Butter Measurement Conversions (...sigh)

I'm writing out some (read, all) recipes from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes and am getting quite annoyed with the measurements.  Crazy Americans!  I understand that in America they have a different sized measuring cup (in New Zealand, Australia, and some other countries, we use a cup that is 250mls, while in the States, a cup is 236.588mls or 240mls [way to make it complicated!]) and often use pounds and ounces (because they're stuck in the 19th century?).

But what I don't understand is how you measure butter.  There are sticks of butter, and there are cups/T of butter.  My phone can't (or couldn't until I just created a conversion to do it) convert sticks of butter to grams.  Edmond's Cookbook doesn't have a clue either.  In NZ and Australia, most butter is sold in a block of 500g, and on the paper there are lines that indicate 50g intervals.  You simply run a knife gently along one of these lines on the outside of the paper, then unwrap the butter, and cut along the impression you have made.  I would like to ask any American visitors to my little blog (and I know there have been a few) - how on earth do you measure a cup of butter?  A t or a T is doable, if the butter is very soft, but how on earth do you do the same with a cup?

I have looked up a conversion ratio for sticks of butter to grams of butter and for cups of butter to grams of butter and created new conversion ratios for my phone, so now I can simply look it up each time I write out a recipe.  I can see conversion ratios needing their own post in here soon.  A lot are in the front of Edmond's, but not all that I would want (for example, regular sugar is included, but not icing, caster, or brown, and the damn butter), so I might spend some time when I have nothing to write about making a nice little table.

Cupcakes

I made some cupcakes!  I'm so pleased with how they turned out.  I got the recipe from one of Nigella's dvds.  I'd tell you which one, but Mum returned it to the library before I could write down the title, and also before I could get any of the recipes I liked the look of written down.  Luckily, her website has the recipe here.  Unfortunately, the website didn't have the recipe for royal icing that she used in the dvd to top the cupcakes.  Luckily I found pretty much the exact same recipe here.  These cupcakes were really insanely easy and they are also amazingly good.  And, as promised, here are some photos!!

Right out of the oven and cooling:

And then generously iced:

You can't really tell, but the icing is a lovely shade of lavender.  I added a little red and a little blue food colouring.  Half of them have coconut on top too.  We have this awesome dessicated coconut that's not those little shredded pieces that get stuck in my teeth, but instead are long threads of pretty yumminess.  I'll work on the photos - now you can see why I don't publish my photos!

Christmas time

This year we have decided to go really really easy on the presents and instead focus on yummy things to eat.  Yesterday we finally came up with, well not a theme exactly, but a type (?) of food for our Christmas lunch.  We're doing finger food!  We'll be doing mini savoury muffins, empanadas (if I can find a good recipe), mini savory vege tarts, homemade crustini (with the sourdough baguettes), haloumi, and some chicken nuggets ah la Nigella.  For sweet/desserts we'll have candycane biscuits, forgotten cookies, and hopefully some Christmas cupcakes that look like this, this, this, or this (or?  perhaps and is more appropriate), and individual pavlovas.  I'm semi-obsessed with cupcakes this weekend.  I can't be bothered cooking (I know, that's a bit unlike me), I think because of the effort I've put in the last couple of weekends for the starter breads I've tried, and because my energy is being used elsewhere (if you could see the junk covering the floor and table in our dining room you'd see where), but I'm still reading and looking at pretty pictures and have added a few more food blogs/sites to my feeds.  I've also realised I should be illustrating this blog, but I've been far too happy with my creations to remember to take photos.  So I will add them as I remake things, and get my a- into g- to put the photos I do have up on here.  But for now, enjoy the promise of pretty things for the future.

(PS:  Honourable mention goes to these cupcakes, for their unabashed geekiness, and to these for their gorgeousness [and also because Kellie has to love them])