What’s better than chocolate eggs at Easter? Chocolate creme eggs hidden in cupcakes, of course! Even better, with a few cheats, this is a quick, simple recipe that’s easy to make with a bunch of kids and minimal mess – and they taste as good as they look, especially when they’re bitten into!

What You Need:

300 grams caster sugar

300 grams of softened butter

6 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

60 grams of cocoa (I used Cadbury brand)

240 grams of self raising flour

24 mini creme-filled Easter eggs. I used a mixture of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, caramel-filled, strawberry-filled and mint.

24 cup cake cases. Good quality ‘foil’ cases work better for this recipe (though not essential)

2 tubs of commercial vanilla frosting. This is part of the ‘cheat’ bit.

Various aerosol food colours (colour in a can)

Various Easter-themed sugar decorations or melted chocolate

How it’s Done:

Freeze your eggs for a few hours, overnight is best.

Pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line two by twelves cupcake tins with the cases. Using an electric beater, beat the sugar and butter until it lightens in colour and begins to ‘fluff’. Beat in the eggs on at a time, and then the vanilla. At this stage, your mix will probably look pretty ghastly and have begun to curdle. Don’t worry! It will all come back together with the next step – adding the flour and cocoa. As I’ve mentioned in previous recipes, this is a good time to remember to use the spill guard on your mixer, or to stir through the flour slowly. Unless, of course, you like to wear flour…

Now, don’t be thrown by the fact this is quite a stiff mixture. It needs to be that way to stop the eggs dropping. One mixed through, add a large teaspoon of mix to each cupcake case. You need enough to give a generous covering of the bottom of the cupcake. Then, add an unwrapped Easter egg, by laying it on its side. Cover with another spoonful of cake mix, making sure the egg is totally covered and the case is about 2/3 full. Bake for aprox. 20 minutes, or until the cake springs back when you touch it. The usual method of sticking a skewer inside won’t quite work this time.

When baked, allow your cupcakes to cool completely. Fill a disposable piping bag with frosting, and using a large nozzle, pipe a simple swirl. Give a quick squirt with the aerosol colours, and decorate with either: more eggs, melted chocolate or sugar decorations…or, you could use all of the above like we did!

I absolutely love these covers! They’re so detailed and intricate and truly represent the story. They’re beautiful and really pull in the readers.

This book was released almost three years. I remember the day it came out and how excited I was to read it. And then it took me three entire years to finally get to it!

When it was first released, you couldn’t hear enough amazing things about the story, but over the years reviews started to outline a few negative points. I still went into reading Wither excited and with very high hopes!

Wither takes place in a world where men are dying at the age of 25 and women at the age of 20. After World War 3, a cure was found to heal any and all diseases that threaten lives. The people who received this cure had a much longer life span. While this seemed to be a step forward for the human race, things change when the first of the next generation dies and no one knows why or how to stop it.

Now  society fears that the entire human race is dying. Upper-class men are paying to have girls kidnapped to marry them and have children. Rhine has known about this for a while, and has taken precautions to stay safe.

Before she was kidnapped, Rhine was living with her twin brother in poverty, hiding and keeping watch at night. When she is abducted and dragged into a van, she sees that she is with many other girls. Rhine is then sorted and realizes that she is a chosen one when the other group of girls are taken away and shot.

Rhine (16) and two others—Jenna (18) and Cecily (13)—are chosen to wed a man named Linden. Wither mainly revolves around Rhine’s stay at Linden’s house and her constant attempts to remind herself that she is a prisoner and that she needs to escape.

I found the characters in Wither to be pretty interesting. Rhine is smart and doesn’t make any dumb or quick decisions. Instead of trying to escape, she’s trying to gain Linden’s trust to improve her chances of getting out.

The only thing that truly bothered me was that Linden was so absolutely clueless. Did he really think that these young girls came here on their free will to marry him, please him, and have his children? Come on! Open your eyes!

Jenna, the oldest of the three girls, is mysterious and has already been through so much that living with Linden seems to be better than whatever she was dealing with before. Cecily, on the other hand, is too young to understand what’s going on. She just wants to please Linden and make him happy like she’s been told to do. She doesn’t understand all the wrongs going on around her.

I did feel that it was strange that, in the one year that Rhine is with him, Linden never forced her to bear his child.

