Favourite Things Friday

Favourite Things Friday is back for 2013 and I'd love for you to link up and share one of your favourite things. 

I'd been wanting a grown up girl mixer forever but at upwards of $400 for something decent it just wasn't on the "must buy" agenda. However for Christmas Mr. P and I decided to treat ourselves. (I think this was more for me than him as he is yet to use it. I've been hogging it incessantly since it arrived home ) So after much research and phoning around playing retailers off against each other to get the best price, this gem has come to live at my house and after 25 years of using a hand mixer you better believe it's getting a workout. I think I've been using it every second day. I'm completely in love with this thing. Plus everyone knows that red makes things go faster and bake better.

I love that I can program it and walk away and that it beeps to let me know when to come back and give it some more loving. And that I don't have to hold it to mix stuff until I feel like my arm is going to fall off. I never really understood the idea of creaming butter and sugar properly until I didn't have to do anything but chuck butter and sugar in the bowl and walk away to make myself a cup of coffee. 

The very first thing I mixed up in it was a Tim Tam cake. You can get the recipe here if you're interested in making some awesomeness because lo and behold it turned out perfectly. I can only assume my mixer has been blessed with  magical powers because perfect rarely happens in this house when it comes to baking.

And then Little P helped me make cupcakes. And they were edible too! That's cake frosting on his forehead not some hideous Frankenstein scar. And that's icing on his upper lip- not a moustache. And that's his tongue poking out -not a hideous growth. 

By this stage I had a completely new outlook on baking . I truly think this mixer is magical. Everything I whip up in it seems to work out.

Rainbow cupcakes 

Fancy cupcakes 

Lemon Meringue icecream (that hole on the far side is because Miss P and Mr P couldn't wait for me to take a picture before they started eating it )

Cynthia's cinnamon coffee cake (which looked mildly leprous in the pan because I doubled the topping amount  but trust me - it tasted divine ) 

Mini cheesecakes 

If I don't start finding some savoury recipes that can be whipped up in this thing my arse is going to end up the size of Texas. 

So that's my favourite thing this week. An appliance. 20 years ago if you'd told me I'd be in love with a kitchen appliance I would have called you nuts.