Dessert Day: Pinterest edition

Today, I headed over to Deidre's for another installment of Dessert Day. It's been a while since we had one, what with her having surgery and me starting back at uni. We ummed and aahed for quite a while about what we were going to make. Eventually, I figured I'd delve into my Pinterest boards and see if there was any inspiration there.

Surprisingly enough, among all the pictures of puppies and shoes, and the patterns for TARDIS sleeping bags (TARDIS SLEEPING BAGS!!!!!!), I found a couple of things that fit the bill perfectly.

We ended up making two of them: orange creamsicle cupcakes, and lemon raspberry bars. Of course, we had to make a few modifications so that they were gluten free. We replaced the base for the lemon raspberry bars with one of Deidre's own concoction - a mixture of butter, gluten free flour, sugar and almond meal. We used frozen raspberries, because fresh ones cost a bazillion dollars. And contrary to the claims, the cupcake recipe only made six. Or at least it did the way WE made them!

In typical Dessert Day fashion, there was much consumption of cheese and crackers and dip, along with a few near disasters (namely, me trying to separate eggs. Sometimes, Dessert Day is very much like My Drunk Kitchen, but with far less alcohol... One of these days, we should vlog Dessert Day so you can see just how incredibly inept we are!!)

The icing on the cupcakes is less than expertly piped, and far more yellow than in the picture I pinned. I'm not sure if the bleached status of American butter is to blame, or if it's actually some kind of marshmallow fluff instead. And the raspberry bars aren't the prettiest looking things on the planet. But they both tasted pretty damned good, so that's all that really matters!!

Hopefully by the time the next Dessert Day rolls around, I'll have my replacement 50mm lens and will be able to present some slightly lighter (read: better) photos!

K xx

Pinspiration

A few weeks ago, I decided that I didn't have enough websites to check on a daily basis, and joined Pinterest. For those of you who aren't aware of it, Pinterest is basically like a series of online pin boards where you can bookmark stuff that you might want to go back to in the future. Or a whole lot of shoes that you think are pretty but will never be able to afford. (There's a possibility that I'm stuck midway between the two...) For those of you who ARE aware of it, you can add me here.

Anyway, somewhere in all the pinning of shoes, I came across this:

Source

After reading that it's just a painted canvas and bits of scrapbooking paper, I got inspired to try it myself. All you need is a canvas, some acrylic paint, several sheets of scrapbooking paper cut into leaf/petal shapes, and a glue gun. I didn't have a glue gun, so I used PVA. Which gave me the opportunity to relive my childhood and paint my hand with glue, let it dry, and peel it off. #sowhatifI'm28 Anyway, if you use PVA, the paper will curl up, so you just have to work quickly and then turn it face down and put a couple of hardback books on the back of the canvas.

Over the weekend, I finished mine:

What do you think? Not bad for my first attempt at non-baking related creativity since high school!!

K xx