happy birthday to me

i’ve had a lovely birthday. I’m terribly grateful to all the very kind birthday messages, calls, cards, pressies, company and an absolutely gorgeous dinner at pattersons. am feeling rather loved. i couldn’t have asked for a better way to have eased through the pain of coming to terms with turning a year older.

i am grateful to the kind people at slavedrivers inc who wished me well through the day and allowed me to subject them to the results of my attempts at baking – the brave souls who partook of my cupcakes, brownies and rice krispy squares. having made them up in a rather random manner due to lack of the usual things that go into these rice krispy jobbies, i’m left with a rather hazy memory that it involved half a tin of golden syrup and all the white chocolate in my possession last night.

I do however remember what went into the cupcakes because I followed a recipe from a children’s cookbook. the cupcakes were made as follows:

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

125g caster sugar

125g butter

125g self-raising flour

beat the butter and sugar till slightly fluffy. add eggs and vanilla essence and beat till smooth. fold in flour and bake in cupcake holders till golden in a pre-heated oven at 180C for 20 minutes till golden. cool before icing with cream cheese icing made out of 120g butter, 230g cream cheese and 220g icing sugar which has been whisked till smooth. resist all temptation to lick the spoon after you’ve iced one cupcake, because the recipe above makes 12 cupcakes and you will have to wash the 11 additional spoons you have licked the icing off assuming that you do intend to use a clean, unlicked spoon to ice the cupcakes.