Whilst in New Zealand, I took the time to catch up on my baking, as you would have seen from my previous posts. So here's so more baking!
First of all, cream cheese cupcakes, these were pretty good and I think this cupcake photo is pretty awesome too. Did I mention I have a new camera? I also made these cupcakes for my friends Ekant and Unicia and posted them down to Christchurch. I decided to do this after a comment on my facebook from Ekant, who asked for some cupcakes seen as he had lived through the Christchurch earthquake. I knew he was joking but I thought I'd call his bluff and actually send some cupcakes down to Christchurch. These ones were neopolitan. I also finished the bird mobile for my niece Sophiia whilst I was in New Zealand, here's the mobile modelled by her big brother Lukah. Finally here's a photo of Sophiia and I - we took a whole bunch of photo's of Sophiia and I but none of them turned out too great. I don't think that she we really wanting to have her photo taken that day!
Hello world! This is just a very short post to let you all know that I am now it Taipei. Our trip here was completely epic - we left New Plymouth at around 8am New Zealand time on Thursday and arrived in Taipei at around 10pm on Friday Taiwan time. In between we slept in a transit hotel in one Malaysian airport and spent nearly a day (mostly reading and eating) in another Malaysian airport.
But now we are here all is well, we spent yesterday having a look around part of Taipei and I do have photo's to post a little later on. We were planning on going out to dinner that night but as it turns out two days of nearly no sleep and walking around a new city for 8 hours finally took it's toll on me and we ended up eating from Family Mart instead - thank God for Kimbab (I guess I'll have to work out what it's called in Taiwan).
Well - just a quick update all! I'll post more pictures of my time in New Zealand and my first days in Taipei soon.
Here is the second batch of cupcakes I've made whilst in New Zealand - this time plain cupcakes with a touch of jam. The top is kind of marshmallow with star shaped sprinkles.
Last Saturday I headed up to New Plymouth with my mum and also to do some shopping for things which can be hard to buy in asia (like stockings that fit).
Whislt I was in New Plymouth I managed to catch up with my friends Nilanka and Carolyn, we went out for a really great lunch at Chaos cafe. Good times.
I love making cupcakes! But living in asia I didn't have an oven so I couldn't bake any. However, I'm now home so I thought I'd use the time to get in some cupcake baking.
Here's the first batch I made - they are a pretty basic recipe.
Ingredients 36 small paper patty cake cases, placed inside mini muffin tins (if you haven’t got mini tins just make them muffin-size instead) 3 eggs 1/2 cup castor sugar 3/4 cup plain flour 1 tablespoon boiling water 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
For the icing: 1 cup icing sugar squeeze lemon juice for lemon icing (or water and a drop or 2 of colouring and flavour such as raspberry or peppermint)
1. Use a mixer to beat the sugar and eggs together until pale and thick. The mixture should leave a trail when you lift the beater out and will be nearly treble its original size. Allow 5-8 minutes depending on how powerful your beater is (or your forearms).
2.Using a metal spoon, fold in half the flour. When that is incorporated, fold in the remaining flour. Lastly, add the hot water and vanilla.
3.Spoon the mixture into the prepared patty cases and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden and springy when gently pressed. Allow to cool completely before decorating.
4.To make icing Combine the ingredients, using only as much liquid as you need to make a spreadable icing. Ice the top of each cupcake and decorate as desired.
A lolly pressed into the icing is the quickest possible decoration and the kids will be happy. Silver balls, sprinkles and ready-made edible decorations will also look lovely. I like to use the ready-made fondant icing 'Pettinice' (tinted, rolled and cut into shapes) for decorating my cup cakes. The cupcakes were good - I can take the credit for the photo's but not the recipe. You can find it at www.healthyfoodguide.co.nz.
Whilst I'm at home I decided it's time for a wardrobe update. So before I left Korea I spent a lot of time on trade me finding a few new vintage pieces for my wardrobe.
I can buy clothes in Korea (and I hope I can buy them in Taiwan as well) but to be honest I couldn't really buy anthing terribly interesting or quirky. Also vintage or even second hand seems to be pretty much non-existant in Korea.
So here's my vintage and vintage inspired clothes from beautiful New Zealand - I love them all but I'm especially happy with the last dress. So cute and vintage and it looks like it's made from nana's curtains - what's not to love.
I have two final pieces on my watchlist - I'm just waiting to see if I can "win" them.
Also whilst I've been home I've gone through a box of clothes I left behind last time and there is at least three dressed and two skirts I want to take to Taiwan with me - as well as my new finds. Why oh why am I only allowed 23 kilos of luggage. I'm have to juggle my wardrobe about again and decide what must stay and what I can actually take with me.
For the last few days, I've been hanging out with Rich and his parents in Tauranga. However, the "sunny" Bay of Plenty hasn't really been living up to it's name. It's cold, and I mean really cold.
Well for me at least - everyone else doesn't seem to be suffering quite as badly. I just hope New Zealand can give me one day of sunshine before I leave.
I haven't been up to that much since I've been here (that's what holidays are for right). However, I did manage to make two batches of cupcake and I will post pictures soon.
I'm also working on a very small cross stitch project - I've had a bit of drama with the pin-up girl I was working out which requires a lot of removing stitches. Which I just can't be bothered with right now.
We also had a rather successful shopping trip into town today - I manged to buy two new cute cardies for the warm weather in Taiwan as well as other necessities which can be hard for a Kiwi girl to find in Asia.
