As an avid cupcaker, I was waiting for these Cupcake wrappers to be imported into Australia. I’d seen them on various cupcake sites hoping that they would soon grace our shores but always without much luck. Then I heard that a shop nearish to me stocked them and I knew that I would have to pay a visit to get a hold of these wrappers.

As I’m learning to drive, I took the chance to drive there (driving in the Northern beaches for an L driver is much nicer as people are more relaxed) and drove up to the store.

Inside there are displays of fresh flowers, some of which I’ve never seen before (they have a florist that picks their flowers). Even for this Sunday morning it’s full.

Halloween Displays

There is a display that completely appeals to me, the Halloween one with the Spider Cupcakes wrappers, the very ones that I have come here expressly to get a hold of.

Cupcake wrappers

I ask them about the Cupcake wrappers and they tell me that when they first arrived they sold out of them straight away and now they get orders from everywhere in Australia requesting them.

Stonewall kitchen

Stonewall Kitchen’s Grade A Dark Amber Maple syrup

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Finally, after months of reading everyone’s stories about The Daring Bakers I finally joined. I was initially hesitant, not knowing if my skill level was high enough given some of their amazing challenges (Opera cake-eek!). But as luck would have it, the first month’s was pizza. Phew I said but then read on, not only would we be making pizza, we would be twirling our own dough. Eeek! The only twirling I’ve ever done in my life is to show off an outfit so this was most certainly new to me. But that’s the whole idea of Daring Bakers: to challenge yourself.

The pizza can be made in stages and the mixing was interesting, certainly using less yeast than I’ve used before. The dough sat in my fridge for 1.5 days and when it was ready, I tried to throw one to no success. The dough was too delicate and I had spread it too far. Also I had no idea about the actual throwing technique, only remember vaguely it done on tv. So I watched a youtube video of how exactly a professional pizza maker makes it (and promptly freaked out, he was so good and fast!). I saw that using your knuckles to push out the dough to the edge to form a high border before trying to throw it helped, the dough on the inside was thin and almost see through and to the point of breaking, while the outer remained thicker and easier to pick up a slice. Flour is also your greatest friend when it comes to tossing so that the pizza doesn’t stick to your hands. I didn’t get mine close to being a circle, as I had an oven tray and not a round pizza stone, it wouldn’t have done even if I had wanted to.

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You’ll have to forgive me this continuing theme this week. To those new to the site, I usually alternate a cooking story with a restaurant review but this week I’m taken by Hallowe’en. Utterly besotted by it in fact. Hallowe’en along with Christmas are my favourite holidays of the year. So I hope you’ll forgive the onslaught of Hallowe’en themed food. I promise you that as soon as the clock strikes midnight on Hallowe’en we’ll return back to “normal” (whatever that may have been for me).

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