I promised Anna I’d bake some mini-cheesecakes for her birthday and having never made cheesecake before, I spend all week looking up recipes. I found 3 recipes that I really liked so I had the brilliant idea of combining the 3 to make mini white-chocolate cheesecakes with an oreo-base and blueberry syrup on top. Could I have made it any harder for myself? Seriously, what was I thinking.

Anyway, we totally stuffed it up! We got all the quantities mixed up and ending up with too much butter in the base, too much sugar in the top and too much heat in the oven. We couldn’t have gotten it any more wrong than we did. It’s not easy baking after a few drinks, I obviously didn’t learn from our previous BUI experience (baking under the influence).

After burning the lot we tried to save them by chopping the top off (because it was pitch black), but it ended up looking a bit like an egg-tart. So to make it look edible G, being the Masterchef that she is, had a bit of a play. In the end it turned out semi-decent looking (btw: the blackness in the after shot is Oreos, but burnt) and it was actually really yummy.

Next week’s mission: Wagon-wheels (preferably not BUI).

I’m really starting to enjoy baking nowadays, and my friends and family are reaping the benefits.

I went for my trusty Bill’s cookbook and found this banana maple turnover cake. It actually turned out better than I expected. There was a moment of disaster and disappointment when I opened the oven door at the due time and it was still liquid, so we left it in for an extra 20 minutes. Phew…

It’s funny, now that we’ve been baking for a while we now know exactly what goes into cakes – a whole lot of butter and sugar. So when G came over and saw the cake, her first question was “How much butter’s in it?” Sometimes I think it’s best if I don’t answer that question.

Because Charles has been blogging about cupcakes and more cupcakes, I wanted some cupcakes. So we decided to try bake them ourselves.

I’ve never baked cupcakes before. I didn’t even know you needed a cupcake baking tray (Thanks A Luu for pointing that out!), I just thought you just put it in the paper cups on a flat tray and you’re set to go. That could have been interesting.

After carefully following the recipe (with one little hiccup), they turned out quite nice – especially fresh out of the oven.

The topping was suppose to be white chocolate frosting with fairy floss on top but who would have thought it was so hard to find fairy floss. Without the fairy floss G and I thought it would be a bit boring just having white frosting on top, so we had a stroke of genius – let’s put sprinkles in the frosting so it would have colourful lines all through it. As you can see below it didn’t quite work as planned.

The sprinkles lost all their colour and smeared into the white frosting, turning our White Fairy Cupcakes into Green Sprinkle Cupcakes.

Never the less, they were absolutely delicious.

I’m a huge fan of Masterchef Australia, so as you can imagine I’m really sad that it’s over. For the past month I would rush home after work to make the 7pm start, I neglected my gym routine and at times had refused to go out for dinner because I wanted to watch my beloved Masterchef. And yes I did cry when Justine left and again when Julie won.

As a tribute to Masterchef, g and I decided to make Lucus’ Chocolate Cigars as a way to finish the series, similar to what they do in Boston Legal at the end of every episode except they actually smoke their cigars and theirs are real cigars. Anyway…

I’d never worked with filo pastry before and after last night, don’t think I will ever again. It’s so thin and fragile and you have to butter it, layer it, then butter it again. What looked like a quick and easy dessert to make turned out taking us about 2 hours to make.

The result, 15 very sweet chocolate cigars that ate well after the show had finished.

After our BUI (baking under the influence) disaster the other night, me and G decided to give baking another go, this time without the alcohol. It’s a lot easier to bake with a straight head.

We headed to our trusty Bill Granger cookbooks – the recipes are easy to follow and they’ve always turned out great. Speaking of Bill, I can’t believe he’s going to be on Masterchef this week. I would probably faint if I was cooking for him. The Masterchef contestants have their work cut out for them this week. Eek!

Back to the cookbook, at first we had our eye on the Passionfruit Pavlova, but were sorely disappointed to find that we were missing just 1 ingredient – Arrowroot. What in the world is arrowroot? All I know is Milk Arrowroot biscuits, but I don’t think that’s what they mean. Anyway we had to pass on the pavlova this time, but rest assure, we’ll make it next week (with arrowroot).

Instead we made these yummy jam shortbread rolls. It was a lengthy process involving getting your fingers in there, rolling and refrigerating the dough, then slicing and baking it. But it paid off. As soon as they were ready to eat we had 7 between the two of us. Could have gone for more, but it was getting late and too close to bedtime for that much sugar.

Last night we all headed to Bar Europa to have a few drinks for Lisa’s farewell. We had a reserved section, which we were suppose to share with another party. But with Lisa being such a popular and well liked person, her party took over / squeezed out the other party, so we had the whole section to ourselves. Nice! And we got free drink vouchers which was extra nice!

Usually after a big night out most people can’t wait t hit the sack and go to sleep. Instead, me and G decided that it would be a great idea to bake some chocolate pudding. Mind you we’ve never tried to bake pudding before and we’d had a few drinks. Just a word of warning: Baking under the influence (BUI) is not a good idea. Not only was it impossible to read the recipe, try measuring and sifting ingredients, adding the wet ingredients, then pouring the mixture into bowls, then sprinkling the topping over the mixture, then pouring boiling water over the topping and baking it for 20-25 minutes. Who knew making pudding was so complex.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture our “pudding” isn’t quite up to Masterchef standards. But, it did taste pretty awesome. The top was nice and crispy, the middle was moist and the bottom had a heap of hot chocolate sauce. That actually sounds like a good pudding, you just have to get past the horrible look (and the burnt smell in the kitchen).