{Valentine's Day} Macarons with Marshmallow Buttercream Filling

Welcome to the second post of my Valentine's series; last week I shared a recipe for delicious dark chocolate cupcakes with a berry buttercream. This week I decided to take on the dreaded macaron! I have made macarons successfully before, and had a bit less luck this time around. Macarons are known for being particularly finicky little treats. Too much moisture, not enough moisture, oven too hot, oven too cold, overmix batter or undermix batter and these biscuit flop completely. I made a relatively large number of these before I turned out with some that I was willing to photograph.

The key to remember here, is that even the flop ones taste good sandwiched together. Most importantly of all: remember to have fun as you go along!

I used the macaron recipe from Brave Tart; Stella also gives tons of tips about macarons. The marshmallow buttercream is from i am baker. I used both recipes as is.

{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!

Cape Town: The Old Biscuit Mill

When I shared with you the delicious Chocolate Pinotage cupcakes that I made for my birthday, I promised that I would share some more information on the long weekend we spent in Cape Town towards the end of September.  Cape Town is probably my favourite city in South Africa: a coastal city with beautiful beaches, an hour or two's drive from wine farms, whale watching and penguins. And the biggest draw: it has many of the top restaurants in South Africa. This will be the first of a few posts sharing all the eating and sight-seeing we did in our short visit.

I had been in Cape Town for work during the week and my boyfriend flew down on Friday evening. He arrived rather grumpy and exhausted after his flight was rather significantly delayed and the weather that evening was rainy and windy and miserable! However, nothing a good night of sleep wouldn't fix.

Pink Macarons

One of my closest friends at work welcomed her beautiful baby girl into the world last year. We had a baby shower for her at the office for which we all brought eats and given my slight penchant for sugar, I volunteered myself for sweet treats.