2am Rainbow Cakes!

This, my friends, is a rainbow cake.
I highly recommend you bake them at 2am with an incredible friend such as Griffin and eat them at a silly hour of the night with a decaf tea. You don't want to be kept up past your bedtime or anything like that...
It was Griffin's idea to make them rainbow and I can honestly say I will never make a plain bun again.
All you do is whizz up the normal cupcake/fairy cake recipe (I have a stupendous new one I'll add in at the end), divide it between as many bowls as you have food colors, and add a few drops of the color to each. Into each paper casing you place a little bit of each colored mixture.
Don't blend them!
Looks a bit like Playdoh here...
Then pop them in the oven to bake, allow to cool, then top with some vanilla buttercream.


Oh my oh my.
The inside of them resemble those gobstoppers you would suck on for weeks as a child, though these won't cut your tongue, simply give you the same sugar rush at the end of it.

New Cupcake Recipe!
(Makes 48 mini cupcakes, 24 bun sizes, or 12 muffins/cupcakes).

90g butter
175ml milk
tsp of vanilla essence
3 eggs
200g caster sugar
210g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

-Cream the butter (which I always warm gently in the microwave first) and sugar and vanilla.
-Then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat after each.
-Add the milk, then sieve in the dry ingredients.
-Bake in the oven at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 13 minutes and allow to cool before icing. Use the vanilla buttercream from an earlier post and bam, rainbow cakes.

You will never look back.

The fun with food dye didn't end there!
Nope, at breakfast we made blue blueberry pancakes! Just add a few drops, swirl it gently and fry it up.


It doesn't add any taste, merely looks pretty. However, the new cupcake recipe is fantastic!
So go add some food dye to your food! Yay!

New life for an old skirt!

Hey there! Some late night sewing going on here! Just finished this, and now I'm off to make a birthday present!
I got this skirt from one of my cousins about five years ago and because I never throw away things for fear that I may one day need it, I decided I'd give it a facelift!

The skirt initially had a thin, hidden elasticated waistband with a teeny black bow and was below-knee in length. It was a bit frumpy and quite plain to be honest, so first of all, I took my scissors to it and made it to just above-knee.

my new skirt!

I found the elastic in my sewing box that I'd forgotten Laura K gave me for my 21st (where would my crafting endeavours be without her?!) and decided I'd stick it on to the top after I chopped off the waistband.

old waistband

It looked a bit 'blah' with just this, so I took out the olive green ribbon I had intended for another project (which I royally ruined tonight, so I'm currently trying to think of a crafty way to salvage it) and sewed it onto the bottom hem. While I was finishing things off, Siob was messing with the rest of it and made a lovely bow out of it, and so to bring in the green a bit more (there's only hints of it in the pattern) and more dimensions to the skirt, I stitched it onto the waistband with one stitch also on each loop to stop it from drooping forward.

bows win

I'm thinking about wearing it out Saturday with a black vest top for my birthday, but it's not what I had in mind (it was the currently stalled project), so I'll see how the mood takes me and if I get a source of divine craft inspiration by Friday night!

Angel Food Cake

Oh I'm seriously starting to neglect things these days! I made this cake about 2 weeks ago now and I'm only posting it now! Eep.
I was in the wonderful bookshop By The Book in Virginia with the Fam one day and got the Australian Women's Weekly 100 Classic Cakes cookbook which was a steal at €8 and is full of cakes I didn't even know about, such as this one. Mom had a flick through in the car and when she saw it said "You're making this when we get home".
Which I did.
She had it years ago in NY and has dreamt about it since, apparently. It's a funny kind of cake- it has 12 egg whites (no joke) with pretty much a sprinkling of flour, cornflour, a good bit of sugar and some vanilla.
It's a bit sweet and sticky. It recommends having fresh berries with it, so i chopped some strawberries and blueberries to have with it. Some of the Fam found it too sweet which meant Mom had a cake for herself that lasted days in the house of locusts.

Guest Slot- my sis Siob!

My sis Siob has become quite the wizard in the world of baking and often easily whips up a batch of buns when the notion takes her. Last week she made delicious muffins, so I asked her would she like to write a post for me! So here's Siob!
I like baking cos it's fun. Laura had some apple pieces left from her apple streusel and I put them into some muffins and I still had some left after that so I made an apple sauce to go with them. I put lemon, sugar and apples into the blender then I whizzed them up and served it in egg cups with the muffins and voila!
They were perfectly moist and the apples were mushy. We ate them warm with some tea and the sauce was really nice with them, even if it was a bit lemony.
The end.
Siobhan.

Cardmaking!

Whenever I give a present, I always make a card for the person! I just love personalising things like that:) I've been meaning to put these up for ages, so there are quite a few! They're for various friends and family. However, I'm running low in supplies which means one thing- a craft shopping trip must happen soon! It puts shopping for new stationary for school firmly in second position in the Best Kind Of Shopping Expedition!

Apple Streusel

Last Sunday we had extra family over for dinner, so of course I took this as an opportunity to go all out and make a fabulous Sunday dinner spread! For the starter I decided I'd make a fruit mix, so I had raspberries, strawberries, grapes and blueberries. Dad got a roast beef (not my favorite of meats, so I make an extra effort to make it really tender and yummy) for the main course, then I stocked up on loads of fresh veg for it also. I love loads of colors in a dinner, so I had about five different veg for the dinner! Baby corn, sauted mushrooms and onions, carrots and string beans. Mmm.

