Pineapple/Malibu & Creme Egg Cupcakes

I recently had a quick visit to Llanberis in North Wales, where I came across the Snowdon Honey Farm and Winery. It was an old little shop filled to the brim with all sorts of honey, but also jams, chutneys and curds. And thats were I discovered a jar of Pineapple Curd with Malibu, so I bought it!
I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with it (not being a curd-on-toast kind of gal) until I decided to pair it with another recent find (in the humble Tescos) of, Bounty spread (which is delicious - try it on a chocolate digestive, its like eating a deconstructed Bounty bar - with a biscuit)!

So I decided to make vanilla cupcakes, using a large amount of Bounty spread to form part of the buttercream frosting (sprinkled with desiccated coconut). And then I filled each cupcake with a glob of Pineapple with Malibu curd! I was pretty chuffed with the results - and I got the thumbs up from my testers!

I used an apple peeler to core out a hole in each cupcake (I've kept the cake remnants and froze them as I read you can add them to a trifle or milkshakes), and piped the curd into the hole (rather than attempting smushing it in with a spoon)! All in all, a success! Hooray!

And as it was Easter last weekend, I made some Creme Egg Cupcakes for my family!

A mini Creme Egg was hidden in each cupcake and it was my first attempt at doing a two-toned frosting, which worked pretty well apart from not making enough! (You make your buttercream, separate them out and colour them as you wish, you then put each colour in a separate piping bag and pipe each colour into ANOTHER piping bag, you then have your two-toned frosting to top whatever cake you desire)!

So its been a very cupcake-y couple of weeks, on to pastures new this week with Ice Cream Sandwiches! Whee!

Princess Slug celebrates Valentines Day 2016

I'm rather a bit late for Valentines Day, but I made another gross and 'Why do you even bother making a card?' card for my partner this year!





Princess Slug is pink and adorable. She loves all things cute and fluffy and also candy floss. Unfortunately whenever she gets candy floss she vomits... MORE CANDY FLOSS!! Best Princess Slug ever in my opinion. I thought a barfing slug would be the perfect expression of my love for my partner this year so this card was made.

I used a nib pen with black indian ink to do the drawing and watercolour paints to colour. I had to paint the card in the bathroom whilst having a shower so as to hide what I was doing. Crafty and impossible I hear you think! But I managed it.
Anyway, as per usual, a lot of fun to paint and bring to life. I have a lot more characters like this I should try drawing up really.

Nerdy Nummies - Unicorn Poop Cookies

I discovered Nerdy Nummies in rather a long way round route. This was by watching an episode of Will Wheaton's TableTop, which is a pretty awesome show if you're into your board games and want to discover some new ones to play so I thoroughly recommend you give it a watch if thats your bag, baby (I doff my cap to anyone who gets my Austin Powers joke there). ANYWAY, the reason I found Nerdy Nummies was because the wonderful lady behind it all, Rosanna Pasino was on an episode of TableTop! Her channel is pretty cool, with a lot of geeky bakes that is bound to impress you at some point (she covers a lot of TV shows, games, films, as well as some actual science-y things)!

I was fortunate enough to receive Pansino's new book, Nerdy Nummies as a Christmas present, which is chock full of geeky recipes such as Phases of the Moon Macarons, Legend of Zelda Rupee sweets, and Gameboy Controller biscuits!
There was one recipe that really jumped out to me, which was the Unicorn Poop Cookies. They looked so magical and filled with rainbows that they HAD to be made. The simple but colourful layout of Nerdy Nummies makes it a fun book to flip through, but the clear instructions also make it easy to follow! (Apologies for the amateur photos clearly taken haphazardly in my kitchen)...

My Unicorn Poop Cookies didn't come out exactly like those in the book (lacking the graceful skill of Pansino in this instance) but I was still pretty chuffed with one they came out - plus they were massive!

Ta-dah! I'm overall really happy and rather excited to make more recipes from my Nerdy Nummies book and hope to in the near future - I have my eye on a delicious-looking dinosaur fossil cake covered in crumbly biscuit crumbs... oh yeah.

Note: I'm aware I took a rather large break from my blog last month, but I hope to now start blogging more regularly on the projects (baking or illustrative) that I'm working on!