I’ve done a lot of great work lately, but this is a cake I particularly wanted to share with you all

This is a 50th wedding anniversary cake I finished not long ago! It’s a two tier vanilla sponge cake filled with custard, cream and strawberries, and then covered with white fondant (RTR). It’s loosely based off of their original 1960′s wedding cake:

50 years is quite the achievement!

I’ve lost my perfect macaron recipe and now I can’t seem to get them right again. Though, I think it has something to do with my egg whites and my mixer.

When I first started getting into baking, I bought myself a Sunbeam Mixmaster from Kmart. At the time, I thought it was the absolute bees knees, with a rotating bowl like the professionals use. I started getting into cupcakes and cakes even more and after Cupcake Camp, I started a little cupcake business on the side – just me and my mixer.

Just over a year of use and the motor burnt out and started smelling funky, so I said goodbye to the benchmixer and used a handheld one for a few months instead, before sparing a some dollars to pick up a second hand Kenwood Chef benchmixer to get me by in the meantime. But it’s just not the same.

While I was studying at TAFE, I got the opportunity to use REAL mixers. Huge 5L bowls on Hobart mixers with paddles that weighed a ton. We also got to use the semi-commercial version of the KitchenAid and immediately I fell in love. No mixer truly compares to a KA. Kenwood’s deliver on super power – but I make cake and desserts, and I’m looking for function and not the ability to mix hard doughs for bread. They can be almost as expensive – but it’s really just not what I want.

Last night while preparing for this weekend I used a new recipe to make my macarons because I have lost my trusty one, but they are all much the same – and both batches FAILED miserably. The first one was way too runny – not enough air in the egg whites. Second time around and almost the same thing – no feet on the macarons, and then the second tray cracked and split. I was too tired to cry, but I knew straight away it’s my mixer letting me down.

If you could buy a Kitchen Aid in part payments, I would so be there – but I haven’t seem to found a place where you can. I put almost all of my earned money back into my work and bills – the last few years have been very far from easy.

When you make macarons with a sugar syrup base (italian meringue), you start off by whisking the egg whites to peaks before adding in the hot sugar syrup to make a foamy and airy meringue. Well, it seems I’m not getting enough air from my egg whites. The whisk attachments on my mixer aren’t getting enough air in, and because egg whites are light, the bowl doesn’t spin to go all the way around. So this evening I’ll be using my hand mixer to whip egg whites and a thermometer in my other hand because there’s unfortunately no way I could spare the money for my dream boat, the Kitchen Aid.

You should be aware though – there’s a million points of failure in a macaron recipe, even with the italian meringue method. Prepare yourself for disappointment (and console yourself by eating the leftover failed ones) xx

Classic Macaron Shells (colour them as you please)

200g almond meal
200g icing sugar
75ml water
200g caster sugar
2 x 80g egg whites (separate measures)

1. Preheat your oven to 150C.

2. In a food processor, blitz the almond meal and icing sugar together, then sift into a bowl and set aside.

3. In a saucepan, add the water and caster sugar and bring to the boil. Do not stir it. With a pastry brush, dip it in water and run it along the inside of the saucepan just above the water line, to stop any sugar from bubbling up and burning (or if there is any on the sides already, it will remove it).

4. Beat 80g of the egg whites to soft peaks. Here’s where it gets a little difficult. If you do have a bench mixer, it’s likely that 80g may not be enough for the whisks to hit the bottom of the bowl and whip up all of the egg whites. Keep an eye on it!

5. When the sugar syrup hits 105C (yes you need a thermometer) turn the mixer speed up, and when it hits 115C remove from the heat and pour in a thin stream into the egg whites. Keep mixing for 5-10 minutes until it cools.

6. Pour the other 80g of egg whites on top of your almond meal/icing sugar mixture and combine to make a smooth paste.

7. With a spatula, add about 1/3 of the cooled meringue to the mix and fold it in carefully to loosen the mixture. Add the rest and fold gently. This is when you should add your colouring (if applicable)

8. When you lift your spatula and leave a ribbon of batter, it should take 10 seconds to fully sink back into the mixture and disappear – then you know it is ready for piping.

9. Fill a piping bag with a 1cm round tip with batter, then pipe the macaron rounds and leave to sit for 30 minutes before baking.

10. Bake for 13-15 minutes. The shells should barely wiggle if you touch the top with your fingertip.

I recommend you go and read up as much as you can on macarons before attempting them, but once you have mastered them you can bake anything!

Also, congratulations to Ed over at http://www.tomatom.com who is celebrating SIX YEARS of food blogging by holding a pretty fabulous giveaway… go have a nosey! I’m not even up to two years yet! x

Two years ago, I sat at my computer (as I do most of the time) and I believe my friend Taryn messaged me and asked when Adelaide would be getting their own Cupcake Camp. And well.. I love cupcakes.

