This is the Totoro cake that I made yesterday. I used fondant to make the Totoro figurines, flowers and leaves. The cake itself is choc-chip vanilla cake covered with dark chocolate.

I love the expression of the grey Totoro, I find him so adorable...:)!

I made the cake because today is a special day for both my husband and I. We'll see later if the cake is edible because I am absolutely no baker...;).

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-Tail and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

Who has never heard of Peter Rabbit, the famous naughty little bunny created by the very talented English author/illustrator Beatrix Potter? To be true, I had never heard of Peter Rabbit until I was maybe 14 or 15. At that time I was only aware of him due to the beautiful Peter Rabbit-themed merchandise I sometimes saw in some book shops. But I didn't give him much thought either. Only recently I have gotten slightly obsessed by Beatrix Potter's works, mainly due to her gorgeous illustrations. I am quite sure my obsession also starts because I now own some rabbits myself...;). Currently I only own Beatrix Potter's books, but in the future, I also intend to collect some Peter Rabbit related stuffs, like teaware, cutlery, and some other porcelain-ware, etc.

My Peter doesn't look much like the original Peter Rabbit, but I am quite happy with the result. I didn't intend to make a rabbit family and only thought of making Peter, but in the end I decided to add his Mother and his siblings, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-Tail - they look more like Peter's children, I know ;). Next to the cake there is also Jemima Puddle-Duck, she doesn't know Peter and his family, but I like her, that's why I made her too :).

The cake is vanilla cake with chocolate chips and covered with sugar fondant. The figurines are also made of fondant. I hand-painted all the figurines with food colouring. The branches and leaves on the cake are also hand-painted. I don't know if you can see it, but handpainting the figurines makes them look somehow glossy and makes a smooth finish, a nice effect, I think.

Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Chips

• 100 grams white chocolate
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 1/2 cups cake flour
• 1 cup milk
• 100 grams chocolate chips
  

I wish you all a very Happy Easter :)!

Mini ice-cream cone cake pops, how cute is that...?? I knew I had to make these beautiful little morsels after I saw the picture in Bakerella's Cake Pops book. I am still very clumsy at working with melted chocolate, dear me, the mess...! But I guess it's worth it as I love the results, even though Bakerella's are way much prettier...! I guess I simply need to practise more :-).

Bakerella's cake pop recipe always involves a type of cake (she likes using cake mix) and frosting: vanilla, cream cheese, chocolate, well, you name it yourself. But because I am normally quite lazy to bake cakes myself at home, since my husband and I are not much of a cake eater, I like using Oreo cookies to make cake pops. You only need to grind the cookies in a food processor then add cream cheese, form it into little balls and then dip them into melted chocolate. And ta-dah...cake pops are ready :). This time, because I forgot to buy cream cheese, I used milk to make the cake pop dough and it worked very well...!

Ingredients - makes 12

• 352 grams OREO cookies
  
• Milk
  
• White chocolate, melted (add red food colouring to make pretty pink colour)
• Dark chocolate, melted
  
• Ice cream cone
• Coloured sprinkles
• Red smarties
  

Instructions

• Place Oreo cookies in a food processor and grind to fine crumbs.
• Add milk a little at a time to the Oreo cookie crumbs. The consistency is right when the dough is pliable and not too dry nor too sticky. When it's too dry, add more milk, when it's too sticky, you have to add more Oreo cookie crumbs.
• Shape the dough into little balls.
• One at a time, cover an Oreo ball with pink melted chocolate.
• Insert a toothpick into the ball to lift it out.
• Transfer the coated Oreo ball to the prepared ice cream cone.
• Decorate with coloured sprinkles, melted dark chocolate and red smarties.
  

Oreo balls before being coated with melted chocolate.

These mini ice-cream cone cake pops are great for tea time too :D)!!

Finally my mission to make a gingerbread house is completed...:)! But I have to say it was a LOT of work of several days. I am nevertheless happy with the result of my first gingerbread house ever. Well..., it's actually not really my 'first' gingerbread house, I tried to make one last year on Christmas Eve and thought I would be able to do everything in one night (template, baking, decorating, etc), but after one of the roofs broke and fell apart, I gave up completing the house. This year I was wiser and gave myself several days to complete the gingerbread house project.

The gingerbread house in the making...

The house after I added some sugar icing, sweets and muesli for the chimney.

Bilbo's house from The Hobbit, German Fachwerkhaus and of course Hansel and Gretel's candy house came into my mind when I decorated the gingerbread house.

Can you see why? Does the round 'oreo' cookie door remind you of Bilbo's little house? - at least a little bit... ;)

Hopefully the handpainted timber makes it look like a Fachwerkhaus.

And the candy-covered roof like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel....

