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This recipe gets a huge work-out in our family. I’ve been making these cookies for years, and they disappear almost as quickly as they bake. Chewy in the middle, crunchy on the outside and just the right blend of vanilla and chocolate. And so, so yummy while they’re still warm!

 

What you need:

1 cup of softened butter (use the real stuff, not margarine)

1 cup white sugar

¾ cup brown sugar, tightly packed

2 teaspoons of vanilla essence

1 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs

3 cups of plain flour

1 ½ teaspoons of baking soda

250 grams of milk or dark chocolate chips

 

 

 

How it’s done:

Preheat oven to about 140 degrees C.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugars and vanilla essence until it lightens in colour and gets a kind of creamy texture. An electric mixer makes this bit easy. Add eggs, one at a time and continue mixing.

In another bowl, mix together the flour and baking soda. Gradually add this to your butter and sugar mixture. Be careful at this point, especially if using a stand mixer – if you’re not careful, flour goes everywhere! (I do it every single time…)

Keep mixing until well combined, then add the chocolate chips. Mix until they’re evenly spread through the mixture.

On a baking tray lined with baking paper (hey, we all hate cleaning up, right?) spoon balls around 1 tablespoon of mixture. Don’t place them too close together, because these suckers spread. I usually put seven to a large tray. Now comes the tricky bit – you need to cook them for LESS time than you’ll think. It only takes about 10 minutes for the cookies to change colour to a light golden brown, which is your signal to pull them out. They’ll still be super-soft, so let them cool for a minute or two, then use a spatula to transfer them carefully to a cooling tray.

This recipe makes about 45 to 50 cookies – I dare you to eat just one!

 

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Oh, my. Chocolate on chocolate on chocolate. And cookies! This was a new recipe I tried out just over the weekend, and it’s pretty safe to say I’ll be making these cupcakes again, especially if my kids have any say in it… ~Mandy Wrangles

 

 

What you’ll need:

About 24 cupcake cases

200g of chopped butter

160g dark cooking chocolate. I used Cadbury melts brand.

A quarter of a cup of water

2 tbs cocoa powder

1 tbs instant coffee

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup caster (superfine) sugar

3 eggs (best if they’re room temperature)

Three-quarters of a cup of sifted, Self Raising flour

 

How it’s done:

Pre heat your oven to 150 C, and set out the cupcake cases.

In a small saucepan, over low heat, melt together the butter, chocolate, cocoa, coffee and vanilla. Use a whisk to bring it together until it’s smooth. Don’t let the mixture boil. Remove from heat and let it cool for 15 minutes.

While your chocolate mix is cooling, use electric beaters to mix together the sugar and eggs until they’re pale and creamy. Then add the chocolate mixture, a little at a time. Once it’s all combined, add the flour slowly and mix.

Pour the mixture to fill the cupcake cases to just over halfway and bake for aprox. 30 minutes. This will vary from oven to oven. The best way to tell if your mudcakes are done is to insert a skewer into the middle of one of the cakes. If it comes out clean – you’re done.

Remove from the oven and let cupcakes cool completely before decorating.

 

To decorate, you’ll need:

Vanilla buttercream mixture

Chocolate buttercream mixture (yes, you can make your own, but the commercial brands are delicious and make life SO much easier. I use the Betty Crocker brand. Whoever said it wasn’t okay to cheat in the kitchen?)

Pack of miniature ‘Oreo’ cookies.

Piping bag and large ‘star’ nozzle.

 

Bring vanilla buttercream to room temperature.

Put aside two Oreo cookies for each cake, and add the left overs to a small snap-lock plastic bag. Seal the bag and smash the cookies with a rolling pin until they’re a fine grain. You can use a blender to do this, but it’s way more fun to smash stuff! Make sure the grains of cookie are small enough that they won’t clog your piping nozzle. Mix the cookie grains through the vanilla buttercream and pop in the fridge for 5 or 10 mins.

