Not-Quite-A-Rainbow Cake

Today I decided I would do a lot of planning for the next school term. So I set my alarm for 8:30, got up at 8:35 and starting preparing planning documents, term overviews etc. I finished printed out my year 7 documents and a few receipts from ebay (educational necessities, of course) when my ink ran out.

 

As far as I'm concerned, there was no point in continuing my work until I had purchased ink (Jason and I are going late night shopping later). This means the rest of my day was suddenly free. So I decided to try my hand at a rainbow layer cake (naturally).

To do this, I just used a packet mix (moist lemon cake from woolies) that I had in my cupboard. Once I made it up though, I realised I definitely wouldn't have enough for a rainbow. A traffic light at best! I decided on the primary colours red yellow and blue (didn't really want a traffic light cake).

I separated the cake mix into 3 plates and mixed in some of my fancy new gel food dye to each.

 

I wanted to make this a mini layer cake, but I didn't have a small cake tin, so I simply used a smaller pot and put that in the oven...

 

Fancy

When all the layers were finished, I started layering them on to of each other with a basic icing in between. I then took some easy-peasy pre-made white icing (gosh I'm lazy today) and rolled it out flat so I could cover the entire cake with it. This turned out to not be as easy-peasy as I thought it would be... When ever I rolled it out on my icing-sugared table, it would always be stuck to the table when I tried to peel it off! Even though my table was dusted with icing sugar like it said! Grrrrr...

I eventually just laid down some alfoil, rolled it out flat and then turned it upside down over my cake, slowly peeling the alfoil off.

Just to make it more beautiful, I kneaded some pink and yellow food gel into some leftover icing and made stars.

 

Finished!

The Easter Bunny came and left me nauseated...

Well, Easter was certainly a treat this year. Too much of a treat, in fact.

 After the hopeful promise to myself that I would only eat chocolate for one day was broken, I was left feeling nauseated, bloated, and still with a huge bounty of easter eggs, bunnies and a giant box of Favourites sitting on my table.

While at first these beautifully wrapped chocolates were seen as bundles of joy, they soon became viewed as the enemy. Small bundles of weight-gain sitting there, looking at me...

Teasing me...

 Each egg was twirling its pencil moustache and whispering to me in a seductive French accent "You know you want me...".

No joke... They do that....

So I came up with the wonderful idea of chopping all of the eggs and chocolates up into tiny pieces (let me see you twirl your moustache now!) and putting them into cookies that Jason could take to work for morning tea.

Genius.

So I baked up some delicious cookies. I tried some different combos. There were caramel eggs which made chewy toffee-like biscuits, plain chocolate eggs which of course made delicious chocolate chip cookies, but the most interesting cookies were made by the box of Favourites...

There were the Turkish Delight cookies, which Jason said were amazing, the Cherry Ripe cookie (good, but not as good as the Turkish apparently), Crunchie cookies (neither of us tried these, but they looked quite good if you like honeycomb (I do not) Flake cookies, and Snickers cookies.

I made these all while Jason was at work and surprised him when he got home. To top it off, I decorated 2 cupcakes I had previously made and froze to suit the Easter-themed spread on my table. These cupcakes were definitely far better looking than the cookies. I was so proud of their cuteness that  I took a multitude of photos. Forgive me.






 Pink sugar has to be one of the cutest things ever. I love everything about it. Its semi-sparkly appearance, its crunchy texture on top of smooth, creamy icing.

On top of these little vanilla cupcakes rests a few candy-coated chocolate easter eggs (more of our easter bounty!).
Jason adored the look of them, but when I awoke today I saw he had left his on the counter! Waiting, forlornly, by itself. How can a cupcake this cute be forgotten! :(

 The recipe for EASTER MADNESS COOKIES

Ingredients:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 Cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups plain flour
Any left over chocolate/candy (chopped up)

1. Beat butter and sugar together until creamy.
2. Add in the egg and vanilla.
3. Add in baking soda and and salt.
4. Mix in flour with wooden spoon.
5. Mix in pieces of chopped up easter eggs/ chocolate. You can use as much or as little as you like. I personally like to use A LOT (this worked well, as I had a lot).
6. Scoop out portions with your hands and roll onto rough balls about 1 1/2-2 inches in diameter. Place onto a greased baking tray and flatten slightly.
7. Bake in a preheated 180 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. They should still be slightly soft in the middle.
8. Wait until they cool to remove from try. If you have used caramel eggs, be VERY careful when you remove them, as the caramel has a tendency to stick to the pan/alfoil and break apart the cookies.