Cupcake Central

I think it’s pretty obvious that I love cupcakes, but in my opinion there doesn’t seem to be many stores in Sydney that sell good cupcakes, thankfully I get to get my cupcake fix when I visit Melbourne at Cupcake Central. 

I really love Cupcake Central, I’ve been a huge fan of their cupcakes for many years. What I love most about Cupcake Central’s cupcakes is that not only do their cupcakes look good, they also taste amazing too. Cupcake Central’s cupcakes always taste so moist and fluffy, I honestly have never had a bad cupcake from there. 

This weekend I had a solo trip to Melbourne, I had a food itinerary planned and I was just so super excited to eat my way through Melbourne. Of course one stop was Cupcake Central, I have been twice already and I could easily go for another visit tomorrow. 

The first cupcake I tried was the Potato Head cupcake, the Potato Head cupcake was amazing, the combination of chocolate cupcake and potato chips is simply genius. The potato chips were also covered in white chocolate too, I really loved the sweet and salty combination of the flavours. The cupcake was also super moist. 

Today I visited Cupcake Central again and I bought the Churros Cupcake, the Churros cupcake is a brown sugar and cinnamon cake, with a caramel centre and topped with a caramel buttercream icing and a dark chocolate dipped churros on top. The Churros cupcake was so delicious, I felt like I was actually eating a churros, the cinnamon cake flavouring and the delicious churros on top was just divine. The cupcake was also so moist and I also the loved surprise caramel centre. This cupcake is definitely my new favourite cupcake.

I really really wish Cupcake Central would open up in Sydney one day, because Sydney needs good cupcakes. (Hint hint Cupcake Central)

Click on the link below to access Cupcake Central’s website:

Cupcake Central 

The World’s best butter cookies

Yes, you read right, these cookies are called the world’s best butter cookies, when I saw this recipe online, I knew I had to try making them.

I was having a craving for a good cookie, so I searched on Google for a recipe, when I saw this recipe claiming to be the world’s best butter cookies and that it was a recipe by Alice Medrich, I was immediately sold.

The recipe was a pretty easy recipe to follow, it required not many ingredients and it didn’t take long to make, the longest part was waiting for the dough to cool in the fridge. 

I ended up baking the butter cookies for 13 minutes instead of the suggested 16-18 minutes and I let the butter cookies cool on the tray before eating one. I decided not to decorate or add anything to the butter cookies because I wanted to see how they taste when they are plain.

The butter cookies did actually taste like the world’s best butter cookie, the butter cookie was crunchy, buttery and not too sweet. The butter cookies were tasty when they were a little bit warm.

I am so pleased that I got to get my cookie fix because I feel like cookies these days taste so bland. 

I will definitely have to add this recipe to my favourites, I’m feeling so chuffed to have found some great recipes this weekend. 

The recipe for World’s best butter cookies can be found on this website: 
World’s best butter cookies

Brown butter triple chocolate blondies

This morning I woke with the urge to bake something, I instantly turned to my Instagram feed for inspiration, I ended up seeing Handle the heat’s brown butter triple chocolate blondies and I was sold.

Handle the heat is one of my favourite recipe bloggers, just like my other favourite, Sally’s baking addiction, she writes lovely recipes that are easy to follow. 

Thankfully I had all the ingredients for this recipe and the recipe was pretty straight forward to follow. The brown butter triple chocolate blondies smelt so amazing to make and I just love the smell of butter simmering in a pot. 

The brown butter triple chocolate blondies only took 25 minutes to bake and they looked so delicious when they were ready. I let the blondies cool down and then cut them into smaller pieces so I could share them with my friends at today’s AFL game. 

The blondies tasted really good, despite the amount of chocolate in them, they actually didn’t taste too sweet. The blondies were also quite moist and very moreish. 

I have to say that this recipe will be definitely added to my favourites list, I really do love a good easy to bake recipe.

Handle the heat’s recipe can be located on her website: 

Brown butter triple chocolate blondies

Movenpick Sydney CBD

Movenpick is definitely one of my favourite places to eat ice cream in Sydney, my friends and I used to go to the Darling Harbour branch all the time, we used to catch the Monorail down to Darling Harbour, but we stopped going because the Government got rid of the Monorail and we were too lazy to walk down to Darling Harbour.  Lucky for us, this year it was announced that Movenpick was opening up a branch in March in the Sydney CBD area.

I could not go to the opening of Movenpick Sydney CBD because I had other things to do, but I went immediately when I got back into work. The new Movenpick Sydney CBD is amazing, unlike the small kiosk sized branch in Darling Harbour, the Sydney CBD branch is like a restaurant, you can order and sit down in booths and tables to enjoy your Movenpick delights.

Since the opening of Movenpick Sydney CBD, I may have visited at least once a week, so you could pretty much say that I am pretty much obsessed. My favourite flavour is Stracciatella.

I am really loving the new section where Movenpick is located, there is also a Guylian Café and also Tim Ho Wan will be opening up there soon too.

Having a Movenpick so close to my work is so dangerous!

Special offers at Movenpick: Currently Movenpick has a deal, download the Rewardle app and then scan your QR code at your local Movenpick store to receive one free scoop of ice cream. This offer expires 31/5/16.

Movenpick Sydney CBD is located at:

580 George Street, CBD, Sydney (where the old Pavillion Hotel used to be)

Thomas the tank engine cake

My now 2 year old son is obsessed with Thomas the tank engine, so I decided that I would make him a Thomas the tank engine cake for his birthday, was I being overly adventurous? Maybe.

I will confess that I have only worked with fondant once and I do recall it was quite a frustrating experience and I was apprehensive about working with fondant again but part of me was determined to give it another go.

I ended up asking my friend Tina for tips on what sort of Thomas the tank engine cake to make and she suggested a few simple ideas, I ended up opting for the simple version. The cake I made was a three tiered vanilla cake with a coconut filling.

Making the cake was probably the easiest part, I ended up learning how to crumb coat a cake by watching a You Tube clip. The fondant part was the hardest part, I actually bought the wrong shade of blue fondant and I stupidly only realised this in the evening when Spotlight was closed, so I had to go to Coles and buy white fondant and colour it myself.  Luckily colouring fondant was not as hard as I had imagined it would be.

Cutting the shapes for the fondant was saved by using my cookie cutters, but the hardest part was the making the Thomas the tank engine shape, I opted for the easiest type, luckily my son recognised that the shape was Thomas the tank engine. lol..

Hours later the cake was finished and I worked on making the green cake board and I realised that I had not enough green fondant to cover the cake board, so I ended up colouring more white fondant green.

Considering this my official first time using fondant to cover a cake, I was actually quite pleased with how the cake turned out.

On the day of the party, I was so nervous that the cake might not taste good, but thankfully it did and everyone thought the cake tasted nice.

I might try to practice making another cake using fondant, I am feeling totally inspired.

What I used….

For the cake base I used Sally’s baking addiction very vanilla cupcakes recipe (my go to base for every recipe)

I used fondant from Spotlight and Coles.

Colouring was Americolor from Spotlight

Making fondant was saved by..

My marble cutting board

Cornflour

My husband helping haha