Update: I was finally able to give the birth sampler/card to my coworker last week, more than a month after the baby was born, but no matter…

My mumsie’s birthday was also last week; naturally, much home-made goodness was in the works.  I made her blue velvet cupcakes (blue is her favourite colour) with vanilla-coconut buttercream frosting.  It’s kind of hard to tell in the photo what colour they are, but trust me, they’re blue.

I think that icing may be my favourite thing that I’ve ever made…all coconutty and yummy…

She still collects hedgehogs, so a hand-stitched card was a must:

It’s from issue 216 (I think!) of Cross Stitcher, and originally said “Nice Cross Stitch”, but I took some artistic liberties with it.  I still have a baby-sized callous on my finger from doing the backstitch on that.  Uurgh.  Trying to pierce the fabric where there’s no hole and it plainly doesn’t want to be pierced becomes old after a while.  Still, I think the end justified the means.

For the next piece, you must understand that “Bork” is a verb in our household, and not just an interjection.  In the kitchen, dropping, spilling, or mixing vigorously and flinging, well, anything, will cause someone to yell, “You borked the ice cream/potatoes/toast!”  (Much as the Swedish Chef yells “Bork, bork, bork!” just before he sends his utensils flying.)  She “got it” as soon as she opened it, and I daresay as custom designs/projects go, this was one of the best.  Also simplest.

It’s on one of those awesome tea towels from Sublime Stitching which was an absolute dream to work on, and is currently brightening up the oven door.

As always, thanks for looking!

baking

Tequila and lime juice and salt…oh, my!

wittychild

When I kicked off my five-day weekend (technically, Labour Day should only afford me a three-day weekend, but yay for vacation time!), let me tell you, I had plans, baby.  Big plans.  It was going to be a veritable orgy of creativity around my place.  But you know how it is: the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  Oh, I did get a little cross-stitching in, and started a mock-up of a Lolita dress, but neither of these creative endeavours yielded anything I could complete and post here, proudly proclaiming, “I made this!”  That all changed today when, with my trusty copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World! in hand, I turned out these babies: Mucho Margarita Cupcakes.

Aren’t they festive?  I think the coloured sugar around the edges is my favourite part.  This is the second recipe I’ve tried from that book – having inhaled the pumpkin-chocolate chip cupcakes with cinnamon icing before I could get a picture – and I cannot say enough good things about it.  This is twice, now, that I’ve managed from-scratch cupcakes that a) rose properly, b) cooked through properly, and c) didn’t burn.  Highly recommended!