I also do have to say that I felt there was something missing. There are so many heavy topics in this book (polygamy, kidnapping, child marriage, rape etc.), but DeStefano only glances over them. I felt that the topics were major elements and that the story could have been much more interesting, and had more substance, if she had dealt with them in more detail.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story. I feel that though there were some things missing in this first instalment, they could well be included in the second book. To be honest, I’ve already bought the second and the third book!

Thanks to Divergent’s later Aussie release date I’ve had to scramble and slip in another movie for March. *pouty face* Boo to the pewpy release date. Boo!

The Book

There are so many fan-created book trailers out there, but I had trouble finding an official one.  I also ‘read’ the audio book this time around, though I did read the entire series by Stephenie Meyer in paperback before the books were made into movies.

This version has the original artwork on the cover, is in MP3 format, and is on one disc. Yes, an entire unabridged book on one disc. It was lovely to just flick it over to my MP3 player and listen to Ilyana Kadushin do her thing. Considering the running time is 13 hours (yup, thirteen hours) you’re certainly going to be getting your money’s worth.

From what I can remember from reading the books, Bella in my head wasn’t anything like she was in the films, and apparently Ilyana felt the same when she was narrating the story for Bolinda Audio. She brings dimension, emotion, and drive to the story that you may not have had in your head, or found in the film.

For anyone who wouldn’t necessarily touch the series with a ten foot barge pole (VAMPIRES DON’T SPARKLE DAMN IT) give the Bolinda audio book a try. Who knows! Maybe you can like the books and just not tell anyone. *wink*

TWILIGHT CD

TWILIGHT MP3

TWILIGHT WEBCLIP

The Film

I saw this film twice in the cinemas in 2008 and I bought it on DVD for the sake of this series.

I’ll quickly mention the things I love about this film. The locations are breathtaking, most of which are around Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Silver Falls State Park in Oregon is magical.

The song Decode by the band Paramore never fails to give me goose bumps. 

The giggle factor was the other thing I adored. Now I know this is supposed to be a totally serious film, but I cannot help but see the funny side of bad hair, one-dimensional acting and vampires that sparkle.

I have taken into account the lack of funding and that the director wasn’t as high profile as the person who took over the rest of the saga, so in that respect they did amazingly well to get it up to that standard.

So the verdict: If you haven’t seen, read or heard Twilight yet, go with the audio book first. Ilyana does this story justice and makes it extremely consumable. If and only IF you can view it as a totally separate entity should you watch the film; don’t take it seriously and walk in ready for all the characters to take themselves way too seriously. I dare you not to laugh.

It’s almost Easter! Just a few more days until the Easter Bunny is due to deliver the goods. And when you’re six years old, this is a Very Big Deal indeed. Such a big deal in fact, that the six year old living at my place has been counting down the days since… well, December 25^th came and went. My kids are also currently on school holidays, so to help keep Mr 6 amused (and yeah, maybe to keep the Bunny-ache at bay…), we’ve been making all sorts of Easter Yummies. First up, the Mandy Wrangles version of that oh-so-amazing-gooey-chocolately-fondantey-goodness in a ball – the Cadbury Creme Egg.

What You Need:

Egg shaped chocolate moulds. Mine are plain, but you could use patterned ones.

Milk chocolate melts.

White fondant, available from all cake decorating shops, some supermarkets and online.

Yellow food colouring.

Vanilla essence.

A clean paintbrush.

How It’s Done:

Make sure your moulds are clean and completely dry. Remember: when working with chocolate, moisture is your enemy. Melt milk chocolate using your favourite method, whether it be a small amount at a time in the microwave, over the stove-top using the double boiler method, or like me, using a cheap little fondue set. Once your chocolate is melted, you need to work fairly quickly.

Place a small teaspoon full into each chocolate shape. Now, you need these eggs to be hollow, so don’t over-fill. Using your paintbrush, brush the chocolate right up the sides of the mould before moving on to the next egg shape. Once all egg shapes have been chocolatised (yes, that is totally a word. Now.) put aside to set at room temperature.

While your chocolate egg shells are setting, take a couple of tablespoons of the white fondant and add some vanilla to taste and a few drops of yellow food colouring.

The vanilla flavour won’t give you the exact flavour of the Cadbury kind, but it’s pretty darn yummy.
Technically, you could use any flavour – in fact I’ve been considering making up some zombie Easter eggs with green or blue insides flavoured with blueberry or mint… but that could be an entirely different blog post…

Once your shells are set, spoon a teaspoon of white fondant into each. Then repeat with a smaller amount of yellow fondant in the centre. Melt up some more chocolate and smear over the top of your shells, trying not to make too much mess of your fondant.

