The Last Market: Ending on a High

How typically me that I only figure out the best method for transporting, decorating and displaying my cupcakes on the LAST day of the Market! :) In a fit of inspiration and laziness I decided to bring the cupcakes to market without icing them, I simply packed up a piping bag full of pink & white buttercream icing and finished them off at my little stand. Ingenious. Why didn't I think of it earlier?! This was MUCH easier and much more fun too, I brought a big selection of toppings and let a few people decide what they wanted on their personalised cupcake. Fun times! :)

Also I had bought my little miniamo cupcake stand last weekend as a little birthday present for myself, and it worked perfectly for showcasing my cupcakes, both plain and iced. I was so proud of myself, I just can't believe it only occurred to me after 3 months of carefully transporting iced cupcakes in the back of my car every Saturday morning!

The Market itself went really well, we sold most of our produce and shared out any leftovers, that's how I ended up with a Chilli Plant in my car for the weekend... :) Mum will mind it for me I hope! But we really finished off the summer in style that night with a BBQ in a local pub. I'll have to publish some photos of that, Market people all dressed up! You wouldn't recognise us out of our jeans and mucky clothes!! :) We had a great night, lovely food, a few drinks and great company, finishing off with a house party back at my place! I would have apologised to the neighbours but they showed up too!

There was an ulterior motive behind the house party though, as well as my Birthday the previous week, it was also my chance to have a Last Night with a lot of my friends who live in this area, because.... I'm moving to Cork in 2 weeks time! :) I'm going back to UCC to study a Masters in eLaw. Yes it has absolutely nothing to do with baking. But I've wanted to do it for years and I'm finally taking the plunge. I'm hoping to find somewhere to live that has a baking-friendly kitchen so I can keep up my addiction down there! Fingers crossed... :)

Birthday Cake Binge! :)

I think I may have overdosed on cake this weekend... :) My sister had very kindly made a Chocolate Praline Cake so that I wouldn't have to bake my own birthday cake, it suited me nicely actually as she let me play around with some Coffee Icing and cover the side in swirly patterns! (Please excuse the crookedness of these swirls, I'm still getting the hang of symmetry in cake decorating!) I had also brought down some of the many leftover vanilla cupcakes from the farmer's market, there were just NO customers this week, it was almost a waste of time! The cupcakes went down well with my family anyway, especially when I iced them individually to suit their preferences, and let them decorate with chocolate/strawberries/sprinkles etc. It's definitely more fun to decorate with people than it is to bake with them! We topped off that sugar overdose with meringues from a local patisserie in Kinsale, just couldn't resist them once my Mum served them up with fresh cream and strawberries.. mm...

So it's no wonder my clothes are tight on me this morning!! I have no excuses for missing training this evening after that binge-fest! :D

A little inspiration please! :)

It's my birthday on Sunday, and although I'm not too happy about turning 26, I am very much looking forward to baking my Birthday Cake! The only problem is... I don't know what to bake... :( I'm not really a big chocolate fan, I'd prefer coffee to vanilla, and I love fresh fruit desserts like pavlova but I want to make a cake so that I can pipe pretty icing swirls and rosettes!

I need some help, I need a little inspiration, so any suggestions would be welcome! :)

I'll still be baking for the market on Saturday, but then I am taking Monday off work so that I still get a full birthday weekend with my family. No major party plans this year, just heading to a concert with my Mum on Sunday night. We're going to see The Swell Season, aka Glen Hansard and Marketa Iriglova of Oscar winning fame, I can't wait!

Pastry Practice

Please excuse the poorly lit photograph, and the dishevelled crust, but this is just practice! :) I don't really get a chance to work with pastry very often but I bought a new pie dish recently, and I was given some rhubarb at the market the other day, and then I saw this post on A Scone's Throw and even though the pie was a mess it looked delicious! :) So I made pie! I haven't seen Strawberry & Rhubarb as a combination in Ireland but it seems to be fairly commonplace on US foodie blogs so when I saw my roommate's strawberries in the fridge I figured she wouldn't mind if I used a few for this experiment. I loved it! More importantly, she loved it! I'm a big rhubarb fan and I'd happily eat it on its own, simply stewed with a little sugar, but add in the strawberries and it was divine!

I also experimented with savoury shortcrust, see that quiche in the background there, it was inadvertently a Vegetarian one, ie. I had spinach, mushroom & tomato, so that's what went in it. I have to admit there is a certain level of pride to baking one's dinner (& dessert). :D

I would post the recipes but they were very very simple... Just a basic shortcrust of flour, salt, butter & water for the savoury pastry, I added some caster sugar to the sweet version. The quiche was just eggs, milk, veggies, salt & pepper. The pie was just strawberries, rhubarb and some caster sugar. Simples! :)

Week 12: A Challenging Weekend

For a number of reasons, this was an intense weekend, and I was left feeling physically and emotionally drained on Monday as a result. Of course this hectic time included excessive baking but as usual I found that part to be therapeutic, it was just Life getting in the way that caused the panic attacks!

The weather was not great on Saturday, it was a miserable morning, raining solidly from 9am to 1pm, but clearing up beautifully once the Market had finished! It's hard to stay cheerful when your feet are wet, your hands are cold and your hair is frizzy, and even harder when you look down at your fresh baked cakes and out at the non-existent customers... I just thanked the foresight/laziness that meant I baked fewer cupcakes this week! They sold in the end, Vanilla cupcakes & Banana bread will always find a home, but the experimental Choc Biscuit Cake and Oat Flapjacks were a non-runner, causing me to eat more than my fair share!

Saturday night was intense, it was a Birthday party for a friend of mine who tragically died in a car crash just a few months ago. I had promised to bake a Chocolate Cake, and even though I was hit with numerous difficulties (I have a love/hate relationship with my oven at the moment), I finally finished it and arrived only 2 hours late for the party. Don't worry though, I more than made up for that by staying until after 5am, consuming numerous bottles of wine, and crying a lot into various people's shoulders... I'm a good party guest like that... :) It was an emotional night, but it was a healthy release, and I think we all needed it.

Sunday morning was pretty painful... an emotional and physical hangover like none I've ever experienced... Yet an alarm rang in my head at noon and I remembered committing to make a Birthday Cake for a neighbour... Oh dear... Six hours later I emerged with a slightly dishevelled Vanilla Birthday Cake... And even though it was possibly the most physically taxing cake I'd ever made, it was actually exactly what I needed to do that day.