As I'm sure you have all read about already, the awesome Billy from A Table for Two and Karen from Citrus and Candy organised a picnic for the Sydney Food Blogger community a few weeks ago. There was a great turn-out, with lots of new faces as well as familiar ones, and of course there were mountains of tasty food which spanned across at least 3 picnic rugs!
We were all encouraged to bring a plate to share, and to put some effort into it as well since there were some great prizes up for grabs, including restaurant vouchers and a brand spanking new KitchenAid which was won by Anita from No Red Meat. Congrats Anita!
It was the weekend before my thesis was due so I decided to whip up something easy like cupcakes. Since Nuffnang was sponsoring the picnic one of the categories included a prize for the best blue dish. Whilst trawling the internet for some cupcake decorating ideas I came across this Cookie Monster cupcake which I thought was an awesome idea and I set out to replicate it.
It seems great minds think alike, since there were two other offerings of Cookie Monster cupcakes at the picnic (one of which was made by Sook from Nommy Nom Nom). Even though we all had the same basic idea, all the cupcakes were slightly different. I decorated mine with dessicated coconut which had been dyed blue to give it a 'furry' effect and piped dark chocolate for the eyes instead of using choc chips.
My favourite part of the cupcake though is the cookie that is shoved in Cookie Monster's mouth! If you're going to make these it's probably best to insert the cookie on the day you're going to serve them to avoid the cookies going stale as mine did. I was getting worried at the amount of blue food colouring that was going into the whole product so I skimped a bit on colouring the coconut (you can see some white flecks where the coconut didn't manage to be dyed blue), but feel free to go crazy on the blue food colouring if you want a really vivid, intense blue colour.
As I mentioned in my previous post about Après restaurant, I made sure that I sat next to people who would be willing to share their food with me so I could try all the dishes on the menu. In order to do this, I had to make place cards.
Since I wasn't having a cake, I also wanted people to have a little something to take home so I decided to kill two birds with one stone by making placecard cookies.
These cookies were just basic sugar cookies glazed with purple royal icing and white royal icing used to pipe on the names. It was my first time piping out letters and I was really worried that they would turn out a big mess but thanks to Queen Chu who let me borrow her piping set, and a bit of patience on my part, they turned out beautifully.
Photo courtesy of BLT
I wrapped them up in some plastic gift bags, tied some purple ribbon around the top and placed them on the table setting when we arrived at the restaurant. Everyone loved the cookies which were crumbly and buttery, with BLT and Captain Awesome polishing off their cookies before dinner had even begun!
The lovely bloggers Helen from Grab Your Fork and Suze from chocolatesuze recently organised a massive Xmas party for Sydney food bloggers. Everyone brought along a dish to share and needless to say with around 50 food bloggers in attendance, we ended up with huge amounts of food. Check out these posts for more foodie madness!
Amongst a tiered platter of classic kids favourites, "Elvis" cupcakes, a slow cooked Bo Ssam, chicken wings, a Makoto sushi platter and other delicious offerings, I made some iced gingerbread cookies for the occasion (recipe below).
A few days later I also decided to try out raspberri cupcakes' mini gingerbread houses. These turned out great and now there is a cute little gingerbread house sitting on my dining table awaiting it's destruction on Christmas Day!
I didn't make all four houses in the recipe so I had some dough leftover for some gingerbread Christmas trees and gingerbread men to decorate the garden around my house. The house was very sturdy and the measurements for the house were perfect! Thanks Steph :)
It's not quite finished yet - on the day I intend on sprinkling some sifted icing sugar for some snow and also putting a puff of smoke from the chimney using mini marshmallows and an unravelled paperclip, as shown in the raspberri cupcakes recipe. More photos will be posted up of the finished product later.