Smooth off the top with a flat knife or spatula, as in my pic.

Once the egg halves are completely set (don’t rush them), they will pop out of the moulds with a small tap. Then, with a little more chocolate dabbed onto the back, join two halves together to make a whole. See… so easy a six year old could do it!

Chocolate shells with fondant

Gooey Easter Goodness!

Before I begin my review for Ink, I just wanted to let you know that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I began this book. I had no idea how amazing the storyline or the characters would be! I had no clue just how big a decision Katie would have to make by the end of the story and what she finally decides to do.

Katie Green has recently lost her mother and, with it only weeks behind her, she is still dealing with the loss in every single aspect of her life. Many changes occur with the death of a parent, but with the death of Katie’s single mother, Katie’s life is completely shattered. Not only did she lose her mum, but also her closest friend. And as if things aren’t bad enough, Katie isn’t allowed to move in with her grandparents because of her grandfather’s health, and is instead shipped to live with her aunt in Japan.

Katie has never felt this uncomfortable. Japan is an entirely different world and Katie has been thrown right into the middle of it. She doesn’t speak the language, she doesn’t know how to eat with chopsticks, and she doesn’t like the food. At the beginning of the book, Katie is eating lunches of bento boxes stuffed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Forgetting to take off her school slippers when leaving one day, Katie decides to head back into the building and change her shoes. Being warned that there is arguing and fighting going on in the hallway, Katie ignores the advice and goes in anyway, embarrassed to have left school with her indoor slippers on. On her way back in, Katie bumps into a couple arguing and tries her best to hide behind her locker, but it’s no use; Tomohiro has already seen her.

Katie can’t make out too much of what the two are arguing about, except that Tomohiro is a huge jerk who has gotten another girl pregnant. Knowing she should keep her distance from Tomohiro, Katie is intrigued by him and finds herself following him and always looking for him in the crowd.

He isn’t the usual bad boy type, but instead he’s completely strange. There’s something about him that Katie needs to figure out, but isn’t sure why. When she catches him standing in the doorway of her classroom, the drawings on her paper start to dance and the pen in her hand explodes. She knows she has to figure Tomo out, and she needs to do it now.

Tomo is somehow connected to the Kami, a group of gods who have the power of the ink, and it runs through their veins. Katie is somehow connected to the ink, but neither of the two know why or how. But is Katie willing to risk her life? Is she willing to stay in Japan, instead of moving in with her grandparents? All for this boy?

If you haven’t seen this cover in person, you need to check it out next time you’re in a book store. It’s magnificent and truly a piece of art!

One of my favorite things about Ink was that the Japanese language was incorporated into the story. I love books that do that! I have so much fun writing down and looking up what all these different words mean and how they are used. It makes the book feel authentic to me, as if I were there with Katie in Japan.

At the start of the book, I was a bit disappointed in the main character and worried that I wouldn’t like her very much. I didn’t understand what triggered her to follow Tomo’s every move, and even stalk him to see where he was going in his free time. All I could think is “This chick is crazy! She’s completely intoxicated by this guy who just cheated on his girlfriend, got another girl pregnant, and is known for getting into trouble. Why would she even bother?”

But her obsession was justified; Tomohiro wasn’t just any random “bad boy” and Katie wasn’t just any girl crushing on him. They were connected through the ink, and needed to find out why.

But once Katie overcame her lust or infatuation with Tomo, I saw a different side of her that I really liked, just as I did with Tomo too. He was known as a bad boy, but after truly getting to know him, it’s not true. He cares a lot about Katie, and is willing to push people away to keep them safe.

Not only did I begin to love Katie and Tomo, especially together, but also Katie’s two best friends, as well as her aunt. I felt that these three brought a bit of humour into the story, and that Katie’s aunt brought her down to earth and back to what’s going on in life: the death of her mother and the grief.

The only thing I thought was missing was her parent’s back story. What happened to her mum? Where is her dad? But I have high hopes that those questions will be answered in the second book.

Overall, Ink is beautifully written and filled with the Japanese language! This story made me laugh, made me cry, and made it almost impossible for me to lay the book down until I was finished…and even then it was hard!

If you get the chance to pick up Ink, I totally recommend it! The second book, Rain, is hitting the stores June 24.