Even the bees like them!

The cat is chasing everything on the computer screen. Oh yes, did i mention that we now have a beautiful kitten? I think this weekend I will make some little cat biscuits in her honour. Although, come to think of it, would it traumatise her to see us biting their heads off? Actually, she's a cat, so that would be a no.

Anyhow. Yesterday, I opened my bible to page 40 where I found the recipe for some honey and granola cupcakes. Another guilt-free cupcake recipe! Never mind all the sugar, these babies have oaty raisiny goodness! Hoorah! Another good thing about them is that the mixture tastes a bit yuck before you actually bake them, so there's little temptation to lick the bowl! Hoorah!

I had a little difficulty working out the difference between granola and muesli but i now vaguely understand that granola tends to be the less healthy of the two because it is the sugary one.

The recipe can be found in the Primrose Bakery Book and it is most certainly a champion of a recipe. They smelled amazing while they were cooking and just look how nice and golden they are!

The Bees are made of sugarpaste and the flowers are made from flower paste. Here is how to make them:

Sugarpaste Bumble Bees ♥

Colour up some yellow and black paste with a gel dye.

*Make a yellow and a black sausage shape by rolling the paste between your hands. Make it about 3cms long and about 1/2cm thick.

twisty sausage shapes

*Put the two sausages together and twist them round eachother. Gently push them together as you are doing it and roll it between your hands so it becomes one big stripy bee coloured sausage.

rounded bee sausage

*You can gently roll it around in your hands so that it becomes as bee shaped as you like. Cut off any extra bee body with a sharp knife and roll the end in your hand so it is round at the end.

*Take a small ball of black paste. Dab a tiny bit of water onto one end of your bee sausage, using a little paintbrush and press the black ball onto it. That's the head.

smiling bee

*Using either a scallop and bone tool or the end of a straw with the top half cut off, create a little smily mouth.

sting

*Using either a frilling tool or some other small pointy stick, make 2 indents for the eyes.

*Dab a tiny bit of water into the indents and press tiny balls of white paste into them. Then make a little hole in each.

*For the sting, make a small cone out of black paste and bring it to a sharp point by twisting and pulling off the end. Again, using a dab of water, attach this to the other end of the bee sausage.

give it wings

*For the wings, make two small white balls and press them between your fingers, making them as thin as you can. Tip: Cornflour stops paste sticking to your fingers.

*Make the circle into a teardrop shape by pinching together the top of the circle. Dab this with water and fix it onto your almost complete bumble bee!

*Do the same with the other wing. obv.

                  Ta-daaaa!!

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Flower Paste Flowers ♥

For this you need flower paste really. For anyone that doesn't know, it's much stronger than sugarpaste and as the name suggests, is used to make all sorts of wonderful flowers. You could easily get a similar effect if you used sugarpaste, but just don't roll it very thin because it will break and ignore the bits below about softening and using glue.

So,

Quite simple really.

*Colour up some pink flower paste

*Grease your board with some trex or use a bit of cornflour and roll the paste out very thinly.

*Using a blossom cutter, cut out a flower. Put it on a petal board and soften the edges using a ball tool so that the edges start to bend up. Try to stretch it as you do so.

*Cut out another flower and do the same thing, but don't stretch it as much.

*Dab a little bit of edible glue in the middle ad put the smaller flower on top so that its petals are in between the petals of the bigger flower. Keep doing this until you have about 4 layers and it looks real pretty.

*In the middle, stick a little white ball and press it down flat. You can dust this as well. I did mine gold.

Now, How pretty's that?!