What's your favourite pastry?

Hands down my favourite, most loved and always craved pastry

would have to be a chocolate eclair.

I've tasted some pretty average store brought ones over the years

but am fortunate enough that my Year 10 Home Economics

curriculum included them as part of our education.

Someone up there must like me.

The perfect cream pastry for an afternoon tea spread.

Fancy Food for a Family Wedding

My dear cousin planned and got her dream wedding. Her reception was held here and catered by this award winning Australian company. To say that I had high expectations for the food is an understatement.

Pre-dinner drinks were accompanied with minature salmon bites, beetroot tarts and gourmet sausage rolls. Being the greedy person that I am I did not manage to get a shot of them as I was super hungry and could not wait a second to taste them.

Entree was a baked Heidi gruyere and braised leek tart with Joseph cold pressed olive oil, pear and walnut salad:

Main was a choice between a salmon dish and this:
Roasted Lilydale free range chicken filled with Barossa Valley pancetta, onions and rosemary on soft polenta with roasting jucies

Dessert was not one but two slices of cake:
Triple layer chocolate wedding cake, and white fudge with raspberries wedding cake

Either the wait staff were a little too quick or I spent too much of the evening on the dance floor but I didn't get to finish my chocolate slice or even start my white fudge slice. Do I ever feel like finishing off that cake now!

Engagement Party Cupcakes go Public

I was pretty happy with baking skills and very basic cake decorating skills. The colour combination of light pink icing topped with hot pink sugar flowers fand inished with a deep green cupcake case was easy on the eye. A big thank you to one of the most helpful cake decorating shops around for the colour combination suggestion. My lovely Mum helped me ice them all which barely took an hour. I can't wait to have some free time on my hands to do a cake decorating course......

Engagement Party Cupcakes - The Making Of

To save money and as an excuse to do some serious baking I decided to make my own cake for our engagement party. I know cupcakes are literally everywhere at present but I decided they'd be the best option. One of my bridesmaids gave me a cook book from the Crabapple Bakery which had the most superb chocolate mud cake recipe. My other bridesmaid helped me bake all 140 cupcakes on Saturday afternoon. My maid of honour (my sister) tried to talk us out of eating all the leftover cupcakes. Delicious!

Melting butter and chocolate has to be one of my very favourite cooking processes. The smell is pure heaven.

You can just smell how fabulous all the gooey chocolate is.

The completely melted chocolate and butter base.

I got so busy adding all the dry ingrediants to the chocolate and butter base that I forgot to photograph those steps.

Here are the cupcakes awaiting the oven. I love that I made them using my late Nanna's baking trays.

Watch out for the finished product!

Whattaya Mean the Wedding Cake is Big?

There aren't many Saturday mornings where I wake up bursting with excitment and dying to get the day started. Last Saturday was one such day as it was my dearly loved cousin's much anticipated wedding day.

The reason for all this excitement and anticipation? This wedding cake:

My cousin had given me a heads up a few months ago so I was anticipating a magnificent cake but I was still pleasantly surprised.

My cousin's new husband has some serious baking connections. His cousin, who was also his best man, owns this cake shop . His gift to the happy couple was this cake, reported to cost around the $5000 mark.

All the guests received two pieces of cakes. That's what I call a good wedding!

A few more photos to enjoy: