cake it!

Dear S,.

a thing I have always wanted to have: a cakestand.
They are rather expensive though, and you hardly ever find beautiful ones on flea markets and in second- hand shops. Somewhere, I don't remember on which blog exactly, I read about making a cake stand yourself- this is what I did.
In the second- hand shop in my street, I found a beautiful, middle sized plate with blue ornaments. Second thing I needed: a vase with two straight ends. I had some beautiful flowery decorated vases in my hands, but eventually I chose to keep it plain. Total kost price: 75 cents.
Then I went to a Brico shop and asked what kind of glue I could use to fix them together; either a special kind of silicone or just try it with superglue. I also got the useful tip to put a small piece of wood/ other material between the two ceramic items. The only thing I found around was a piece of a very thin wooden teabox- worked like a charm! First i glued the piece of wood to the plate. Let it dry; put glue on to the thinner end of the vase and glue it as central as possible to the wood on the plate. Done! I'm really happy with the result, especially because it was my first try.









Of course, I had to try it out on the same day! I made some Carrot and Nut Cupcakes with creamcheese topping, voila:





It was a recipe I have tried for the first time and I found them SO nice!
So I want to share this recipe out of a beautiful cupcake book:

170g of finely grated , try to squeeze out the excess fluid
120g of soft butter
120g of light demarara sugar (rietsuiker/ Rohrzucker)
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 eating spoon of lemon juice
1 ts of cinneamon
1 ts of spicecake/ speculaas herbs
1 pinch of salt
100g of flour
half a bag of baking powder
50g of ground almonds
50g of roughly chopped walnuts or pecans
1 es of milk

How to:

Mix butter and sugar until light and cremy. Add the eggs and beat all for a while. Now add all the other ingredients to the batter, stir gently but thoroughly. Add the grated carrots as last ingredient. Fill the dough into cupcake forms with paper cups. This batter should be enough for about 12 cupcakes. Bake them in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. The should rise a bit but stay rather soft- they don!t get a crunchy top. Don't worry if there is some orange fluid when you get the cakes out- it's just carrot juice.

When they are cooled, glaze them with a cream cheese and lemon frosting:

300g of cream cheese (Philadelphia or noname)
60g of powder sugar
juice of a (small) lemon
zest of a lemon.
mix all the ingredients thoroughly and let it rest in the fridge for a while.

Decorate and enjoy!

Love, M.


ps: cats have the tendency to attack these cakes wildly. take precautions if you'd like to eat them yourself :)