{I Love You Berry Much} Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Berry Buttercream

With less than two weeks to go until Valentine's Day, I am sure many of you are looking for ideas on celebrating the day. Last week I talked about our romantic getaway at Hillsnek Safaris. This week I'm going to give you  the first of three ideas to win your way into your partners stomach with food. The best way to go as far as I'm concerned!

{Happy New Year} 2013 in Review

As this year draws to an end, I find myself reflecting on the year that has been. I am sure many of you are finding yourselves in the same position. For me it has been a busy year and a bit of a wild roller coaster. now I'm not going to focus on the doom and gloom parts of my year, except to say that those parts are the parts that we learn the most from. So it's important to take some time to look back on the hard times and even failures to see what we can learn from them.

In January of this year I started my little baking blog. It's so exiting to look back at my first posts and see how much I've grown over the year: in baking, photography and writing. I also have a stronger sense of the type of baking that really brings me joy: creating delicious cakes and watch the way they light up the faces of the people I share them with.

Ok, enough of the soppy, deep stuff. Let's get into the cake! Here are some of my favourite baked goods over the last year.


January: Naughty Nautical Cupcakes
These I baked for a themed bachelorette party. I was so happy with how all the toppers turned out!

{Christmas Eve} Dark Chocolate Truffle Gingerbread Cupcakes with Chocolate Bourbon Buttercream

This is my second Christmas post for the year. If you missed it, make sure you try out this home-made eggnog recipe I posted yesterday; I am an eggnog convert! These are seriously the most decadent and delicious cupcakes. They’re perfect for the Christmas season, but I can’t say I’ll be able to hold out and only have these once a year! A delicious gingerbread cupcake with a Lint dark chocolate truffle filling and a chocolate Bourbon buttercream. I mean, come on!

These Are a Few of My Favourite Things!

Wow its been a CRAZY few weeks. Tons of deadlines at work, a horrible bug that knocked me down harder than a taxi on Jan Smuts (for the foreigners...think bus on a free way), my birthday (YAY!) and then a trip to Cape Town for work followed by a long weekend of fun, food and whale watching!

We had so much great food in Cape Town, I've decided to write a few posts on some of it. Cape Town really is an amazing city! But more of that to come...

Milestones and Milo Cupcakes

Six months ago when I started up this blog, it was mainly for my own enjoyment: a place to express myself, share my love of baking and track my progress. This last week, I reached 1 000 hits on my blog. Now I know for some bloggers this is a tiny number that they reach each morning by 9am, but for me it's an achievement and something I am very proud of. Thank you to you all for taking the time to read my posts, pin my pictures and enjoy my baking (hopefully) as much as I do.

I also took a few steps in the social media realm and created a Facebook page and Twitter account; you can now follow my baking adventures here, via subscription, on Facebook, on Pinterest, on Twitter, or on Instagram. I'm still working on figuring out how to get the links for those setup nicely on my page, but watch this space!

To mark this occasion I would like to share with you my new favourite cupcake: Milo cupcakes with condensed milk icing. OMG these things are amazing! I had to stop myself eating the batter just to make sure I got a few into the oven. And man am I glad I did. Fresh out of the oven they were even better! Once topped with condensed milk icing they were unbeatable!

St Paddy's Day Celebrations - Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I'd been eyeing the Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes of Brown-Eyed Baker for a little while and decided that St Paddy's day 2013 was the day I would finally make them. So I combined these with the Chocolate Guinness Cake to make for one great St Paddy's day for me!

Naughty Nautical Cupcakes

My sister's best friend recently got married. For her bachelorette, my sister and some of her very talented friends put together a Naughty Nautical Bachelorette.

Place Settings at the Tables