Jikana Damaru

Photo Session & Sweet Shot

Photos from a session over the weekend!

It was a crazy shoot as the little boy had other plans than to have his picture taken over and over but we made it work. And I ended up having quite a few favorites from this session! They are super cute kids!

http://forblogs.blogspot.com

And yes, I'm late on my 31 week update!

Pause: two

Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill, laughed in the sun and kissed the lovely grass.

Rupert Brooke

[Image via weheartit]

Fruitcake Pops

Last week I showed you my fist batch of cake pops, leopard print ones. I really loved how they looked and tasted and wanted to make more.

I have been recently working on a birthday cake and I had some fruit cake left over so I thought rather than waste the bits I didn't use I would make them into fruit cake pops. I went for chocolate buttercream as the binding element and have coloured and themed them to match the birthday cake.

If you don't have time to make a fruit cake you can always use a shop bought one! These are the second batch of cake pops I have made and I definitely need to keep practicing the coating part! It can be tricky to get nice and smooth. However, my plan of letting the cake pops with inserted stocks rest in the fridge before coating the cake in candy has stopped the cake pops from spinning on their sticks.

Fruit Cake Pops (makes 24 cake pops)

Ingredients
560g gluten free fruit cake (click link for recipe)
160g chocolate buttercream frosting (see below for recipe)
399g candy melts
Sprinkle stars
Edible glitter

What you will need
24 x 6" lollipop sticks
Polystyrene block
Baking parchment

Cooking instructions

Crumble fruit cake with your fingers so it is in the smallest pieces.
In a food mixer, mix the chocolate frosting with the fruit cake crumbles.
Whisk until it resembles a dough like mixture.
Place mixture into fridge to firm up, making it easier to work with.
Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Using electric scales, measure out 30g of mixture and roll into a ball.
Place on baking sheet.
Repeat steps 6 & 7 until all mixture has gone.
Place candy melts into a microwavable bowl.
Heat for 1 min on medium.
Stir and continue heating in 30 second intervals until candy is fully melted.
Push one lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and then into one cake.
Place cake pop in fridge whilst you continue to repeat step 12 for each cake pop, placing them in the fridge after each cake.
Take cake pops out of fridge one by one and coat in chocolate, sprinkle glitter and stars on top.
Push into polystyrene block and leave to dry.

Chocolate buttercream frosting (260g)

Ingredients

55g (2oz) butter, softened
85g (3oz) sifted icing sugar
28g (1/2 oz) cocoa powder, sifted
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cooking instructions

Whisk butter and vanilla essence until light and fluffy.
Gradually whisk in icing sugar and cocoa powder.

Have a sweet day!

a blogging break...

family calls and it's time to take a break. in the meantime, I'll leave you with a shot of the tasty chicken, bacon and leek pie my friend (Sophie) cooked last week. see you soon x

Magazine Love... Mollie Makes!

Do you do a happy dance when you visit your mailbox and find anything inside it other than your Visa bill and your Council excess water reminder? I know I do! Last week, I opened up my box to find a parcel from my friend Ben. Inside was a veritable treasure trove of excitement including two magazines from the UK where Ben resides. One of these magazines, Mollie Makes, is kinda rocking my world and I am only pausing long enough from working out how to subscribe from Australia to share this discovery with YOU, dear friends!

Why we don't have a magazine like this in Australia is beyond me. If you love handmade... you'll adore this magazine. Interviews with amazingly creative people, craft tutorials, styling inspiration, and more ideas than you can poke a stick at. It might have been more effective for me to have only folded down the corners of pages I didn't want to come back to, peeps!

Check out an issue sampler here... They also shot a promo video, which is well worth checking out... can you tell I want to be a promo girl for this magazine? Anyway, I am wanting to subscribe to this mag immediately... if not sooner. And in the meantime, I'm finding it hard to resist not whipping a batch up of those divine little strawberry pincushions!

Pause: one

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, love the reeling midnight through, for tomorrow we shall die

(but alas we never do)!

Dorothy Parker in The Portable Dorothy Parker

[Image via weheartit and then pinterest and, really, I would hate to be a good photographer at the end of the day!]

Cake Pops

Today in my series of posts "Inspirational Pins", I bring you the prettiest cake pops in shades of lemon yellow, rose pink and dusky aqua. I can't wait to make another batch of cake pops to decorate.

Have a sweet day!