Worst. Photo. Ever.

The quality of this photograph (taken through gladwrap in the car on the way to a recent dinner party) is indicative of the general apathy an malaise that is pervading my entire life at the moment.

Working weekends is killing me, and the sticky 'd' key on my work laptop is making me feel slightly stabby.

Anywho, my sweet friend Zephyrama sent me a bunch of awesome cookbooks before Christmas, among them one celebrating recipes from regional restaurants around Australia.

I made little chocolate, date and almond tortes for a dinner with friends recently, and they turned out really well. We served them with vanilla bean ice cream and they were delicious.

This is also the worst post ever, because I'm not comfortable posting copyrighted recipes online, so I can't even share that.

Red Velvet cuppycakes with mint cream cheese icing

We made these little cuppycakes to take to the nephling's baby shower.

They're red velvet with mint cream cheese icing. The red velvet recipe I found somewhere on the internet and the icing is just regular cream cheese / butter / icing sugar with mint extract and food colour added.

Pants decorated them and we didn't have my piping bags and things because we made them at his parent's place. Still, I like how they turned out, kind of rustic.

When I lived in Manhattan, we used to order take out from a little cajun place that did the most incredible food. My flatmate LOVED red velvet and always ordered a slice, but I'd never tried it before.

The verdict? Delicious, so moist, but so, so bad for you, with the oil and the buttermilk and eggs, it didn't really have a distinct flavour. Not sure what I was expecting, but it's just a really dense, plain cake. The icing really helped.

We bake a lot, at least a batch of cookies a week for pants' little lunch, pies and cakes to take to dinner parties, etc, so this year, I'm trying to document them a bit better.