Clockwork Lemon

Sweet Spring Cupcakes + Minted {Giveaway}

I'm excited about this post, and not just because there are sparkly cupcakes to share. I've paired up with Minted.com which happens to be one of my favorite paper-based websites. Minted makes wedding invitations, customized notebooks, stationary, and (cutest of all) an array of paper goods for parties. Everything is designed by independent artists and the quality is great. Basically a wonderful/dangerous place to visit if you're a stationary addict like me. 

Last Christmas I bought everyone in my family  customized notebooks, and since then I've also purchased stationary sets, more notebooks, and now this spring themed party-table set. Little did Minted know when they wrote to me that I was already a huge dorky stationary fan girl (YES I WILL TRY THE CUTE PARTY TABLE SET, THANK YOU)

 

 

I wanted to have a spring themed dessert table and decided that instead of choosing the desserts first I would pick out the signs and decorations and then make cupcakes with the same colour scheme. Pretty much everything on their website can be customized so I picked out this teal sign and changed the words to 'Sweet Spring"

 

 Then I added a windmill set from the same design package. You have to assemble the windmills yourself, but it makes for a cute and easy cupcake topper. I didn't even bother to pipe on the icing, just swiped it on and stuck the windmill in. Done and done! When you have a party to plan easier = better. 

I also picked up a package of matching confetti which I used both as cupcake coasters and as a background. 

For the fancier cupcakes I actually piped the icing on (instead of just smearing it around) and added some gumpaste flowers that I had made the week before and dusted with pink shimmer powder. They are simple to make and keep for months and months on end. So when the day of your party arrives, you can just stick them on to your cake/cupcakes and you are good to go. 

Actually, forget what I said about piping the icing.. totally optional. See if you can spot the cupcake that I iced with a butter knife and then added flowers to. Still looks great!

 

 

With all the cute paper colour and patterns, all you need to do to make a dessert that wows is pick a couple of matching colours to ice your cookies/cake/cupcakes with and maybe add a detail or two (like the flowers) to dress it up. To make things even easier I also:

1. Made the cupcakes in advance (iced them day of)

2. Made the gumpaste flowers in advance 

3. Didn't mess around with trying to pipe a large amount of cupcakes perfectly, just 4-5 accent cupcakes and the rest were decorated with windmills.

4. Didn't bother trying to find lots of matching plates, used the confetti as little coasters instead. 

And now you can enter to win a $50 gift card to Minted.com and make your own dessert table! Or spend it on invitations, notebooks, and stationary.. no judgement here. 

To Enter:

Leave a comment with which Minted product(s) you would buy with the gift card. 

 

Additional Entries (optional)

1. Tweet about the giveaway, then leave a separate comment with a link to the tweet: " Win a $50 Minted.com gift card from @Clock_worklemon #stationaryaddiction  http://tinyurl.com/qz5gaun "

2. Pin the giveaway on Pinterest, then leave a separate comment with a link to the pin

3. 'Like' Clockwork Lemon on Facebook and leave a separate comment saying that you did (you can click the link, or press the like button on the left sidebar) 

 

A winner will be chosen through random draw on June 1 2013

Full disclosure: Minted provided me with the party table set and the $50 dollar gift card. However, as a stationary nerd and customer, the opinions were 100% my own. 

Three Desserts I Couldn't Stop Eating

As a person who usually reaches for salty snacks instead of sweet ones, I can get tired of eating the same baking over and over while testing a recipe. Cupcakes, chocolaty cookies, and even some squares seem less appealing once I've on batch five or six.

It's actually a good thing because it allows me to taste a little from each batch without going overboard and eating too much. However, some recipes keep their appeal no matter how many times I've made them and I find myself rummaging around in the fridge for another helping despite the fact that I've already had two.

These three recipes had me tasting and tasting and tasting and I'd happily have another helping right now.

 

1. Mini Meyer Lemon Cheesecakes

First I'd like to blame the miniature size of these cakes for their snack-ability. Secondly I blame the combination of the tart and lemony curd against the creamy cheesecake. The bright lemony flavor really cut through the richness of the cheesecake and kept me going back for 'just one more' or sneaking spoonfuls of the curd out of the bowl from the fridge.

 

Breakfast Themed Birthday Cake

Another year, another birthday. I'm lucky in that I share the same birthday as my lovely friend Rachele which means we get double the celebration and have an excuse to throw a birthday party with double the guests, food, and (most importantly) cake.

Last year we made a big batch of cupcakes but this year I wanted to take the time to design and decorate us a themed cake.


During our party planning session we came up with a couple of party themes and ultimately decided that we wanted to have a breakfast themed party.

Not a party during breakfast time, nor a breakfast-for-dinner party, but a party with breakfast themed appetizers, mimosas, and a caesar bar. While we were brainstorming the snack bar I doodled these happy breakfast food characters to use for the cake. I wanted them to be dancing around the outside of the cake holding hands.

 Sorry for all of the poorly lit cell phone photos to follow, all of the cake work was done in the late evening. (Fact: it's important to do decorating work late at night while watching Mystery Diagnosis or Hoarders  on YouTube for maximum creative inspiration).

Turnip Cake {Lo Bok Cake}

One of my all-time favorite things to do is go out for dim sum. Nothing like rounding people up (the more the merrier!) and ordering dish after dish of dumplings, buns, egg tarts, and other dim sum treats. This turnip cake makes a regular appearance at dim sum and I'd never given much thought to how it was made or even what it was made out of. Pan-fried and served up in slices, it's crispy on the outside and smooth on the inside studded with bits of pork belly and chinese sausage. So I knew that turnips were somehow involved, and bits of meat, but beyond that I was usually too busy eating it to really contemplate if this was something I could make at home.

When my friend Vincci invited me over to her house with her sister to make turnip cake for Chinese New Year I jumped at the offer. Free baking lesson!

 

 

If you want try making this at home (which I highly recommend) then you'll need to head to an Asian grocery store for most of the ingredients. First up are these long white turnips that make up the base of the cake.

 

Using a Planner for Blogging (and Everything Else)

It's probably not a surprise to anyone that I read a lot of baking blogs, pin a lot of recipes to pinterest, and read a lot of cookbooks. However, what you might not know is that I read as many stationary/organizer/planner blogs as I do baking blogs and own as many pens and notebooks (or more) as I do cookbooks. Obviously this blog isn't the place to nerd out about my filofax and plannerisms planner system so I wrote a guest post for plannerisms.com on how I use two planners to manage my blog (and the rest of my life). 

 

If you love paper planners, to-do lists, and organization systems then head over to Laurie's blog to check out the post. Using these planners has helped me get ahead in my blog posts, at work, and keep up with household stuff. 

If you don't love planners and can't understand why I don't just use the calendar on my phone then just hang tight and a baking related post will be up soon!

 Plannerisms Post

Happy New Year! {2013}

I love New Years almost as much as I love Christmas, and that's saying a lot, because I really love Christmas. The beginning of a new year always feels so fresh, it's the perfect time to sit down and write out some goals for the coming months (this may or may not just be an excuse to buy a new notebook). I also usually use this time to reflect on things that happened in the past year.

Instead of a 2012 recipe roundup I thought I'd do a more personal post than I normally do and share what happened this year and what I'm looking forward to in 2013.  So here it is: The Good, The Bad, and The Goals.

 

The Good

There were so many good things about 2012 that it's hard to narrow everything down into one list. These were highlights that stand out in my mind:

1. Started writing and doing photography for my column Icing On The Cake in The Globe and Mail.

2. Finally upgraded from a point and shoot to an SLR camera