Whales!

I saw humpback whales jumping out of the water from my balcony today. It was soooo coooool!!

Rainbow Cake!!!

My good friend Maike turned 22 this past weekend and threw a potluck birthday party at her apartment. I've been on a major baking spree lately, and decided to endeavour to make this impressive-looking rainbow cake that I'd seen on a few food blogs. I was really thrilled with the end product, and thought I might toot my own horn and share some pictures with y'all.

The cake is just a basic vanilla pound cake recipe.



I divided the batter into separate, equal portions and dyed each bowl of batter a different colour using food colouring.

Each bowl of batter had to baked separately, although I have seen other food bloggers pour each bowl of coloured batter one on top of the other to make a marbled rainbow cake. This also looks pretty cool.

I layered the slabs of cake, putting vanilla buttercream
icing in the middle.

The final product! I covered the rest of the cake in undyed buttercream icing, then used my icing piping bag to add a little pizazz!

I was really, really excited for Maike to cut into the cake. I think the best part of making this cake is the reaction you get from the person who cuts it open.

I think it looks so beautiful!!

Canada vs. Australia Rugby

The Rugby World Cup starts on September 9th in New Zealand, and in preparation for the World Cup, Canada and Australia played a match here on the Gold Coast. Forty of us exchange students got organized and bought tickets to the game. There was a surprising number of Canadian fans at the game, and all were dressed to the nines in flags and red and white painted faces. I spent the whole afternoon the day before the game searching for face paint, and couldn't find any! So I decided I was going to try to make my own face paint out of cornstarch, face cream, and food colouring. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the facepaint red enough, and ended up painting my face with and subsequently washing off a big pink maple leaf. I didn't even have a red shirt or sweater to wear to the game, so shamefully settled on using my red lipstick to paint a small maple leaf on my cheek.

Canada actually didn't get their butts kicked, which was good, considering we Canadians don't have the rugby culture that they have here in Oz.

When the game was over, many of the players greeted fans and gave autographs on the field. There was one particularly cute Canadian player who my roommate decided I needed a picture with. His name was Connor. He was very cute indeed.

Housewarming Party

Two weeks ago, my roommates and I hosted a housewarming party for our beautiful apartment. Collectively we baked three cakes and about 4 dozen cookies and brownies to serve at the party. We also served tea and hot chocolate. My favorite baked good was a chocolate layer cake that I had invented about a week earlier. The cake has orange rind icing in the middle and is covered in whipping cream -- really yummy! I also really loved the sugar cookies that we iced in all different colours.

There is another group of 4 exchange students living on a different floor of our building, so we decided that we would jointly run the housewarming party. Thus, guests spent the first few hours at our apartment indulging in baked goods, and then we headed downstairs for pizza, chips and drinks. Someone brought a guitar to the party, so later in the evening we all took turns passing the guitar around and singing. All in all, the party was a great success, and and a perfect excuse to bake until I dropped!