Wish List Wednesday: In My Dreams

Oh hi! This week's Wish List post is going to be short and sweet for two reasons- firstly, I have an internet connection from the stone age and can't seem to get access for more than two minutes at a time, and secondly because I'm packing to fly back to BC as we speak! It's all very exciting and emotional and far too much to write about right now, so I'm just going to leave you with my Wish List items for the week, all of which I am completely in love with!

First, this week's splurge item- this amazing retro pink oven from Big Chill Retro Appliances! I'm not one of those girls that want's a pink kitchen, far from it, but I love love love this oven. Since seeing it, I've been plotting ways to fit it in to a non-pink kitchen without making it look like a giant-sized Easy-Bake...so far no luck, but I have a long flight coming up to design imaginary kitchens. It's also unlikely that fitting it into my kitchen will ever be an issue, since it costs about $4300... a girl can dream though!

This week's steal items are these gorgeous little cake stands- I love them so much I may actually order them for market tables and events when I get home. I think there's just something so pretty about simple little tiers like this and I'm trying to stop myself compulsively collecting them...but who doesn't need 87 cake stands in their life? Let's be serious here.

This perfect little piece is from Academy Gifts. I. LOVE. IT.

This vintage tier from Etsy reminds me of the antique tea room I worked in
as a teenager...maybe that's why I love it so much. Just picture it piled
with macarons or mini cupcakes!

That's all for this week, thanks for reading and look out for Easter Goodies on the way! xx

The Weekender ~ "Rotcher" Cupcakes

Hello lovelies, welcome to the first installment of 'The Weekender', another new weekly feature on the blog! Each week I'll post a recipe(either my own or something fabulous I've stumbled across), a trick or tutorial, or  a party DIY! I'm really excited about this one, I think it's going to be tons of fun- and I'll be sharing secret cupcake recipes for the first time!

This week, my first recipe post is dedicated to one of my best friends in the whole world, Shakey. Well, it's not so much dedicated to him as a person, as it is dedicated to him making an idiot of himself and me dying of laughter at his expense. That's what friends are for right?

Shakey being really excited about panda-
shaped bread at Bread Talk in Singapore!

"Rotcher" cupcakes are actually just Chocolate Hazelnut cupcakes...but for the rest of my life I will call that flavour Rotcher, because of one afternoon in Singapore. Shakey was trying ice cream in a shop and had asked for some of the kind labeled "rocher"(as in ferrero rocher, which was blatantly obvious to everyone but Shakey at this point). After telling me loudly that he was "just going to try this rotcher for something different", he takes a bite, makes a face, and shouts across the store, "THIS ROTCHER TASTES LIKE NUTELLA." It took a minute for me to realize what he was talking about before I started laughing like a crazy person...Meanwhile, the poor girl behind the counter is just staring at us with her mouth slightly open, trying to figure out what's going on right in front of her. After typing this out I realize that it's probably not actually that funny to anyone else, but honestly it's one of my favourite moments of all time. There is nothing in this world quite like laughing til you cry/stop breathing, and the best people in your life are always the ones that make it happen. So, in honour of laughing like an idiot about absolutely nothing, with people that mean absolutely everything, my Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes have been renamed "Rotcher" Cupcakes (and here is the recipe!)

My 'Rotcher' Cupcakes were part of a cupcake photo shoot last year...
they scrub up pretty well!

"Rotcher"(Nutella) Cupcakes

People will be hovering at this point waiting to lick the spoon.

Cake:
1/3 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup nutella
2/3 cup milk
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup flaked hazelnuts, optional

Frosting:
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup nutella
4-5 cups sifted icing sugar
pinch salt

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix together dry ingredients and set aside.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and nutella and mix until smooth.
3. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the batter, mixing just until you can no longer see most of the flour.

Drinking wine is essential to successful baking

4. Mix in half the milk, and another third of the dry mixture, and repeat. You should have added three lots of dry and two lots of milk, starting and ending with dry ingredients. Just mix your batter until it's pretty much uniform in colour and texture, and then STOP STIRRING. Seriously. Put down the spoon, step away from the mixer. Ain't nobody got time for chewy cupcakes...don't overmix your batter!
5. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3rds full- you should get 12-15 cupcakes.

Freshly baked and smelling like heaven

6. Bake the cupcakes for 17-20 minutes in the centre of the oven. Open the door at 17 minutes and lightly touch the top of a cupcake. If it springs back, they're done. If you leave a dent, they need a few more minutes. When the cakes are baked,  let them cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then transfer them to  a wire cooling rack.
7. For the frosting, whip the butter and nutella until combined, and then gradually add the icing sugar while mixing. Whip the whole lot for a few minutes, add the salt to taste, and then eat a big spoonful, because seriously this stuff is amazing and you deserve it!
8. Decorate however you like- this frosting is so decadent that it looks amazing just swirled onto the cupcakes with a teaspoon- add a few hazelnut flakes and you've got some show-stopping rotcher goodness!

