Cookbooks giveaway, WIN 2 cookbooks to celebrate my 1year Blogivesary

How time flies when your having fun. My 1 year Blogiversary is coming up at the end of the month and I'm so excited about it I would like to offer one of you the chance to win 2 cookbooks from the ones listed below.


The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook


Secrets of Macarons


More From Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey's Home Kitchen


Whoopie Pies


Planet Cake: A Beginner's Guide to Decorating Incredible Cakes


50 Easy Party Cakes


Romantic Cakes


Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look

Open to my lovely readers everywhere. Entries open until the 14th of April 2011.  

YES this is open Internationally.

To enter you must complete step 1 and enter a comment to let me know. Step 2 and 3 are optional but if you do them add a separate comment for an extra entry.

1. Follow this blog and then tell me which of the 2 listed cookbooks you would like to win. Existing followers just say in the comment

2. Step 1 and also follow me on facebook

3. Step 1 above and tell your friends on your facebook page or blog about this giveaway.

Prize is 2 cookbooks from the ones listed above to be chosen by the winner including postage to the winners address. Winner will be chosen using radom org and the winner will be announced on this blog.

Ben Ten cake pops with mini M &M's

I'm having a bit of bloggers block at the moment.

Yup I have been a bad blogger, nothing inspiring cooked around here the last week of so. Well I did make some of my triple chocolate cookies but y'all have seen those done so I didn't take any pictures.

oh and I did make a cake for my nephew but it was a last minute thing the night before and I used a Harry Potter cake box mix that someone had given me.

So I went back through my archives to try and rustle up some photo's to share with you and found these.

OK the reason I never posted these before is not because they were not totally awesome, it's because I took pretty awful photo's which often happens when I am making something for someone else.

These are some Ben Ten Pop's I made last year for the owner and designer of Australian Made kids fashion line Little Miss J and Mister TJ, well for her son really.

I made the pops with chocolate cake and mini M & M's, which I think is perfect for little boys. Just make up your chocolate cake, add enough frosting so it will be moist and holds it's shape remember not sloppy and the add a handful of mini m&m,s.

OK you need to be a little restrained on the M & M's too many and you will have difficulty popping you lollipop stick into the pop.

Here is a picture of the pop's, I shaped them using a small round fondant cutter and pressing the cake pop mixture in and flattening the top. Then I chilled the mixture and went through and popped the lollipop stick into each one to make a hole, this is pretty important with the M & M pops because if you poke into one of the candies there is no getting through you just need to start in another spot. Some times it's easier to scrap the whole pop and reshape it.

(If you look closely you can see where I had to make a second hole as I could not push through the candy)

Chill the pops again and in the meantime melt your chocolate/ candy melts. Take the pops out of the fridge and insert the lollipop sticks by dipping them into the melted chocolate and pushing them into the pre-made holes. Chill them in the fridge again.

One the lollipop sticks are set you can dip the whole pop in the melted chocolate and set standing up in styrofoam.

With these Ben Ten pops I had pre-made rounds of fondant using the same round fondant cutter and cutting the triangle shapes using a pizza cutter wheel, after the chocolate on the pops were dry I attached the fondant rounds with a little melted chocolate and held them a couple of seconds until secure.

In Love with.........Miette the cookbook

Miette: Recipes from San Francisco's Most Charming Pastry Shop

I am totally in love with the cover of this book.

It looks like the kind of simple but sooo amazing baking that I like, the basics if you will behind all the decorating. Reminds me of some of my other favourite cookbooks that I talked about previously (click here for link)

and of course it doesn't hurt that it's from a renowned patisserie in San Francisco.
I have already pre-ordered my copy and can't wait for it to turn up so I can try out all the recipes.