orange | Peppermints & Honey Bees

I don’t cook to many desserts but I was in the mood and wanted to try this recipe I found on pinterest from

http://drizzleanddip.com/2012/09/10/clementine-upside-down-cakes. I used tangerines instead, but whatever! I varied my recipe because I used a cup of Greek yogurt and a cup of water instead of butter and eggs but I will give you the recipe from Drizzle and Dip and if you feel adventurous like I was you can deviate from the recipe.

225g butter – room temp
225g caster sugar
225g flour
2t baking powder
4 large eggs – room temp
finely grated zest of 2 small clementines, or in my case tangerines
about 1/2 – 1 t of brown sugar for each cake
15 slices of peeled clementines (1 slice per cake)

Hot Syrup

1/2 cup of clementine juice
1/2 cup sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180 c / 350 F
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, allowing to fully combine between each addition
Add the clementine zest and mix.
By hand sift the flour and the baking powder over the mix and fold it in to combine
Sprinkle around 1/2 – 1 teaspoon of brown sugar in the the bottom of each cavity of a greased muffin pan.
Add a slice of clementine (cut about 1cm thick) on top of the sugar.
Using an ice-cream scoop, evenly measure out the cake batter and dollop onto each clementine (about 3/4 of the way up the pan).
Bake for 25 – 30 mins, until golden brown. Mine took 30 minutes with the Greek yogurt.
Make the syrup by bringing the juice and sugar to the boil until the sugar has dissolved and it just starts to thicken.
Using a spatula gently loosen the baked cakes from the mold and tip out onto a cooling rack. Pour the warm syrup over the cakes to allow them to absorb.

Mine didn’t turn out quite as pretty as Drizzle and Dip’s did but they were delicious and still look pretty good I think!

enjoy!

As I mentioned earlier I am all about dyeing so when I saw some thing similar to this on pinterest from a blog called http://www.vitaminihandmade.com/. I thought I would give it a try to add some color to my boring white living room. I went with sunshine orange in the Rit dye and bought some inexpensive white curtains at IKEA. I didn’t want to spend a lot in case it didn’t work out.

I got the curtains wet in my double kitchen sink and filled one side up with hot water and the dye. I kept both curtains together at the top to make sure the dye pattern was the same on both. I wanted the top to have a little color so i dipped the whole curtains in for a few seconds and then removed all but about a foot, leaving the rest in the empty sink. I soaked it for about five minutes and gradually kept putting more and more in for about half way up.

After I had what looked to be good I rinsed the curtains in cold water and washed and dried them in my washer and dryer. They were a little lighter than I had hoped they would turn out so I bought one more box of Rit, just to do the bottoms. After this time I liked the way it looked. I guess it just depends on the look you are going for and the color, so you may or may not need two boxes of dye. I’m pretty happy with the way they turned out!