Dinosaurs need love too

Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day 2011, whether you have a special someone or not!!

[Stegosaurlub by DA's Earthknight]

When you need a hero...

THEY'LL BE THERE!

Artwork and concept by d.r3sto on flickr

Mug-asaurus

I want to show you the mug of awesome I received from Ben for Christmas:


After adding a hot beverage :)... FOSSIL DINOSAURS!!

Sunshine, cuppycakes and RAINBOWS

I forgot what brought this on, but I had a hankering for the happiness only a child can experience with colours and food... so I brainstormed and concluded "anything that looks like its packed with sparkles, unicorns, rainbows, sugar and tartrazine is generally what children want their happiness made from". Combining cupcakes and rainbows had the desired effect. So... another recipe to try out that's fun and tasty and has the tooth-rotting equivalence of a sugary Chernobyl!

Rainbow vanilla cupcakes

Ingredients (~ 24 cupcakes OR 12 muffin-sized cupcakes ;P)

150g softened butter
300g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
400g self raising flour
250ml milk
4 eggs
food colouring... however many you like (I limit it to 5 at the most: red, yellow, green, blue and purple)

1) Lay out a cupcake/muffin tin and line 12 or 24 of the moulds with paper cupcake cups and set aside. Combine sugar and butter in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Add vanilla extract and eggs. Mix well.
2) Add the flour and gently mix, adding the milk gradually to the mixture. Make sure that there are no flour or butter lumps... (those are gross in any cake/baked good).

3) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

4) Separate batter evenly into 5 (or however many) bowls for each individual colour you wish to make your rainbows with. In each batter bowl add a few drops of the colour you desire and stir it in with a teaspoon (each bowl will need its own teaspoon). Divide each coloured batter bowl amongst the cupcake cups, approx. 2 teaspoons of each colour -layered- per cupcake cup.
5) Place the tray in the oven for 25mins or until cupcakes are cooked through - poking a wooden skewer or toothpick in the centre of the cupcake should come out clean when the cupcake is cooked. Place on a cooling rack for 5 minutes before removing from the tin.

Enjoy eating Sunshine and Happiness!!

Sadistic streak

It may be a little sadistic, but I rather enjoy torturing gingerbread men by dunking their heads in a mug of coffee or hot chocolate, then watching their icing faces melt away as they realise the true horror of their predicament. It is probably on par with lining up gummi bears and tearing the head off one while the others watch on. Playing with your food is acceptable!

Ok, so the compliments I received for my gingerbread cookies have spurred me to pop the recipe up for everyone to try out.


You will need the following for ~50 cookies

• 250g butter, at room temperature
• 200g sugar
• 1/2 - 1 cup golden syrup
• 2 eggs, separated
• 4 cups plain flour
• 2 tbs ground ginger
• 1-2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
  
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• additional flour for rolling dough

(1) Beat butter and sugar together with an electric mixer (easier, trust me - unless you have really sturdy wrists). This mixture should be creamy; add the syrup and egg yolks. Mix well.
(2) In a separate bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and bicarb. Gradually add to the syrup mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon. The mixture should become dough-like and will leave the bowl easily without sticking.
(3) Lightly flour a clean surface and place dough, knead it until it's smooth (don't clean the floured surface, you'll use it again). Roll into a ball, flatten to make a disc and wrap in clingwrap. Place in fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Icing ingredients

• 200g icing sugar
• food colouring (red and green)
• egg whites left from gingerbread recipe
  

(4) In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180°C. Get the egg whites and combine with 200g icing sugar. Separate icing sugar into however many colours your are wanting - one white, one green and one red etc. Leave one aside. In the others, add the desired food colours (8 drops) for a vibrant red or green. Cover each container with clingwrap and refrigerate.
(5) Collect the dough from fridge, and add more flour to surface if necessary. Roll dough to .5cm (5mm) thickness and use shaped cookie cutters for desired effect. (I found that taking 1/4 of the dough at a time and rolling it was easier and less messy).
(6) Place cut-out cookies on baking paper in 2 trays (I had to use 3), spacing them about 2-3cm apart (otherwise you end up with a MONSTROSITY). Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until they're browned considerably. Take them out at 10 mins and they'll be soft cookies, leave them in a little longer and they'll be a little softer than gingersnaps. Leave on a rack to cool.
(7) Spoon icing into a piping bag (or if you're a genious, get a ziplock bag, spoon into a corner, twist the bag to seal the icing in and carefully snip the corner). Decorate!!

Deck the halls with glowing Froggies!

Fa-lah lah lah lah, lah lah lah lah!

Thank you lovely Kassidy for sending me this great idea from National Geographic...

now if only Bunnings could supply the frogs too.

Cake! Anyone?

There are cakes...


... and then there are CAKES!

Fossil digging... did I hear a chorus of "YAY!"

Armadillo cake of awesome!

There just aren't enough miniture scale models of LotR cakes around anymore

Mmmm calamari cake

This tiger is too pretty to eat

And of course, the gore of the Halloween cake... yum!

... but then there is ... well... this:

Ever wanted to eat a child? Now you can, in cake form.