I will not write much as I am at the moment in my MIL's house. But I want to wish you all a lovely Christmas time with your family and friends.

And one more time, in German, Frohe Weihnachten, lovely readers :)!

Inspired by Bakerella to make some cupcake pops, especially after I got her adorable Cake Pops book :)! My cake pops didn't turn out as pretty as hers, but I am nevertheless still quite proud of my first cupcake pops. It was fun to make...:)!

My cupcake pops require no baking. You only need a package of Oreo, cream cheese and a food processor. The dough needs to resemble play dough in consistency. It's extremely easy to make and tastes very chocolaty, slightly gooey and very YUMMY! But only if you like Oreo, of course!
After you are done with the dough, the rest is history - simply extra fun-time in the kitchen, decorating the cake pops with different types of icings and sprinkles.

I decorated mine with dark chocolate, white chocolate (with a bit of red food colouring), smarties and colourful sprinkles.

"Hmmm, which cupcake pop should I have now??" says Tilly the Bear from the Cupcake-Pop Land.

The teddy bear is made of fondant, simply there for the sake of decoration! But she's such a cutie, isn't she :)?

I received this 'Lovely Blog Award' from eatgreek.net. Wow, the second one for this week...!! Thank you, Eatgreek! I would love to also pass on this award to 15 other food bloggers, whom I like - I have much, much more than 15, but I have to follow the rule - only 15 bloggers... So here they are, in no particular order:

1. Anncoo
2. Bentolicious
3. Enak2 Lovers
4. Indonesia Eats
5. Mochachocolatarita
6. Kitchen Corner
7. Roti n Rice
8. J3ss Kitch3n
9. My Kitchen Snippets
10. My Little Space
11. Hamaree Rasoi
12. Nasi Lemak Lover
13. Teczcape
14. Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice
15. Belzy's Kitchen

It was my husband's birthday a few days ago, but I couldn't make him a birthday cake until yesterday. So here's his belated birthday 'cake' - the quotation marks are there because it's actually not a cake, but just a round-shaped styrofoam decorated with fondant....;)! I finally decided not to make a real cake because I knew that we wouldn't be able to finish eating the whole cake. I shall make a small batch of cupcakes or cake pops in the next days to compensate the faux cake :).

The theme of the cake is bunnies with carrots *roll eyes* - I know, so predictable ;)! The people who have been following my blog from the beginning should know by now that I adore my rabbits...;). Well, next time I will make something different!

I modelled the bunnies after the rabbit figurines I saw in Maisie Parish's Fun and Original Character Cakes.

"Yum, yum, yum...!!"

This cake can be a good idea for Easter as well!

Last but not least, I would like to thank Sweetums from My Little Sweet House for this lovely award. I feel very honoured ! Thanks a bunch Sweetums :)!

I know I have posted this blog post last month, but this time I am sending this 'Sanrio Cookies' post to Sugar High Fridays (SHF) #69 Bite-Sized Desserts hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen for a sweet round-up:).

Sanrio is a Japanese company that produces kawaii (cute) merchandises aimed for young girls. The most famous character from Sanrio is "Hello Kitty" - I am sure most of you have heard or seen "Hello Kitty" somewhere. Growing up, I loved buying and collecting Sanrio stationary products and accessories, from cute notebooks, stickers, pencil cases, rulers, letter-sets, well, you name it! I still love them, but there's not much choice around here in Germany, just Diddl, Nici and Hello Kitty in a few stores. I was never that fond of "Hello Kitty" anyway. I prefer other characters from Sanrio like "Badzt-Maru" the penguin, "Keroppi" the frog or "Monkichi" the monkey ;). I was inspired to make some cookies using these characters from Sanrio, even though I finally didn't make "Keroppi" because my green food colouring's gone! Anyway, here they are...

"Welcome to my house," said Jacque the bear. "You can also have some Badtz-Maru cookies with milk :)!"

Do you see the character sketches behind the cookies :)?

Which character do you like best?

Chococat the Cat?

Kuririn the Hamster?

Badtz-Maru the Penguin?

Or, Monkichi the Monkey?

I personally like "Kuririn" the Hamster the best, because the Kuririn cookies have the least flaws I think. Anyway, it was a quite fun project with a lot of drawing and painting :)! I used marshmallow fondant to decorate the cookies, click here if you want to see the recipe. I used food colourings to paint the characters and Food marker pens to outline them. I used some sugar sprinkles for the general decoration like the hearts, pink balls and pink glitters on Kuririn's head.

Sugar sprinkles I used.

I made the cookies using Peggy Porschen's recipe from her wonderful book: Simply Spectacular Cakes. Very simple and easy to remember: 200 g butter, 200 g sugar, 400 g flour and 1 egg. That's it!