 

While the vanilla and cookie buttercream chills, add the chocolate buttercream to your icing bag and pipe a ‘base’ of chocolate over the entire cake. Once they’re all done, remove the vanilla/cookie flavour from the fridge and pipe a small swirl on top, adding the saved Oreo cookies for garnish.

 

 

 

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Super cute and super sweet, these vanilla and raspberry cupcakes are topped with a home-made marshmallow that’s ridiculously easy to make (and soooo yummy!). Perfect for a girly afternoon tea or Sweet 16^th Birthday Party, they look fantastic grouped together on the table or a cupcake stand. ~Mandy Wrangles

 

 

First up, we’ll start with the marshmallows.

What you’ll need:

3 cups of sugar

2 tablespoons of gelatine

1 and a half cups of boiling water.

Vanilla essence

Food colouring

 

 

How it’s done:

Dissolve the gelatine into a bowl with the boiling water. You might have to help it melt by squishing with the back of a spoon.

 

In a large bowl, place the three cups of sugar. Add the water/gelatine mix to it and beat with an electric mixer until the mix is thick and creamy and the sugar is dissolved. 

 And after about 5 minutes, looks like this! Magic! 

 

It’s at this stage that you can add flavourings and colour. For this recipe, I used vanilla and a few drops of pink colouring to half the mix. Working fairly fast, spoon mixture into a piping bag with a wide round nozzle – be careful because it sets quickly and can be a bit sticky and messy! Onto a tray lined with baking paper, pipe coils of marshmallow.

Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours, or until cupcakes are baked and cooled.

 

Now, onto the cupcakes. This recipe makes around 24 cakes.

 

 What you’ll need:

200g softened, unsalted butter

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 cup of caster (superfine) sugar

2 and a half cups of self-raising flour

1 cup of milk

3 eggs

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries, mashed with the back of a spoon (I used frozen)

Vanilla buttercream icing. (You can make your own, but I’m all for cheating, so used a commercial brand – Betty Crocker)

 

How it’s done:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C. Line a muffin or cupcake tin with cases, or, you can use the self-structured ones shown in the pics. I like these because you can bake lots more at a time. My trays fit 25 cases.

 

With an electric mixer, whip the butter, sugar and vanilla until its light and fluffy. Then add your eggs, one at a time. The mixture can go a bit curdly at this stage, but don’t worry, it’ll all come back together. Then add half the flour, half the milk. Then more flour, more milk and keep mixing until it’s all combined. Add a couple of spoons of the mashed raspberries and give another quick mix – but only enough to swirl the raspberries in.

 

Fill your cupcake cases to about halfway. Add some more raspberry chunks if desired. This is a fairly thick and heavy mixture, so give the tops a bit of a smooth over. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until a skewer stuck in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely before decorating. (pic of cooked, undecorated cakes?)

 

Once cakes are cool, pull your marshmallows out of the fridge and roll them in icing sugar, or a mix of icing sugar and coloured decorator sugar. Try not to eat too many before they go on the cakes! With a piping bag and the same large nozzle as used earlier, pipe a round circle of vanilla buttercream around the edge of the cake. Add your marshmallow on top, and you’re done!

 

Hint: When making cupcakes for a special occasion, I find it really effective to use cupcake cases that match your colour theme, or, as you can see in these pics, two slightly different cases. It’ll make all the difference for the table display.