Cupcake Camp is actually what triggered me to start my own business, and look how successful that is – we’ve done over half of last years work in under two months. I’m exhausted!

And so… in three weeks we’ll be holding Adelaide’s second Cupcake Camp with all proceeds again going to charity.

Cupcake Camp Adelaide is an event where a group of random volunteers from across the city bake cupcakes and bring them along. They’re sold with all proceeds on the day going towards a charity of our choice. Everyone amazingly works together to bring us a variety of flavours, with almost everything you can think of (yes, I believe a bacon cupcake is in the mix somewhere).

We’ve got face painting and cupcake decorating for the kids, with soft drinks, coffee, tea and more. It is an amazingly fun but very fast afternoon and it’s over before you know it!

If you live in Adelaide or know people that do, you should spread the word. The Cupcake Camp Adelaide website has posters and flyer sheets available to download, or you can just email the picture to your friends here. Every person helps us to sell out on the day, and we’ve currently got over a thousand cupcakes pledged to sell where last time we sold over 400 and raised over $1000!

I am very passionate about my charity work and I hope you will rally behind me to make this one my most successful event yet. I raised over $2000 at the High Tea last year – that’s my goal to beat, I know you guys can help me do it!

xx Monnie

P.S – I’ve got another competition coming up very soon! Just posted the first one off to the winner, I hope you like it

I have had my camera for four years this year. In 2010 I bought a new lens for it that has changed the way I use my camera, before that I was pining for a newer model. After being told it’s mainly the lenses that make the camera, I splurged on a new one and have not looked back.

The way you photograph your creations makes a very big difference to how they’re perceived.  Mobile phone shots are just likely to make them look very regular, when you should give yourself some credit and make them look as spectacular as they are!

What camera do you use?

I use a DSLR. If you don’t know what that is, a DSLR is a higher end professional quality camera that allows you to change the lenses. Digital cameras basically have a lens built into them you can’t change. Lenses affect the zoom and the amount of light that can enter the camera, which helps with low light shooting.

I use a Nikon D70, and my primary lens is a 50mm f/1.8. My backup handbag camera is a Canon IXUS 80IS which has great close up capability and produces a very clear shot.

How do you get these kinds of photos?

I must admit that it is after the purchase of the 50mm that things changed. The difference with this compared to other lenses is that the smaller the f number, the more light that can go into the camera, and the price goes higher. A 50mm lens is a fixed lens, so you can’t adjust the zoom at all, but is considered one of the most important lenses you can have. It helps to give this incredible depth of field effect that you see in a lot of my photos, the style of one thing being in focus while the rest gradually falling into the background.

What do you use for lighting and background setup?

I work on a budget, so I use a big white canvas as a backdrop for most shots, and my kitchen bench. It is a neutral gray colour so it helps with bringing out the colour in whatever my shots are. I do primarily dessert and macro photography anyway.

With lighting, I try and work in the middle of the day. Nothing is better than diffused natural light coming in from a window. It’s important to get enough light for your camera to take clear photos but not too much light and definitely avoid fluros or harsh yellow light.

What do you use to edit your photos?

Adobe Photoshop CS4. I make some changes to colour and contrast, and sometimes put some crazy action on top to make the colours different, but I like a natural look these days.

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The cupcakes in the photos are part of a mixed dozen. I had an order from someone in the UK who wanted to send a box of cupcakes to her friend here in Adelaide, so I put together a mixed dozen of chocolate, vanilla, caramel and raspberry.

There’s still time to enter the competition to win the Cupcake book – you have until Monday!

Happy 14th of February!

The last four days have been my busiest cake days on record. I baked 250 mini cupcakes, two dozen regular cupcakes, one giant cupcake, one 6″ cake and ~60 macarons… And only about a quarter of those were related to Valentine’s Day! Phew.

Since my last post I also went to teach a cupcake decorating party as part of a hen’s afternoon..

It was HOT and a very long drive to get there, but I had a great time and they made some spectacular cupcakes.

Now for more fun things! I have booked in a time to teach my own cake decorating classes in the city. They are held at the Box Factory Community Centre and the first one is Cupcakes 101 on April 11th (how original is that title? But it explains it well)!

If you’re in Adelaide and you’re interested, all the information is over at Cupcake Treats, and I am really really looking forward to it! The space at the Box Factory is wonderful and the staff are lovely. I love teaching others! I designed the certificates today.. I can’t wait to show the students.

Over the next three weekends I am teaching three cupcake decorating parties and a class, I’m busy but it’s great!

And finally something we quickly whipped up for a friends birthday last week… an iPod cake!

P.S – If you haven’t seen my jelly slice recipe before, I made a batch on Sunday for an order and I had leftovers to eat… Oh my goodness, it has been too long since I had jelly slice! You should go and make some, I won’t tell anyone