I also bought a Manderin Phrasebook and CD - let's see if I can move beyond "Hello" and "Thank you".
If you've been watching the news in New Zealand or in fact anywhere in the world you would have seen that our beautiful Christchurch city has been hit by a 7.1 earthquake. Thankfully it happened in the small hours of the morning so there were no casualties.
But many people's homes and businesses have been destroyed which makes me sad.
I have also read that at least two of the historical buildings in the CBD will need to be demolished - which makes me incredibly sad. I loved Christchurch's town centre and part of that is due to the historical buildings. It's so sad to lose our history.
Over the weekend I spent much of my time crafting and listening to radio New Zealand - due to the fact they had a lot of coverage on the earthquake.
I don't want to sound like an advertisement for Radio New Zealand, but they do also have a fantastic music show on. I'm pretty much totally out of touch with the New Zealand music scene after living in Korea. But I am pretty much sure this is my new favourite New Zealand song.
So far, our Auckland adventures have been a little bit limited as Rich has become sick! So today we had to stay at home (which I don't mind, I really need to finish recovering from the flight and it's cold!).
However, yesterday we did venture into my favourite part of Auckland - K Road. We had lunch at a cafe there. I have been waiting forever to visit a New Zealand cafe!
We also visited a cute store - "Pleased to meet you". The woman that worked there was so lovely and they stock the work and merchandise of one of my favourite New Zealand artists - Misery!
They had in stock some of the "Cute as Hell" beauty range which I haven't seen around - forever! In fact I didn't think that you could buy it anymore. So I bought some of the violet and quince splash. Rich bought me this for my birthday years ago and I loved it, but I didn't think it was being made anymore. I was so happy to find some as the scent is amazing!Also, here's the sticker they used in the packaging - yah! It's so cute and I can never get enough of cute. Later on in the day, Rich and I went to check out the Auckland waterfront. Although, as you can see from this photo we didn't actually hang around there for very long as it was SO cold!
After around 16 hours flight time (Seoul to Sydney and then Sydney to Auckland) I'm finally home again.
It's pretty awesome to be home, even though it was so cold today I had to stop off at Glassons and buy a winter hat. Even though the news said it's only 15 degrees in Auckland it feels much colder to me!
It looks like we will be staying in Auckland this weekend and hopefully catching up with a couple of friends, then it's off to Tauranga to see Rich's family (we'll hopefully fit in a brieft visit to Hamilton somewhere) and finally to Taranaki to see my family.
So I think my blogging and blog reading/commenting shall be a light for a while.
I will be out enjoying New Zealand with my family and friends and appreciating the green, enjoying hearing New Zealand accents all around me, eating awesome food and wondering why everyone seems to be so laid back.
On Monday I'm giving some of the teachers I've worked closely with bottles of wine as a farewell. Instead of trying to wrap the wine bottles (let's face it - that never really works) I decided to use these adorable gift tags I got in a swap my friend Tille organised on her blog - She waits for whispers.
I think they look pretty cute - although I'm sure the female teachers will appreciate the cuteness more than the male teachers.
A while ago, I did an international snack swap on craftster. The swap was a pretty simple one - you needed to send your partner some snacks from your country and also craft them a small item to keep snacks in.
I talked to my partner about the crafted items and she said she was happy for me to take my own spin on it - so I decided to make these kawaii cakes with a mix of Japanese and Korean craft supplies I had.
Rich and I have now finally finished the scrapbook of our Japanese trip! Here's the final pages of the book.
1. Maid Cafe - A rather strange and Japanese concept! Japanese "maids" (girls dressed in anime style outfits) serve you cake and coffee in a super cutesy cafe. 2.Akihabara - This is an area of Toyko famous for it's anime stores and gaming. You can even visit the "Toyko Anime Centre". 3. Mejei Shrine - This is a beautiful shrine in Harajuku - even though we visited on a Wednesday afternoon it was still incredibly busy! 4. Harujuku - It's an amazing place - but it would have been even better to visit there if I had more spending money! 5. Asakusa - An era of Tokyo which is trying to preserve the Edo period history of Japan. It's an incredible place! 6. Tokyo River Cruise and Tokyo Tower - It's all great cheesy tourist fun! 7. Travelling on the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) and eating bento - the perfect way to travel! 8. Visiting the Japanese Snow Monkey - This was the most amazing day of our trip. 10. Visiting Kyoto tower - mostly because if I see a tower I have to visit! 11. The beautiful streets of Gion in Kyoto at night.12. Our final day in Kyoto - visiting temples and palaces. 13. Back in Tokyo and spending time hanging out at our capsule hotel.14. Our last day in Tokyo - it's back to Harujuku again!15. Visiting the Imperial Palace.16 - Goodbye Japan - everything was just super!
I also made these cupcakes for my friends Ekant and Unicia and posted them down to Christchurch. I decided to do this after a comment on my facebook from Ekant, who asked for some cupcakes seen as he had lived through the Christchurch earthquake. I knew he was joking but I thought I'd call his bluff and actually send some cupcakes down to Christchurch. These ones were neopolitan. 
I also finished the bird mobile for my niece Sophiia whilst I was in New Zealand, here's the mobile modelled by her big brother Lukah.
Finally here's a photo of Sophiia and I - we took a whole bunch of photo's of Sophiia and I but none of them turned out too great. I don't think that she we really wanting to have her photo taken that day!