 

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Mid-August will bring us the second in the Percy Jackson franchise: Sea of Monsters. Based on Rick Riorden’s book, this time around Percy and his friends search for the famed Golden Fleece in order to save Camp Half-Blood’s magical borders from its foes. With most of the same cast as the first movie, I think we’ll see a good, fun film about this modern-day demi-god.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones will also be released in August. Based on Cassandra Clare’s uber-best-selling novel (and the first of six in this series), will tell the story of Clary Fray, a seemingly normal New York teenager, who learns of her secret bloodline – and the war that’s been going on under her very nose for years. Starring Lily Collins as Clary, Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace, and an epic supporting cast including Aidan Turner (think Mitchell the vampire in Being Human and Kili in The Hobbit, *swoon*) as werewolf Luke. Described as an ‘epic adventure fantasy’, we can expect to see lots of demons, angels and, of course, Shadow Hunters.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking late November is way too long to wait for the second Hunger Games movie: Catching Fire. I loved the first movie, and felt it was as true to the book as it could be, so I’m hoping the filmmakers do just as good a job of the second film. Katniss Everdeen – again played by Jennifer Lawrence – must again fight to save the people she loves – this time in the Quarter Quell. Expect more violence, more heartbreak and more political badness.

Finally, to round the year off: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, with the current release date being December 13th. If you’ve saw ‘An Unexpected Journey’ recently, I’m sure you’ll agree that this is another movie that can’t come too soon. A typical example of a bit of creative license being taken by the movie makers as compared to the book (hey, I thought it worked) – the two remaining Hobbit movies are bound to be box-office winners as well as visual feasts.

So what about you? Which movies are you hanging out to see on the big screen? Which ones won’t you bother at all with, and which ones will you wait for on DVD? Are you worried that turning your favourite books into movies will leave a permanent scar on how you feel about the story, or are you like me, expecting to see small changes that will hopefully enhance your memories of the time spent between pages?

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Well, it looks as though 2013 is shaping up to be a huge year for those of us who enjoy going to the movies – especially those of us who like to see a much loved novel turned into something special for the silver screen.

There’s always that nervous anticipation: Will the filmmakers get it right? Will the heroine maintain her gutsy, confident and assured demeanour? Will the hero sound like he does in my head? Will he look like he does in my head? How much will they change? Will there be crucial scenes left out, while new ones are popped in to help with the move from page to screen?

There will always be changes – there has to be. No 400 page novel can be filmed word-for-word and then squished into two hours. But that’s (usually!) okay with me. As long as I can keep the book close to my heart, I like to look at movies as an extension of a favourite story.

So, to kick this year off, the first book-to-movie on my list (yeah, sadly there’s only room for a handful here, so we’re gonna miss a few hundred) is Beautiful Creatures. Based on the Supernatural Romance novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, release date is set for February 13 th in Australia, and the 14th elsewhere. The blurb goes something like this: ‘A young man and his mysterious new love interest uncover dark secrets about their families and the small Southern town where they live.’

Oz the Great and Powerful is due to hit the screens in early March. Based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’, this one is set before the 1939 film starring Judy Garland. But don’t think Oz is just for the little kids. There’s some fabulously dark themes running through these books. Some big names are associated with Oz the Great and Powerful, including director Sam Raimi (think: the early 2000’s Spiderman trilogy, The Evil Dead, The Gift…) and main cast members Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz.

Another March release is the remake of Carrie, a remake of the 1976 horror classic based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. I’m guessing this one will be for an older teen/adult audience – if you know anything about Carrie’s story, you’ll know that there’s blood. Lots of it. And a Carrie remake – well, I’m not too sure about this one. It’s scary stuff – not just the blood and gore bit – but the whole ‘let’s remake a classic’ thing. Hmmm.

To round March off is The Host. Based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer (yes, she of the Twilight saga), The Host tells the story of an Earth that has been invaded by alien beings called ‘Souls’. Basically, Souls are parasites who take over human bodies. But Melanie Stryder isn’t so keen to let her invader – Wanderer – have her body to itself. I think this movie could go either way, (I’m hoping it’s awesome) especially since in the novel, much of the story happens between Melanie and Wanderer inside their shared mind.

So what about you? Which movies are you hanging out to see on the big screen? Which ones won’t you bother at all with, and which ones will you wait for on DVD? Are you worried that turning your favourite books into movies will leave a permanent scar on how you feel about the story, or are you like me, expecting to see small changes that will hopefully enhance your memories of the time spent between pages?

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