P.S...

I made red velvet cupcakes in the weekend. I basically love making them because the recipe calls for baking soda and vinegar together. If you remember primary school science and making 'volcanoes', this makes a great frothy reaction - very exciting! Also - unlike the volcanoes - the end result tastes good and is very cute with a swirl of buttercream on top. A win-win recipe really!

(although, as you can see from my picture, the mixture pulled away from the casings as it cooled for some reason, leaving weird craters)

Welcome to 2011

I just can't believe it's a week into 2011! Time goes fast when you're busy I guess...

One thing that has been keeping me busy is my new years resolution: I have tentatively committed myself to take part in a 365 photo challenge - basically, taking a photo a day for a year. I am hoping that Project 365 will help me to become a better and more creative photographer, and help me get used to my latest purchase - a Nikon D5000! It is my first dSLR camera, and as such is taking some getting used to - the possibilities seem endless and I am still tentative even taking it off auto mode.

Anyway, I have been semi-diligently taking pictures every day this year - although it is harder than i expected just to remember to take a shot some days. My pictures are uploaded to my flickr stream here, so take a look! Here is a sampling of the first few days:

More Lovely Rainbows

This time I made mini cupcakes which ended up being mostly icing - which was fine with me! Again the sprinkles make me smile.

Rainbows

I love sprinkles so much! They're like edible rainbows...

Sweet as Sugar

These are my latest cupcakes - chilli chocolate with buttercream icing. They are definitely my favourite recipe, I'll post it sometime later! I also topped the icing with coloured sugar to match the cute pinky papers.

Chocolate Overload

I also took time off from studying (what am I saying - more like I fitted in a bit of study in the gaps...) to bake these extreme chocolate-lovers' cupcakes. The cakes were chocolate fudge with dark chocolate ganache topping served with grated chocolate on top! I love chocolate but could only manage two of these in a day before succumbing to chocolate overdose, but my boyfriend ate four and showed no apparent signs of slowing down. I left some with him and shared the rest with my neighbour - who also loves chocolate. I judge these a success, but probably can only handle them very occasionally!

Pretty in Pink

I do love pink frosting! I put a mixture of berry flavourings in this batch, to go with the chocolate cupcakes underneath.

More Cards

Sweet as...

I popped this ATC into a cupcake themed swap for a partner. I simply printed out a cupcake and coloured it in with coloured pencils, added some rub-ons and stamps to a pink background and attached the cupcake with adhesive foam tape. So much pink always puts a smile on my face!

Father's Day Cuppycakes!

My gift to dad for Father's Day - his favourite chili-chocolate cupcakes.

Ah, sweet

Aww. These are the first cupcakes I made! I wasn't really into baking, I preferred cooking - things like chili and Rachel-Ray-style comfort food. Then my best friend gave me these cute-as cupcake papers and the tiered display and I never looked back! I love love love cupcakes!

(they were delicious, by the way - mocha swirl with buttercream icing)

Icing goodness

Mmmmm... creamy vanilla buttercream icing.... Deliciously bad for me!

Sprinkles

My cute-as cupcakes topped with rainbow sprinkles!

And a pretty soft-focus photoshopped one...

I'll eat you up i love you so!

I LOVE these cupcake papers!! Cupcakes were delicious too, vanilla bean with mixed berry icing.

Yum!

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cupcakesfromgrace

Yum!

These were delicious - double chocolate cupcakes with faintly caramel-tinged icing.

Made 21 of these for my friend's 21st birthday, all with different toppers on them. Definitely a success at her party!