Baking Mad

I thought I should finally upload various picks of my cooking/baking exploits. I've had much fun with all of them, but my latest project is to create an ombre cake of my own. I've been doing research on recipes and ideas and today I did some experiment baking of a vanilla cake recipe and a Swiss Buttercream frosting. Wow.
First off, the cake is light and moist and uses oil rather than butter. I was skeptical but it really was fab. The Buttercream.... words are not enough. I have decided it is the new buttercream for me. It does include an egg white step, but honestly, other than that it wasn't too much harder or more time consuming than regular buttercream. And it gets so much whiter and tastier!! (The butter quotient is huge, but who cares? The taste is worth it!) I'm not going to show pics because the red food coloring I used was rubbish and turned the cake grey (!!) not red!! (Never again Asda...) Lesson learned. Stick to expensive gel colors. However, it did achieve the two tone look despite being grey and it is yummy!! So, I'm getting excited to attempt my real effort soon. First though, I aim to make a tiramisu this week as we are having friends for dinner and I'm also making lasagna. I haven't made tiramisu for years and am really stoked to do so!!
But here's some of my latest baking exploits:

Coconut cake from Hummingbird. Next time I'm soaking it with coconut rum. :)

chocolate sugar cookies with royal icing. I was playing with an idea I found on Pinterest, and realized I need gel color to do it right. But it sort of worked. :) And I like the royal icing, though buttercream is better.

This looked so pretty in the pot. Just made it up. Pork loin, apples, cranberries, vinegar, sage and chicken broth simmered for 5 hours in the slow cooker. SOOO good!

chocolate cupcakes with rum frosting and playing with the Easter theme. I liked the yellow and brown contrast too.

Brown eggs that I dyed and Leslie Wilson's cinnamon rolls for our Easter brunch

Colin's new talent

So Colin is getting chattier and chattier. He loves to imitate our mouths or raise his eyebrows to express himself. It really does seem as though he thinks he's talking to us sometimes. We love the noises he makes. His latest ability is making the raspberry noise with his mouth. He's very proud of this accomplishment and likes to do it when he's particularly happy. I'll often get that sound when I come in to wake him in the morning. He'll look right at me, smile really big and spit. :) He's also close to rolling over, but I have yet to catch that on film as the camera's presence is VERY distracting when we bring it out. :)