{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!

Happy Thanksgiving! Pumpkin Oatmeal Cream Pies

In South Africa, we don't celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. However I really like the concept of taking one day off to appreciate all the amazing things we have in our lives. Although things may not always be perfect, that doesn't mean we should lose sight of the great people around us and special things happening in our lives.

I found this quote online, that I believe is from Gerard Way:

What are you thankful for in your life? I would love to hear!

Ok, so enough with all the deep stuff. For the last month or so the bloggosphere has been FLOODED with pumpkin recipes in every shape and form. I got to the stage that if I saw another pumpkin recipe I thought I would have a break-down. But then I saw pumpkin in the shops and got really excited; we seldom see pumpkin around these parts. Suddenly I felt the need to join in this orange vegetable craze!

Shana Tova! Decorated Cookies

This week was the celebration of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashana. While I myself am not Jewish, my boyfriend and his family are. This year I wanted to venture away from the typical platter of dried fruit nuts and chocolate when it came to gifts.

Snickers Marshmallow Cookies aka "Little Bites of Heaven"

OMG these cookies are DELICIOUS! Cookie dough with bits of melted marshmallow, chocolate chips and Snickers bars. The caramel from the Snickers also melts a bit and oozes out...so good. When I asked my taste-testers for a name for these cookies, Little Bites of Heaven was decided on. If you get one of these bad boys fresh out of the oven you'll know why.

Do you see the gooey marshmallow? And that little piece of melted caramel? And all the chocolate chips in the dough? Now that's a cookie :)