Baking frenzy!

One of my favourite past times is cooking and baking. Especially the latter calls for creativity. I regularly make crazy elaborate cupcakes, but I also like to bake a traditional undecorated cake or cookies. A couple of days ago my friend Joyce gave me a baking mix that she wasn't going to use herself. It contained whole bitterkoekjes (traditional Dutch cookies), big chunks of chocolate and amaretto! Highly addictive.

Do you guys like baking? Do you ever make food with a dark theme (and not just for Halloween)? I'd love to see some examples!

I used a rose shaped baking tin and mini turban cake forms:

Last year for my birthday, I made victorian themed cupcakes and owl shaped cake pops:

And in 2010 I made these Halloween cupcakes:

Tea obsession?

I have a thing for tea and especially for extraordinary flavoured tea... Last week I found a package in the mail that contained 8 new kinds of tea that I had ordered through the Dutch Teabar webshop:

These flavours are:

- Oudhollandse appeltaart (traditional Dutch applepie tea)

- Fruity Fairytale (green tea with mango and other exotic fruits)

- Stroopwafel thee (traditional Dutch syrup cookie tea)

- 1000 dromen Ayur la Vie Bio (green tea with grapes, roses, jasmin etc.)

- Rooibos aardebeien slagrooom (rooibos tea with strawberries and cream flavour)

- Rooibos hammam (roobios tea with orange, eucalyptus etc.)

- Bananarama (tea with banana, coconut etc.)

- Rooibos choco caramel (rooibos tea with chocolate and caramel)

I have already tried each kind of tea, except for Rooibos Hammam. Apart from the Oudhollandse Appeltaart, which didn't contain any tea but only dried fruits, I loved all flavours a lot! Bananarama is definately my favourite though. Drinking tea becomes so much fun with exotic ingredients!

Baking sandcastles

Some time ago a dear friend of mine gave me a fantastic Bundt castle cake pan! I picked it myself when we went shopping for my 'having helped with the wedding' present. I already baked a cake in it two weeks ago, but then I didn't use enough dough. This time I got it right, but the structure of the cake is a bit weak, causing it to crack. Next time I know how to make this thing work perfectly, but for now I'm enjoying my second imperfect attempt...

My friend's wedding took place last September and I had the honor of being her witness. It was a lovely sunny day and both the ceremony and celebration took place at the beach. This is what I wore, trying to look both appropriate and like my normal self at the same time:

 

Purple dress: bought in Paris

Black mesh hat: bought in Paris

Clutch bag: don't remember

Shoes: Calandschoen, Amsterdam