panna cotta with raspberry and thyme

Sometimes food is better in single serves - do you agree? 

When I have to share food I often get a case of food anxiety. I feel like I have to eat really quickly if I'm going to get my fair share and end up stressed. I dread the moment when you sit down for dinner in a restaurant and someone in your party says "how about we get a few plates to share?"

No, no, no. I want my own meal, on my own plate, so that I can eat in my own weirdly organised way (I have this thing about piling food neatly on the back of my fork which can be ... time consuming). Just let me be! Okay, the truth is I don't always feel this way. There is definitely something lovely about having a long table of old friends sharing a classic family style feast - but let's just make sure we each have our own plate, why don't we?  

Phew. Lucky for freaks like me this particular desert is best made in single serves, that way you'll have the best chance of having a panna cotta that will hold it's shape. Or you can be lazy, like me, and not even bother turning it out - just eat it right out of the mould. I served these at my mother's 50th birthday and they went down a treat. 

Spiked with real vanilla bean and covered in tangy, herbed raspberries, this panna cotta is easy to love and very easy to make! 

stephanie, the birthday girl (and her incredible wedding).

There are many people in the world who are precious to me, but few that are more precious to me than this girl. Today is her birthday.

Over the years I've had the privilege of going to school with her, singing beside her, writing songs with her, traveling with her, shopping with her, blogging with her, partying with her, road tripping with her, drinking coffee with her (although, weirdly, she orders a hot coffee and waits until it is ice cold before she'll drink it.), wrapping things in brown paper with her, freaking out with her, drinking red wine with her, giggling with her, talking until all hours of the night with her, praying with her and crying with her.

She is an incredible woman of God who is passionate, creative, confident and fiercely loyal, and I am so thankful to have her as a friend.

Although it is hard to chose, I think my favourite time spent with her was at her wedding. It was raw and honest and breezy and just lovely (Steph's all time favourite word). They had it in a little beachside town in a backyard that we transformed together into a magical land. It was this wedding that really started my love for weddings and for which I made my first ever wedding cake.

There are a million things I could tell you about this wedding, but I'll just let the photos speak for themselves. Click, click! 

(Photos by Jes of Ruth&Rose, Flowers by The Sisters)

a purple english garden cake

Oh, look! I made a cake and covered in flowers!

Predictable. Reliable.

This beautiful and massive cake was made for a friends parent's double 60th birthday party. The brief was for layers of dark chocolate and honey lavender cake smothered in white chocolate icing (this recipe to be exact). The flowers: a purple hued English garden. I've never been to an English garden, as I've never been to England, but I guessed that roses, lavender and lisianthus would be about right. I snuck some Australian foliage in there - this is Australia though so it's only fair.

There is not much in this post that you haven't seen before, except that I'll show you a neat little trick on how to secure fresh flowers to a cake.

mojito birthday cake

I woke up the other day remembering that it was a friends birthday. I would be seeing her in two hours and would be a bad friend if I didn't bring her a birthday cake, so I frantically filed through the 'cakes-to-make' list in my head and chose one that I thought was achievable in the short time that I had. Settling on a mojito cake, I dragged myself out of bed and whipped this cake up in no time... And somewhere between adding the single egg, pouring the mixture into a smaller-than-normal tin and seeing the end result I realised that something had gone wrong.

The cake was TINY. It was embarrassingly small for the group of 8 people that were supposed to be consuming it. Not small enough that it could be a joke but definitely not big enough to properly feed everyone. Sigh. Somewhere amid my freak out I checked the recipe book one more time to see what I had done wrong, and there it was, right in the heading, the recipe was for teeny, tiny, mini Mojito cupcakes.

Okay, so it wasn't that bad. We did all get a slice of cake even if it was a tad smaller than the standard sized slice. It was delicious, (like, stupidly delicious) so that made up for it! 

the loveliest of kitchen teas

This is an event that I can take absolutely no credit for. It was mainly the handiwork of my dear friend Caity. But I had to show you because it was oh so pretty. Vintage tea cups, bunting, crocheted table cloths and flower wreaths... I know you've seen them all before, but they still get me every time!

simple rosemary sugar syrup

I love to cook. (Obviously.) But sometimes the urge to cook is just as easily satisfied by making something as simple as a humble sugar syrup.

You can do anything with this kind of syrup. Make a sweet lime and rosemary cocktail, pour it over a butter cake to give it an unexpected twist of flavour and stickiness, or just drizzle it over some fresh fruit. I mixed it through some stawberries to dress up a pavlova.

Directions: Bring 1 cup of water to the boil. Add 2 cups of sugar and 3-4 rosemary sprigs. Stir until the sugar has completely disolved. Allow it to simmer for about 5 minutes giving it time to reduce and infuse, but don't over cook it or you'll end up with syrup that is too thick to drizzle.

new york inspiration: magnolia bakery

Have you ever heard of Magnolia Bakery?

They are New York's iconic bakery that started the raging cupcake trend of the early 2000's. There are a number of them scattered across New York now, and it's easy to see why they are so popular - just look at how cute they are!

I've had their cookbook for many years but had never actually tasted one of their infamous cupcakes. On my first visit I entered the bakery and was totally overwhelmed - there were cakes and bunting and sprinkles everywhere. I was stressed by all the people and the endless flavour option so I bought a humble red velvet cupcake and got out of there! I would have loved to sit in a park and eat it in the sunshine... but I found no parks and there was no sunshine and it was negative a zillion degrees. I proceeded to walk around for the rest of the day with my cupcake in a paper bag. That night, when I finally had a chance to sit down, I bit into it and discovered it was frozen. frozen. what?! Oh, perhaps this is what happens to things in paper bags when you walk around for hours in subzero temperatures. The thought had never occurred to this little Australian.

I swear by Magnolia's vanilla buttercream. It is the creamiest, tastiest of buttercreams. Let me share the recipe with you.