For the dog lovers

I don't know why people find this so shocking, but Brendyn and I have a dog, Abby. Correction, people don't find it shocking that Brendyn has a dog, but they do find it somewhat perplexing that I do! Well in all fairness, Abby was originally Brendyn's dog and when Brendyn and I got married, I was the evil step mum that stole her daddy!


All jokes a side, it's not as though I hate dogs. I am just not overly fond of them either or animals in general really. I think dogs they are quite cute. But yeah ... can't say I am an animal person, let alone a doggy person. Funny story, when I first met Brendyn's Nanna she asked me "Do you like animals dear? Dogs?" I was so nervous and wanting to make a good impression I blurted out "Of course, who doesn't?!" and thank goodness I did because she then proceeded to say "Good! Every good person does." Yes, I lied to Brendyn's Nanna! I am a bad person - maybe Brendyn's Nanna is on to something. Please don't tell Nana I lied to her!


Ok cupcakes, long story short, my sister, Gina (yes, my name is Tina, well Christina really, and my sister's name is Gina), asked me to bake 20 cupcakes to celebrate her colleague’s 50th birthday. Knowing I like to work to a theme, she told me to make it mathematical and to incorporate dogs if possible. So I thought long and hard on this and decided to make 'five types of dogs' multiply by 'five types of dogs' multiply by 'two types of dogs' equals 'happy 50th birthday'. Sadly, I didn't get a photo of the whole mathematical cupcake equation as it didn't fit into my iphone camera screen. Insert sad face here.


I had to make the dogs out of fondant first to top each cupcake. Based on the cupcake mathematical equation I needed to make three types of dogs. As you can see below, my mathematics is clearly not up to scratch as I ended up making five types of dogs! Whoops! I can't claim the credit for the creativity of the dog fondant toppers as I copied the topper designs I saw from google images (oh, how I heart google, but that is another blog post in it's self).

On the next night, I had to make the cupcakes. I decided to go simple with this bake job. I made 10 Lindt chocolate cupcakes and 10 vanilla cupcakes. The Lindt chocolate cupcakes turned out fine. The vanilla cupcakes were another story. The first vanilla cupcake recipe I followed was horrible - bland, bland, bland, bland! So I made a second batch using a different recipe and in all honesty it was the best vanilla cupcake I have ever had my way with! It was as though all the stars in the universe lined up, the world was at ease and this cupcake was made. The cupcake was all so fluffy and moist with a hint of vanilla (not over bearing in the slightest). My favorite thing about this vanilla cupcake was how extremely fluffy it was. It was so light - so light that I ended up eating three of them.

Sadly, I forgot to put the lid on the air tight container that housed the cupcakes I was bringing into work, so the vanilla cupcakes dried out a bit. I suspect the same might have happened to Gina's box of cupcakes as I didn't have an air tight container to give her the cupcakes in. What a sad state of affairs.


Speaking of vanilla cupcakes, I could really go one or three!