Nerolie makes edible treats

I love baking. I love creating and decorating and eating.
This post is going to be a look back on some of the creations I have made over the past few months.
In future I will post on a bake by bake basis.

Last night I whipped up these chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing. Chocolate cream cheese and vanilla cream cheese.
Big big fan of cream cheese icing as it is relatively easy to make by hand as turning on the mixer at 10pm and waking the baby is not an option.
Chocolate cake was a box mix (shhhh) made tastier by substituting milk for the water and half melted butter for the oil.
Cream cheese icing
60g butter
120g cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
And approx 1-2 cups of icing sugar. I do the icing sugar to taste so its up to you if you want it sweeter or more tart.

Last week at work was the Biggest Morning Tea for the cancer council.
I made blueberry cupcakes with a lemon curd filling and blueberry cream cheese icing.
Total hit! Delicious. My inspiration was from Pinterest. Not quite as pretty but ok with the time I had.

Not a great picture but these are some minecraft
brownies I made up for our nephews birthday.
I did use a brownie mix and made the grass icing out of a knob of melted butter, bout a tablespoon of milk, enough icing sugar for a good consistency and green food colouring.

Strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream for a work friends baby shower. Note the little jelly babies on the top.
Recipe from Edmonds cookbook. Just the butter cake with strawberrys added and put into cupcake cases.











Kiwifruit cupcakes with kiwifruit buttercream.
As above, I adapted the Edmonds butter cake recipe.

Lemon cake, three layers with lemon curd filling and a vanilla buttercream.
Also from my ever favourite Edmonds cookbook.



















Two of my finest achievements were for my darling daughters first birthday.
The first was a rainbow decorated cake. The bottom was a dairy free chocolate cake covered with vanilla buttercream and then green fondant. The top layer was a rainbow swirl butter cake (Edmonds again!) with blue fondant.
I made the rainbow out of twizlers and the cloud was fairy floss (which looked a little sad by the time I got a picture).



The next day we had a cake smash shoot with the talented women from Margan Photography.
They are simply amazing and so far we have had four shoots with them and are trying to think of reasons to have more.
I made a traditional rainbow cake for the shoot. Using Edmonds butter cake again and vanilla buttercream icing. As a side note I really should expand my cake recipe use lol.
My little Eva had a blast! All this sugar was completely new to her so the icing was too good to resist!

Photo above courtesy of Margan Photography.

Nerolie makes a Nani Iro Top

Next stop on my sewing journey was to go back to Tessuti for a newly organised follow up course. We had decided as a group to make a top from Nani Iro's Colourful Cloth Book (Tessuti pattern review here).
It seemed to be a top that would suit all shapes and sizes.
I arrived to the cutting table full of rolls of gorgeous fabric! How would I choose?!
Practical as ever I settled on the black Nero Giolica. It was a light gauzy fabric and the name totally spoke to me. I knew with black it would get the most wear, out and to work with a long sleeve top underneath (its getting colder you know!)
I did choose a pinstripe contrast for the back facing and inside the pockets.

Parts of this pattern were so difficult to a somewhat beginner sewer. The pockets did not seem to match up for me and the gauze like material was hard to sew.
Colette said that at least choosing a hard material would mean when I make it at home later with something different I shouldn't have any problems. Nice thought, not convinced though.
We were lucky enough to have both Colette and her mum Silva helping us out. They originally thought they would be able to sew their own top with us but with 6 beginner sewers all needing help they were flat out. So thankful to have them there as it is great being able to check with a knowledgeable sewer when you run into problems.
Took a bit over 5 hours but I left with a completed top.
Our lovely teacher Colette has blogged about the class on the Tessuti blog.
Pictures of me in the top to come :)

Nerolie makes a toddler top

Pics of our fave top.

Nerolie makes a start!

My lovely sister gave me a sewing class for christmas, so I booked in with Tessuti Surry Hills for a date in April. They are super popular so book out months in advance.
Very nervous as although I had sewn a few things in my time (nappies, quilts) I knew I needed a solid base knowledge to further develop my skills.
The class was fantastic. We learnt things like seams, french seams, installing a regular zipper, darts, gathering and zig zagging the edges if you do not have an overlocker.
I went away totally inspired!
The following weekend I took my toddler off to Lincraft to find some material to make the Tessuti our fave top. There are a lot of blogs on this top. My favourite being the one with the instructions for a kid version.
I scaled down the pattern so I was printing two pdf pages onto one page. Cut it out while my she slept and sewed it too.
I had a blast with this top although next time I would make the arms a little bit looser and the top a little bit tighter as it is still a little big for my girl. Will make one for myself next!
Pics to come next post.