The night before I made the dessert- we had cooking apples in the house and I found an Apple Struesel recipe, so I whipped that up! It was delicious! I served it with a little bit of wonderful vanilla ice cream and it went down an absolute treat! I added raisins to the mix to jazz it up a bit and just a sprinkling of chopped nuts on the crumble. I take it as a good sign when there are no leftovers and safe to say Magnum didn't get any that day:)

Cakes for a Memorial Night

About two weeks ago (I'm so behind...) I went to the St. Clare's Orphanage Fire Memorial in Cavan. I'm on the committee and at one of the meetings whilst trying to organise the event, told the others I'd bake for it as some other women were making sandwiches and we'd have tea and coffee, so of course one would need some cake. I baked a bunch of cupcakes and made 2 cakes also. Needless to say they didn't last very long with near 400 people there on the night, but they went down very well! A lady asked me do I do wedding cakes... I said I don't and she said I should! Madness. They might taste nice, but I have an awful long way to go before I'm anywhere near that standard!:D

Here are some pics of the goodies! I made a plain buttercream sponge cake with Mini Smarties on top and in the bundt cake I added defrosted berries. You can get a great bag of them in Aldi and you just need to defrost them a few hours before you need them! Incredibly handy!:)

I also used a different buttercream recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook that I got one day in the library! Oh it's so incredible! It's American in style, such as recommending that you use what would be muffin cases over here for cupcakes, not the bun ones. They're much better that big as I see cupcakes as a dessert style food anyway, if they're decorated well and provide at least 4 mouthfuls:)

Vanilla Buttercream:
250g icing sugar, sifted
80g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml whole milk
a couple of drops of vanilla essence

-Cream it all together. I dare you to try and not eat this from the bowl with your fingers...

Presents for Jo!

Okay, so a few weeks back I said I had recently made a new present, but I couldn't post it until I gave it, and now I can! Over the weekend I went to my darling Jo's and gave it to her- an apron:) Jo has recently been baking a bit (see her on Jen's baking blog over there-> )and I thought it would be cool to make her one. I measured my brother Conor (he's a little taller than Jo and closer to her height than me) for the apron and set about making it! I thought it would also be cool to put Jo's name on it and personalise it that little bit more, so I put a little bit of wadding behind a piece of cream material to puff it out a little and stitched Jo's name, then I also made her a little card cos I like making those too!:)

Here are some snaps of the apron and the cookies- the chocolate on top of the cookies isn't supposed to be there, I threw in the extra squares after baking and they melted...though it could work out well if I intend to add it the next time!
Sorry it's late Jo- you know what Cavan does to your life! <3

Flat Lake Festival!

Our little cake stand
So...this is over a week late! Es tut mir leid!
Last Sunday Slacke and I were at the Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan, selling cakes at the Cafe Sessions! However, before I get cracking on that, we must first pay homage to the late night spent in the Slacke kitchen the night before!. Bed was sometime around 3am and Denise had been baking all day. I baked the cakes of my batch (sans decorations) Friday night and sealed them up, packed up with the decorations I was bringing for the cake area of the tent as well as more baking stuff. I then made some funny looking cupcakes at work and brought them with me too...
The night before

Coco the amazing dog kept us company during the hours spent baking and decorating and general kitcheny activities and even stole a krispie cake for herself along the way. Hilarity ensued when Denise ran out to give out to her:D Come bedtime, Denise and I were so tired, we didn't even get to say goodnight to one another...
The wonderful Tom drove us the relatively short distance to Clones the following morning, boot filled with goodies, tea & coffee dispensers and laps carefully navigating the bendy roads and moving trays of cupcakes accordingly. At the festival, I got a lift with most of our stuff (poor Denise & Tom carried cupcake trays and a few other things!) via a quad and little trailer...my heart sank when I saw that that was how our cakes and delicate coffee equipment were being transported to the site! The drive was steep and bumpy, but thanks to my crafty driver, all was delivered intact! The day saw us entertained by Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies, Henrietta Game, The Amazing Few and Riona Sally Hartman (links below!) who were my favorite acts! We had fun chatting to and feeding the Wellies and Harry and we even got the song Beard Snood dedicated to us later that night (it's about baking!) and I got to play the cymbal for the wonderful Wellies as well! Wooooo! It was also the first time I got to actually make money on what I've baked and Slacke & moi are very happy about that:)

All in all, it was a great day and Griffin and Ceri even came back to Slacke's with us that night! We stayed up much too late considering we were all shattered (especially poor Ceri!), but it was such a fun time.
I'm just going to post links here for you so you can have a little listen to the amazing musicians our ears were graced with for hours on end:)
A super big thank you to Mr Tom who drove us there and back! Stupendous man altogether.
Riona Sally Hartman
Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies
Henrietta Game
If they were a three legged dog, I'd like to be their third wellie <3
Playing the cymbal and wearing my new skirt!

Lori Skirt for the Flat Lake Festival

It's been a while! Oops. But I've been keeping busy, so I guess that's a good thing!:)
Last night I made a skirt! Wooo! A proper one! With lining and a zip!
(But no pattern as such. Don't tell Nana.)
I've had this material since my 21st and have been too scared to cut it incase I ruined it, so at long last I did. I knew I wanted to make a flared skirt with it, waist high. So I laid out a skirt I already had similar in style and drew it out on an old sheet so I could have a practice run. The practice run went accordingly, so I finally used the lovely material Laura K got me. It was quite the Lori evening as I had on the mixed cd she made me, was using the material she got me and was contemplating the buttons she gave me...


Anyhoodle, I happened to have a zip I bought last summer, so I added it to the side and sewed all up! It's quite cute and I've named it the Lori Skirt after the lovely Kavanagh gal in my life. I had a little bit left over, so I made a sash tie put of it that I tie at the top of it and it doubles as a hair tie.
Here are some snaps of it! I'm going to the Flat Lake Festival on Sunday, so I'll wear it then with a white blouse:)
Last week I sewed something new too, but it's a present, so I can't put it up until I give it!:)