New Beginnings

Ive decided to move on from Bluebells Cakery and onto new adventures at the new Cornwall Park Cafe. Im looking forward to everything this amazing cafe has in store for me and everything that it will mean for me in the future.

Here are a few of my first couple of cakes for Cornwall Park Cafe.

S'mores Cake 

Gluten Free Lemon Poppyseed

Lemon Floral Cake

I was asked my my neighbour and longtime family friend to make a cake for his daughters birthday, so, as inspired by work, came up with this floral beauty. It is a lemon cake with lemon curd, cream cheese frosting, berry meringues, passionfruit macarons and lots of fresh edible flowers. Such a beauty.

Bluebells Cake Decorating

My dream job, and only at the age of 19...Imagine where I can go from here.

Bluebells Cakery has allowed my creative juices to flow and I have loved all of my cake decorating skills I have learnt. There is nothing like seeing the reaction of the customer when they see your cakes, oohing and ahhing.

Here are a few of my creations over the past week!

My Homework

So much has happened in the last few months. I have decided to finally pursue my dream since I was little of going to culinary school. So I applied! AND I got in!!! I seriously cannot wait to start...can I just start now? Its going to be quite a journey, challenging but oh so fulfilling and exciting.

 I have loved my job at Bluebells Cakery and working in the front of house with the customers is a lot of fun because everyone is so happy (except those few people who are in such a hurry and order coffee without a response to "Good morning, how are you today?" Instead they just reply, "Regular flat white, one sugar." But other then those people, its so nice to see how happy everyone is.) Last weekend since everyone was sick/away in the back, I got to step up and decorate in the back! I decorated loaves, mini cupcakes, filling orders as they came my way. And on Sunday, I really stepped up and decorated almost all of the cupcakes for the shop! (Thanks Karla for your guidance :) ) Anyway, I can't wait to see what my future holds at Bluebells, but I love my little family. <3

I was told to do some practice at home of doing the famous Bluebells signature swirl on the cupcakes,  and its MUCH harder than it may seem. But regardless, Im thrilled with how they turned out.





So I also made homemade pork and cabbage dumplings!! I even made the dough and rolled each one out one by one! Took forever and a bit fiddly, but TOTALLY worth it! They were such a hit.

Cupcakes x2!

So last week I started work at Blubells Cakery in the front of house staff and was inspired by all of the beautiful pastries that we sell, so I decided to grab by copy of their cookbook and whip up a couple batches of their cupcakes, but put my twist on both of them.

The first cupcake I made was a Lemon Coconut Cupcake. It is a vanilla bean cake with with a lemon curd filling and vanilla cream cheese frosting, topped with coconut threads. 

The second cupcake I made was a chocolate cake with a dulce de leche filling and a dark chocolate ganache frosting.

Miscellaneous Baking

I have had a relaxing summer and spent some time baking several different things for friends and family.

One of the things I made was a triple chocolate chunk salted caramel brownie.

           

 

Another one was a vanilla bean cupcake filled with chocolate ganache and hazelnut praline shards.

       

       

Banana Dulce De Leche Cake

For Oscar's 17th Birthday, I made him a banana cake with alternating layers of dulce de leche and chocolate ganache filling topped with a vanilla bean buttercream and garnished with almond praline.  Everyone loved it and went down a treat!

Salted Caramel Brownie Cookie Bars

So its summer and since I have some free time, I decided to make these. After spending a few weeks in California over Christmas, I was inspired by everything being so decadent over there. 

And out came the idea inspired by a 'slutty brownie' which is a chocolate chip cookie base with oreo cookies in the middle and a layer of brownie on top. But since I didn't have any oreos or anything similar, I decided to fill it with salted caramel. And thus, I give you the salted caramel slutty brownie.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ah, so parts of Auckland have been without power for a few days now, driving everyone insane...me included. But after getting our power back we went round to my Aunt and Uncles house and I made some cupcakes for my cousins birthday. 

They are my infamous red velvet cupcakes--an American classic, but who doesn't love a good one. This recipe is tried and true, and has never let me down. Will always be a crowd favourite!

Red Velvet cupcakes with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting 

Banana Salted Caramel Cake

It is my grandparents birthdays this week and since I am down at Lake Rotoiti for the weekend, I decided to make a birthday cake for them. It is a banana cake with salted caramel and cream cheese frosting filling with a brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream.

So Happy Birthday Nana and Pop (Pasty and Buzz)!

Raspberry White Chocolate Cupcakes

These are a moist vanilla cake with white chocolate ganache filling and a raspberry swiss meringue buttercream. New Zealand white chocolate is superb and has an excellent mouth feel compared to American white chocolate, making it a must do in the cupcake scene. 

