It’s romance season again – well, for some folks anyway! For me it is an excuse to try making some new cupcakes and decorating them with hearts and such.

Whist Nic was doing her usual magic creating vegan ‘cheeze’ and onion pasties, baking up some sos rolls and getting all the other cakes ready for the week, I took a few hours whilst we were closed to try a new recipe. Before I get onto that, feast your eyes on what Nic has added to ‘Cake Island’ this week:

These yummies will be available Weds 11am – 3pm and 6 – 9pm, Thurs 11am – 3pm and Sat 11am – 3pm

Today’s kitchen trial bake involved turning our usual vanilla cupcake recipe into Red Velvet cupcakes and making little vegan choccy hearts to go on top.

The ‘Moo Free’ choc was a total wipeout, it didn’t melt very nicely and I found it too sweet, it also had a weird aftertaste. Sad, because this choc was from advent calendars that came to us through the pantry and won’t last until next Christmas. I expect we’ll find another use for the chocs, but on their own they weren’t very nice at all.

Our vegan white choc coverture buttons worked a lot better, although they didn’t look so great on the white icing of course, so I had to switch to chocolate icing (the trauma) with red velvet dusting on top.

We’d had some electrical not-worky drama in the Grove area near the kitchen, so our lovely sparky Alex popped in and luckily it was a simple fix, and he was happy to take a cupcake as payment – what a legend. Bik was in doing maintenance so he got one cupcake that got squashed. We do spoil him.

So anyway, from this weekend we will have these little lovelies on sale and, if I can get timings worked out for collection, you may even have a limited chance to preorder some for the weekend before Valentine’s day! Join our mailing list for info nearer the time.

All proceeds from buying these tasty little numbers go towards the running costs of our community pantry, so these cupcakes show love in more ways than one.

You can also enjoy one of these yummy soups – green bean & tomato or leek and potato, both made using supermarket surplus and served with yummy bread also diverted from becoming waste. Our soup is pay-as-you-feel and you also have the option to pay one forward for somebody who needs a hot lunch.

Enjoy these pics – and come in and have the real thing! Lots of love to you from today’s kitchen crew – Nic, me (Jani) and Missy Boo – who was not allowed in the kitchen, of course, but was a Very Good Girl about it.