African Mask Cupcakes

This weekend I checked out 1:54, the Contemporary African Art fair at Somerset House in London with my mum.

It was MORE than amazing. I was overwhelmed with the amount of amazing art, crammed into one space. The excitement, the pleasant autumn morning, the good company, the beautiful setting of Somerset House and the art made for one of the best days of the year.

That night I came home & got to creating some of my own pieces of African inspired sugar art out of fondant and chocolate. I was like the Mad Professor - completely obsessed! :)

African Mask Cupcake - fondant

African Mask Cupcake - chocolate fondant

Africa

Africa, Beautiful yet unappreciated

Africa, Sahara to the Atlantic

Africa, From Zulu Land to Yoruba Land

Africa, From Nile River to River Niger

Africa, Rain and Sunshine round the year, 

Africa, With her greenery lustre

Africa, With Coolness, Calmness, a Serenity unequal

Africa, Your hospitality and warmth taken for granted

Africa, Raped and left desolate, yet richly blessed

Africa, Your Children scattered all over the World crying for you

Africa, You are simply mine Africa. ~ Segun Rasaki

Peace & Love

xxx

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Mango & Lemon Fusion Cupcakes (Inspired by Ellen Gallagher)

Back in June I went to see the Ellen Gallagher: AxME exhibition at the Tate Modern and was inspired to create a cupcake flavour.

The exhibition was very interesting: Ellen uses a mixture of different mediums including paint, photographs & even plasticine to bring her art to life. After taking it all in, I came away thinking of all things yellow and decided try out variations of either lemon or mango cupcakes.

I started out with a vanilla recipe as the base. The lemon cupcake had a lemon curd centre with a whipped cream topping, lightly flavoured with lemon curd. For the mango cupcake, I pureed some sweet mangoes (the Pakistani variety I believe) for the centre and flavoured the whipped (double) cream with some of the mango puree and a little icing sugar.

However, when I put everything together, I mixed up the toppings & fillings and ended up with a lemon, mango fusion. The best variety being the mango centre with the lemon cream topping.

At first I was kicking myself for messing up but when I tasted it, it was actually really good! It got me thinking about making mistakes, how often I seem to make them and how annoyed I get with myself for it.

The truth is, no-one is perfect, least of all me and that as long as I'm growing and evolving I will continue to make mistakes. The good news is that sometimes, they can turn out to be important discoveries and if you're really lucky, very tasty!

Here's to making tasty mistakes!

Peace & Love
xx

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Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50

The cakies

This week I was at the book launch of "Growing Up: The Young British Artists at 50", to support a friend of mine, Ali Glitlow, who edited it. I was going to bring flowers but figured why not bake some funfetti cupcakes to celebrate the occasion (my friend is American so it seemed like the perfect flavour).

The book

The book is an honest account of five British artists; Anya Gallaccio, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Michale Landy and Sarah Lucas, and their journey over the last 25 years. It has tons of unreleased photos and personal interviews and is a great read. I bagged myself a copy and was lucky to get it signed not once but twice by the author, Jeremy Cooper, (cause I'm special like that :)).

If you're into that sort of thing and even if you're not, definitely grab yourself a copy :)

Peace & Love

xx

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Art, Light and Cupcakes

Last weekend I went up to the Tate gallery in Liverpool to see the Magritte art exhibition. It was really good with a whole range of his work that I wasn't aware of before. I know his really famous stuff and even did a tribute post on it a couple of months back but I think it was the Surrealist photography that got me inspired.

So out came the tripod & some cakies as I attempted some Surrealist photography of my own. Taking pictures of myself wasn't as easy as I thought it would be but it sure beats housework! I think the life of an artiste is one I could get used to. First I need to find someone willing to buy my stuff.... 

Peace & Love

xx

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable." Rene Magritte

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