Anzac Cupcakes

Well its that time of the year again and exams are looming in the near future. So what does one do when they have jammed their head with as much information as possible for that period of time? Bake of course! Aka the perfect study break.

So I turned to my little notebook I keep by my bed for the crazy flavour combinations I come up with at 3 am to find one that would suffice. I came across some real Kiwiana flavours like lamington, banoffee, or Anzac so after about 5 minutes of strict deliberation, I decided to make the Anzac cupcakes.

Any other flavour suggestions for the future? :)

They are a golden syrup cake with coconut and golden syrup caramel filling, golden syrup frosting and topped with toasted coconut and an Anzac biscuit.

Lemon and Marscapone Cake

It was my wonderful godmothers birthday yesterday, so I turned to the trusty pages of my Bluebells Cakery cookbook and decided on making a vanilla bean cake with lemon curd and marscapone filling, topped with pink rosettes of vanilla bean buttercream.

This recipe uses a unique way of mixing the batter, by adding butter to the dry ingredients until it turns into breadcrumb sized pieces, then adding the wet ingredients. But despite this unique way of mixing, it is a foolproof, delicious recipe that is sure to win over the hearts of anyone who has any slight resemblance of a sweet tooth.

Boredom Leads to Making Cupcakes

I was home alone all day yesterday and after spending the majority of the day doing homework and eating dinner at 5pm followed by way too many lollies, I switched on the TV to watch cupcake wars. This inspired me to bake some cupcakes with whatever we had in the fridge and pantry, all homemade as always!
 I decided to use the leftover caramel from Becca's birthday cake last week to make a triple caramel cupcake and a vanilla, raspberry and chocolate cupcake. 

So I made them, using my favourite old recipe that has never let me down and began to bake.

The Triple Caramel Cupcake is a caramel cake, filled with salted caramel, with caramel buttercream and a caramel drizzle topped with an almond brittle.

The Vanilla, Raspberry and Chocolate Cupcake is a vanilla bean cake with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream.

Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes

This weekend has been a lovely relaxing five-day weekend for me after a hectic week of exams. Had a fantastic weekend away to my grandparents lake house at the gorgeous Lake Rotoiti and got back yesterday afternoon. Today was so lovely and warm here--where did winter go? No complaints from me though! So, I had a great ride on my sweet Remy this morning, followed by an afternoon of cupcake baking! Could it get any better?

So after doing some research last night, I took inspiration from my previous salted caramel cake and the 'Fleur de Sel' cupcake at Kara's Cupcakes in California to come up with this one.

It is a chocolate cake with salted caramel filling, vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream and salted caramel drizzle with fleur de sel sprinkled on top.

Maple Apple Cupcakes

I was recently surprised by one of my classmates at school with a cupcake from a bakery in Ponsonby as a thank you/inspiration for all the cupcakes that I bring into school for everyone. I was so surprised and delighted, completely made my day! Anyway the cupcake inspired me to make these cupcakes. Perfect for this cold fall (autumn) week here in Auckland. 

They are a cinnamon cake with cinnamon apple filling and maple cream cheese buttercream.

Chai Cupcakes and Samoa Cupcakes

I have been so busy lately riding my horse and doing heaps of school work preparing for the upcoming exams next week, so I haven't had a ton of time to bake recently. Anyway, this afternoon I set some time aside to do what I love and bake until my heart was content. So, me being me I got ambitious and decided to make two flavours today. I made a chai cupcake and a samoa cupcake.

Chai Cupcake: Chai cake with cinnamon sugar crust and a chai swiss meringue buttercream, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. 

Chai Cupcake

Samoa Cupcake: Coconut cake with chocolate ganache filling, caramel swiss meringue butter cream and topped with toasted coconut.

Samoa Cupcake

Samoa Cupcakes

Perfectly accompanied by coffee.

On another note, I made this cake for my godmothers partners birthday. He is really into sailing, so I made him this cake. It is a red velvet cake with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting.

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Ganache Cupcakes

Over the past few times I have tried to make chocolate cupcakes, I have had somewhat of a fail and they haven't risen the way they should, they sunk in the middle, or they were dry and crumbly. So I have decided to discard/dispose of all other chocolate cake recipes now and have found the perfect chocolate cake recipe thanks to the utter perfection of my Little and Friday cookbook. This has now become my bible (along with Magnolia Bakery's cookbook) and my favourite recipes.

My cupcakes are inspired by the Little and Friday cake transforming it into a dark chocolate cupcake with raspberry marscapone filling and covered in chocolate ganache. These are rich and decadent, fulfilling the chocolate desire of anyone.