The following are the guest strips I did for Bunny

My husband and I have also created a webcomic based on the antics of our domestic house cat named Bella. I create all of the illustrations and we co-create the ideas for each strip. It is updated on Mondays and Thursdays AEST.

Please visit often and bookmark La Bella Vita!

I’ve done some guest strips for Lem over at Bunny. This is one in a set of three. They are fun, quick and dirty.

I think everyone was surprised when the cake was sliced.

I made these for Andrew to take in to work tomorrow (Friday) for Valentine’s Day.  They are very simple and incredibly tasty!

Here’s the recipe for the Brown Sugar Cookies:

125g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or essence (I used imitation because it’s actually BETTER than real vanilla extract.)
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup (or you can use honey or a thick maple syrup)
1¼ cups self-raising flour

Cream butter, vanilla, sugar and honey until light and creamy. Mix in flour and blend until doughy.  Very lightly flour a wooden rolling board and hand flatten the dough very carefully.  The dough is too delicate to roll with a pin.  Then cut out your shapes, place on a flat cookie sheet lined with baking paper and cook at 150ºC (or 130ºC Fan Forced which is what I did) for 30 minutes or until firm.  Remove and let cool.  Once cool, roll out your icing using sifted caster sugar as a flouring agent on your rolling board and cut using the same shapes you used for the cookies.  Brush some golden syrup (like a glue) onto the inner portion of the cookie, and place the icing on top and in the center.

That’s it!  So simple and tasty and perfect for people with egg allergies.

Andrew’s coworkers loved the last cupcakes so much, I made more.

I also made some in honour of “Talk like a Pirate Day!” last November.

Banana Nut Bread is next on the baking list.. as soon as it cools down a little bit.

This is a papier-mâché mask I have been working on.

I added gold leaf to the border, coated the entire mask with a satin finish, gave it an antiqued, “worked wood look” and finally, weaved some gold thread and applied it to the border.  I don’t know if I’m done with it now, or if I want to do more.  I have found some black ribbon for the tie.

Filling
1 can (14 ounces/1.75 cups) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup fresh/strained lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3 egg yolks
12 mini tart crusts (but I had enough left over for 6 more)

Meringue
3 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar

Preheat oven at 325ºF/160ºC

Combine the s.c.milk, lemon juice, and zest; blend in egg yolks. Ladle among the mini tart crusts. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until the filling is just set.
With an electric mixer, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the sugar until stiff. Transfer the meringue to a piping bag fitted with a medium star tip. Pipe stars of meringue all over the surface of each pie. With a blow torch, carefully brown the meringue on top of the pies, or put back in oven on a higher setting, but keep an eye on it because it will brown quickly!

These are for Andrew’s Thursday Morning Tea event. The lemon comes out creamy and so delicious. I didn’t overwhip it so I could maintain a soft and creamy consistency while still having peaked points.

I made some cupcakes for Andrew’s once a month Thursday Morning Tea event that is in the morning. This week, I made themed cupcakes. It’s the first time I’ve used rolled icing and it’s really neat.

Next time I think I will spend more time with making the shapes neater.

I think they came out pretty darn well!

The fondant is pretty flavorful, the way icing should be.

We bought a coconut ruff and 3 brownies. 1 rocky road, 1 walnut and one chocolate chip brownie. Andrew and I split them all so that we could taste some of all of them. They are so soft, fresh, delicious and tasty that I was drooling while chewing them and crying because they were so extremely decadent.

But I digress. When we were in Sydney last week, we found a nice little shop called Tapestry Craft. Their downstairs area was full of wool and knitting materials. Wall-to-wall yarn. It was fantastic. The gal downstairs was a “hoosier” which is Indiana? Or was it Iowa? Either way, she was very nice and wrote a url down for me to this fantastic website that is in beta testing. I think the knitters on my list will find it interesting if you haven’t heard of it already. The website is Ravelry.com. There’s a waiting list to get in, but from the looks and sound of it, I think will be something good.

I bought some New Zealand wool from the shop; hand painted and 10ply. It’s very, very soft and the color is fantastic. The only problem I’m having is, I don’t know how many stitches to put in so that the color will repeat. Right now I’m doing trial and error. I’m sure it will still look nice even if it doesn’t gradate, but it would be nice.

Welcome to The Tea Room.  Here I will be posting my non-classical arts and crafts, some recipes and pics!