Cupcakes - Chocolate & Vanilla

I made these same cupcakes for 2 different events that we had, both on the same weekend.

ingredients for cupcakes


250ml cream

220g caster sugar

2 eggs

225g self raising flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons cocoa powder


preheat oven to 180c and line your muffin tins with cupcake wrappers (makes about 18 cupcakes).



whisk together cream, sugar and eggs until well combined. Gradually add flour and beat until smooth, add vanilla. Take half of the mixture and put into a seperate bowl.  TO the remaining half, add the cocoa powder and mix well (add a little milk if the mixture gets too thick)

dollop alternate spoons from each bowl into cupcake wrappers and bake for about 20 minutes (keep an eye on them!)

When cakes have cooled, ice with vanilla icing (icing sugar, a dab of butter & hot water), then drizzle randomly with melted dark chocolate (I melt in the microwave, them ut into a plastic bag and snip off the corner, for easy drizzling)

Garden Salad - from the actual garden!!

I made a delicious salad - the majority of the ingredients were from our vegie garden!! This was very exciting for me!!!!

Basically, I tossed together lettuce, baby spinach and a mixture of herbs with some roasted beetroot (I put the beetroot into a parcel of aluminium foil with some herbs and a splash of water, and roasted until softened, then splashed the chopped cooked beetroot with a little raspberry vinegar), and some fetta cheese.  I mixed up a quick dressing using olive oil, raspberry vinegar, and some honey mustard, which I drizzled over the leaves.

It was great to be able to make use of some home-grown vegies!!!! Although it makes for quite n expensive salad, if you take into account the cost of setting up the garden in the first place - handyman, dirt delivery etc, but of course, the garden will be around for a long time!!! And hopefully will provide us with more than one salad :-)




Actually, a week later, I made another salad from the garden - this time a Green Garden Salad - I made up a pesto using macadamias, garlic, parmesan and basil & parsley, which I  added a tablespoon of to the usual salad dressing ingredients of olive oil and vinegar. I tossed this dressing over lettuce leaves and baby spinach from the garden to create a very tasty and simple salad.  Seem to have forgotten to make it smile for the camera before it was eaten however!!