Friday Freebie!

A couple of years ago, when I was really hurting for any kind of work after moving home, a friend scored me a job at a greeting card store. Not exactly what I was going for fresh from university but hey, work is work(or more accurately, paychecks are paychecks). I'd like to say it was fun, but honestly I hated every second of it. For one, the company runs its business like a prison. It felt like how many times you sneezed or blinked while on shift was regulated by the looming spectre of "head office". As you can imagine, that really isn't my thing- I quit pretty soon after being formally written up for "saying a word that sounded like the word crappy" to a customer. Seriously, that was written on the form they made me sign. I was only there for about four months, but in that time I realized that the greeting card industry is probably the biggest rip-off EVER, next to bottled water and movie popcorn. Some of the "nicer" cards we were selling there cost $14! For one card! Didn't they hear about the financial crisis?! Ain't nobody got time for dat!

All this time later, while I was thinking of new things to spruce up the blog and website, I thought about these rip-off greeting cards and invitations and decided to include a Free Printable section in my page. Every Friday I'll share a new invitation, thank-you card, save-the-date, or other greeting, as well as a link to download a printable pdf of the design. When holidays are approaching I'll also throw up a few mini-printables for kids..You know the cheesy cards that you had to give to everyone in the class, even that kid you really didn't like, because it was Valentine's Day and your mom said so. ANYWAY....I will try to keep these worth looking at, and they will all be stored on the PRINTABLES section of the website to be downloaded anytime. Just to get the ball rolling I've put a few up already, so take a look!

Click Here to visit the Printables Page & download your free pdf printout

CLICK HERE to visit the Printables Page & download your free pdf printout

Wish List Wednesday: The Pilot!

Oh hi! Welcome to the very first Wish List Wednesday, one of the promised new features to come along with the Little Bow Sweets face lift! Every week, I'll showcase two things that are on my Little Bow wish list- one splurge item, and one little treat. I've convinced myself that this will stop me actually running out and buying these things (but let's be serious if I wasn't broke from travelling we all know I would). Sometimes the things on my wish list are practical...sometime's they're just pretty and shiny and I really really want them! Anyway, let's start this weekly wish list off with something I've been drooling over for  a while now...

KIDDING! ....sortof. *ahem*

Seriously though,  the first Splurge on my wish list is a custom painted KitchenAid, like these ones from Un Amore by Nicole DiNardo:

Through the Un Amore site, you can either order a
stand mixer to be delivered to her for painting, or
you can send  her one yourself. Either way,
when it gets back to you it won't be your standard
KitchenAid anymore!

I can't decide if I like her bold Rockabilly-style prints or these
pretty floral ones more. I'll just have to get rich and buy two.

This is definitely a splurge item, starting at around $350 for basic designs, plus the cost of your stand mixer itself. The photo gallery is amazing...I can't even come close to picking a favourite! If you love the idea but don't want to splash the cash, there are some great tutorials out there for refurbishing your stand mixer at home- my favourite from a quick read-through of five or six sites is here.

This week's Little Treat item is these Cakes by Bien Side Stripe Cutters from Carina's Cupcakes. They may seem plain, but for those of you that may have noticed a little trend called Chevron floating around, you cannot imagine how much easier these would make chevron cakes. Actually. you don't have to imagine, the answer is A LOT EASIER. I also love that the set comes with four widths of stripe, which completely eliminates fidgety guesswork. And the best news is that the set only costs about $22- definitely worth it since bold geometric trends are sticking around! Long story short, I want these....right meow.

So there it is, the first Wish List Wednesday! Come back each week for more cake & baking related products you didn't know you wanted and maybe a few little things you didn't know you needed! xx

Goodbye, MeowCakes- Hello, Little Bow Sweets!

The very first MeowCake!

Well, here it is...after a lot of thought and debate (and possibly a soul-searching move to the other side of the planet *ahem*) I've finally decided to take all the love and time I've put into MeowCakes over the last year and a half and turn it into something a little more sophisticated. This involved a little bit of an image overhaul, and a move towards a branding idea I've been working on for a while now. I love MeowCakes and its quirkiness, as well as the fact that a silly joke actually caught on as name, but just like the rest of us, MeowCakes had to grow up... so here we have it, Little Bow Sweets! I spent months thinking of names for my project, constantly trashing what I had come up with or finding that someone else had beaten me to the punch. As with most good ideas, this one came to me out of the blue- while I was in Brisbane a couple of months ago actually. I love the fact that it's cute and quirky, a play on words, and just a little more refined than its predecessor. I cant wait to unveil everything I have planned for this, honestly, I'm like a kid at Christmas right now. The full website is now up and running and I will be adding some freebies as well as a weekly recipe/tutorial very soon! I'm so excited for everything to come and will try and keep you all updated as much as possible throughout the next few weeks! xx

It's not all about the brand- check out today's dark chocolate cakes with
vanilla bean buttercream and crunchy honeycomb topping!

The New Look!