Sugar and Spice and Everything Tasty

You can add lavender to any vanilla cake recipe by infusing milk with dried lavender. How? Easy.

Use about 4 tablespoons of dried lavender to each 1/2 cup of milk. Just stir it in, cover it, and then let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

For these cupcakes, a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery, I used the following:

1 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
3 tablespoons of butter (I use margarine)
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup lavender infused milk

Beat together the flour, baking powder, butter and sugar until it takes on a sandy texture. Mix the egg in with the lavender milk, and then add it slowly, stirring until fully incorporated, but be careful not to over-mix.

Fill cupcake tin 2/3 full. Bake @ 325F for 20-25 minutes (rotate halfway through baking) and remove when cupcake tops are springy, or a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs (but not doughy).

For the icing, i used a standard buttercream recipe (butter, icing sugar, TINY bit of milk) but used some of the lavender infused milk. To pipe, I put two colours (white and purple!) into one piping bag, and piped out three rows of ruffles using a #104 tip. I used what I believe is a # 352 decorating tip for the little leaves. Anyway, cute for spring!

I am obsessed with raspberries. And chocolate. Preferably together.

These are chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream icing. Extremely simple… just add raspberry jam to your butter, icing sugar, milk, and vanilla, but use less milk to get the consistency you want. These were my favourite, for a really long time…

Now… these ones are my new favourite. (Partially because of the flower I somehow managed to pipe onto the centre one, but not entirely).

I used a plain old buttermilk cupcake recipe, and poked a frozen raspberry into the centre of each one before putting them into the oven. Pure deliciousness. The tartness of the raspberry offset what was probably way too sweet a frosting otherwise. Note to self - use dark instead of milk chocolate in the future.

So I got these teacups for Christmas. They’re actually silicone baking cups with plastic saucers, and I LOVE them. Too cute. But what’s the point of having adorable little tea cups without a teapot?

Exactly.

So I decided to make a teapot. I got a round glass pyrex bowl, filled it with chocolate cake batter, and baked it. The original plan was to make two half circles and glue them together with icing, but the way the cake rose, I didn’t need to. So I just covered the cake in buttercream icing and smoothed it out with my hands. You can do it with fondant too if you want a smoother look, but I ran out of marshmallows, and only had enough for the handle, spout and topper thingy.

The fondant works best if you make it the night before and leave it out to let it harden. I used marshmallow fondant, which tastes better than most other fondant, in my opinion. You take marshmallows, melt them down in your microwaves, and add icing sugar until it turns into a dough-like consistency, and then you can work with it just like modelling clay. To avoid the marshmallow sticking to your hands, you can coat your hands in butter or margarine.

So I was short on time, and didn’t make the fondant the night before, so I just made it while the cake was baking, shaped it into the handle and spout, stuck some toothpicks in (to attach to the cake with later) and put it in the freezer for a while. Not ideal… it was pretty soft and required more toothpicks later on. Definitely make the fondant the night before if you have time.

So after you assemble your teapot, decorate however you please (I just used buttercream icing).

To make those little flowers I used Wilton petal tip 104, and piped with the thick end touching the cake, and the thin end closest to me, and then pulled down. Check out their website for a more detailed tutorial.

Baked Lemon Chicken, French Beans and Mashed potatoes and carrots 

Chicken Ingredients:
Olive oil
Chicken breasts, thawed. Use how much you have or want to use and adjust your recipe likewise. You can cut them into bite size pieces like I did, or leave them whole
Lemon juice, about 2 tablespoons worth (from the bottle or from a lemon it dont matter)
1 Clove of garlic, minced
A teaspoon of honey
Any type of spice you have (I used cajun)
Pepper and Salt 

Method:
-Preheat your oven to 350 
-Mix all the ingredients except for the chicken in a ziplock bag, shake it about. Add the chicken. Marinate for about 20 minutes. (Ideally I’d say marinate it for a day but nobody has time like that)
-Line a baking pan with aluminium foil (this will make clean up sooo much simpler for you that I really recommend it) add your chicken and the mixture.
-Bake for 20 minutes

For the rest of the dish:
-Cut and boil your french beans, until they are cooked but still a little crunchy
-Boil the carrots and potatoes on high heat in the same pot
-Drain all the veggies.
-Skin the potatoes when they have cooled down enough to handle them.
-Add the potatoes and carrots into the same bowl, get your masher out! Mash mash mash until everything has turned into a white, orange mashup. Add your favourite mashed potato seasonings: pepper salt butter milk sour cream. Whatever you want. The milk will definitely give it a nice creamy texture

Now! Assemble your dish. Visuality is key to “le gourmet food”