Sprinkle Bakes by Heather Baird

My office very generously gave me this book as a going away pressie. It's beautiful! Sprinkle Bakes, by Heather Baird.

Cappuccino Muffin Cake Pops

Happy little balls of muffin mix sitting in their baking tray home

You have to love cake pops. They're a bizarre baking fad that has moms and bake-a-holics the world over going googly-eyed over little balls of cake.

Gone are the days of mixing cake with frosting to get a dough sticky enough to mould into balls... nope, these days we have cake pop makers. They come in all forms from stand-alone machines to cake pop baking trays. I was lucky enough to get a cake pop baking tray, as a birthday present, from my mom.

This weekend I gave the baking a whirl... The cake pops baked spectacularly well, the decorating needs MUCH work. That said, they were delicious, even if they didn't look beautiful. Wayne, mom and I had many happy mouthfuls of my cappuccino muffin mix cake pops.

The recipe couldn't be easier...

Crusty Onion and Cheese Muffins

Australian Women's Weekly - Muffins, Scones and Breads

I'm not the biggest fan of savoury muffins, however, my husband and mom are so this is what I made for lunch yesterday. These savoury muffins are delicious and dense and will easily feed six people for lunch. I suggest serving them with Simonsberg Spring Onion and Chives flavoured cream cheese.

Oh, yes... I couldn't get chives, which the recipe calls for at Pick n Pay yesterday, so I ended up using fresh coriander (dania to us South African's). I also used about three tablespoons of fresh dania instead of the one tablespoon of fresh chives.

Anyways, here's the recipe >>

Granny's Perfect Popovers

My Gran used to make popovers for me after school as a treat. She'd fill them with apricot or strawberry jam, which to this day, is still my favourite way of eating them. You can also turn them into additions to High Tea by filling them with smoked salmon and cream cheese, with an assortment of micro-greens.

They're a take on the Yorkshire pudding, but without the oil. I don't know about you, but I've had a Yorkshire pudding disaster and as a result have shied away from them. This is the perfect alternative :)

Granny's Perfect Popovers

Recipe after the jump >>

Clover’s Flourless Chocolate Cake

I originally found this recipe on the http://www.clover.co.za/ website.
This beautiful, rich, mousse-like chocolate cake is one of my all time favourites to make. With only a handful of ingredients it’s an easy and relatively quick cake to make.

The thing about this cake is that during the cooking process it rises beautifully, then sinks to almost a quarter of the size, so if you’re looking to impress with a large cake for afternoon tea, best give this one a miss. However, it can’t be beaten when it comes to lightness and taste.

Recipe after the jump :)

I love discovering new little shops and one very special little shop has popped up in the town that I live in. It’s called The Book Boutique, and is filled with wonderful little treasures from exquisite books to over-sized meringues. I picked up two books during my visit to the store on Saturday which consisted of The Australian Woman’s Weekly – the 12 days of Christmas recipe book and The Australian Woman’s Weekly – macaroons & biscuits recipe book. Both were R80 each, which by South African standards isn’t a bad price to pay for a decent recipe book.

Of the two my favourite is definitely the biscuit book; however that really is because I’m on a bit of a baking mission at the moment.

The Macaroons & Biscuits book is filled with wonderful recipes like honey jumbles, chocolate chunk and raspberry cookies, peanut praline cookies, melting moments and a wide variety of biscotti. However, the gems of the book are most definitely the macaroons which come in all sorts of flavours including (but not limited to) raspberry, honey almond, caramel pecan and orange almond.

I’m quite excited about my purchases and hopefully will be putting up a “They’re a Success” post in the very near future.

Happy baking all!

How To Make : Cake Pops

Cake Pops by Zolita

Baking and, well, food in general really, often goes through trends. We've seen black and white wedding cakes, decorative cake wrappers, iced biscuits and now cake pops.

At first glance these sweet little morsels look like they are just a disaster waiting to happen, but they're actually really simple to put together. I found a beautiful step-by-step recipe for making cake pops which I've posted below.