I just want to (butter)fly

Damnit, now I have that stoopit Crazy Town song stuck in my head.  No way to start a day (I'm eating weetbix with one hand and typing with the other - how do you spell 'milk on the keyboard'?)

Anyway, things are looking a tad busy for me today, so I thought that I'd finally get around to posting about these wicked-ass cupcakes I made for my friend Sara's birthday.  It was an important birthday, plus she's pregnant at the moment, so I wanted to make a big fuss out of Sara-the-person-who-likes-stuff, rather than Sara-the-pregnant-lady.  So the scene was set for cupcake action!

And here they are!  The flavour is chilli-chocolate (Evil Sara introduced me to the taste exploooossssion which is Lindt chilli flavoured chocolate, and now it seems that a chocolatey treat just isnt' right without a nice big smack-your-face blast of chilli), and the little butterflies that you see on the top are made from sugar cookie dough.  Again, the cakes were just made with the chocolate variation on the white cake recipe, which is totally my go-to recipe for cupcakes - I doubt if I'll ever use another (unless it's the sour cream and white chocolate recipe, which should be coming up in the next post).  I got the awesome teeny butterfly cutters from Cakestuff, and the lady who runs that shop should be given a niceness medal - every time I've interacted with her (albeit over the emails) she's always lovely, which was even better this time because they accidentally send the wrong thing first up.  But they fixed it super-promptly, and I got to keep the wrong thing too!  Noice.

So that was baking adventures.  Well, last week's baking adventures - I'm in the middle of a bit of a secret squirrel operation at the moment, so you'll just have to wait to see how that turns out (can't wait until that is done, looking forward to having a sense of achievement, rather than a sense of trepidation and 'biting off more than I can chew'edness).  Mum and Dad are coming down for a visit next week, which should be real fun, haven't got anything planned, in fact I'm almost praying for kind of shitty weather so that we can just blob around (invariably, it's always a bit rank on the weather front when they're down here though... *sigh*)

The weetbix in my bowl has now become sludge, so that must be the signal to finish up here.  TTFN, y'all.

Who Loves the Devil?

Yes! Yes! A cake!  It's only the second cake I've ever featured on this blog, and that's because I usually can't be arsed hauling a knife around to wherever I'm going to be caking-it-up.  But here I was, going to a most civilised dinner party, and thought, what cake takes almost no effort, I have all the ingredients for, and is almost universally loved?

The answer, whispered on a sweetly sulphuric stream, was Devil's Food Cake.

I'd actually never made one of these puppies before.  And there is actually a darn good reason for that - I'm craptastic at making ganache.  It's probably a matter of practice, but also probably the fact that yours truly might be a tad overconfident with her skills.  I mean, on paper, how hard could it be?  It's essentially adding either cream or water to melted chocolate to make a thick, choco-tastic frosting. Simple, right?  Ha!  That's just what the French want you to think.  My ganache, while sufficiently delicious, was matte and stiff, not shiny and limber as it's supposed to be.  As it always is.  You'd think that by now, I'd be aware of my limitations and either practice making ganache when it's not a make or break occasion (it never really is, usually people are impressed that you didn't just buy something, but still.  Competitive streak and all that), but no!  Where is the fun in that?

Damn, it was good.  I got the recipe from David Lebovitz , made no adjustments or re-doings, just pure, unadulterated Lebovitz.  I've got to stop writing about this cake now, I'm getting drool all over the keyboard.  Lucky I've got a few vegetarian cooking books out of the library, 'cause Mama's gonna need to lose a few kilos after her date with the Devil.