Merry Christmas

Its arrived! Its here! Christmas!



I hope all of you have the happiest day, filled with fun, family and food...BUT also filled with the reason for Christmas... may your day be filled with the LOVE and WARMTH that only comes from our Saviour - Jesus Christ! I thank Him so much that He came and was the living sacrifice that I can belong to a bigger family, and have a sure and secure future!





May your day be merry and bright!

Three Cheese Muffins

Lunches for Shane are always a challenge. I am not always a morning person (ok, ok, so most of the time) so I like to be prepared for the 6am rush to be ready for 6.30am when Shane wizzes out of the door for work! So I love easy, ready prepared lunch that I can just pop into his cooler bag! I think these make a nice healthyish lunch that works for me!

And they were so super easy! Almost no effort...almost...

Just a couple staple ingredients and cheddar cheese, mozerella, feta cheese and bacon bits...

Mix it all up and spoon into prepared muffin pans...

Once baked, enjoy with a bit of butter! Yum!

 These freeze so well too, which is what I usually do!




 If you have any easy luch ideas, please be sure to post them in a comment here! I love new ideas!

Download the recipe card here:
Three Cheese Muffins

Carrot Cake

Wow! What a whirlwind of 2 weeks has just gone past, while everyone else I know has been calmly preparing for Christmas, my family has been frantically preparing for my baby sisters wedding...and yesterday the BIG day finally arrived. It was amazingly special! Hazel had made a fairytale picnic wedding! Congratulations to Howard and Hazel Wain :) I know you guys will have a very special marriage!

A while back Haz asked me to ice her wedding cake. I almost fainted! I love to bake, really I do, but a wedding cake is something really really special, and has to be perfect. I mulled over what to do for days...and days...and had a couple panic attacks along the way...BUT then Amanda from I am Baker saved me! I remembered this Rose Cake that she has made a while back, I LOVED it (along with ALL her other cakes), so I checked through her tutorial, got inspired, and hauled out some ingredients to make a trial cake so I could get my frosting on!

The ingredient list is pretty short, and no big mixer is involved. So it's really just mixing the dry ingredients, making a well in the centre, adding the lightly beaten wet ingredients and finally adding the ingredients that make this cake a carrot cake - the grated carrot, pecan nuts and the crushed pineapple.

Stir, stir, stir and pop it into a moderate oven. They were nice and moist and held together wonderfully!

For the icing I used I am Bakers best cream cheese frosting, which turned out amazing!

 It was so smooth and tasty and  it was a nice consistancy for piping which, in this case, was essential! First i did a crumb coat and made sure the entire cake was covered!

Then I used a star shaped nozzel to pipe the roses on.

Since it was a practise cake, I wasnt too finatic about getting the roses neat and perfect...

But both Haz and I were pleased with the end result of the exercise!

The combo of the two - cake and cream cheese icing was very nice! The icing was perfect and held wonderfully in our Durban heat for about 3 days (I had to test it to the max!)

The actucal wedding cake turned out beautiful and I iced some cupcakes too with some light green cream cheese frosting, they were also beautiful! I will post them when I get some ( I totally forgot to get a picture of them!Shocking!)

Check here for the Cream Cheese Frosting

Download the recipe card for the Carrot Cake