Chocolate Cupcakes

Everyone needs a chocolate cupcake hit every once in a while, especially when the chocolate cupcake is from the ultimate chocolate cake recipe! I have made many recipes for chocolate cake but this one wins for me hands down EVERY FRICKIN' TIME! Sourced from the Good Housekeeping Simple and Stunning Cakes book by Greg and Max. For some unknown reason this is the only recipe I have made from this book, maybe I subconsciously thought it was the magnificent octopus (Magnus opus for those who don't get the Blackadder reference!) of the book and the rest would pale in comparison, who knows?

They were decorated with chocolate fudge icing, marshmallows dipped in the coloured sugar I previously posted about and a few store bought sugar butterflies.

I prefer to use chocolate ganache to frost my chocolate cupcakes with but as I stupidly delayed making these the bloody cream went out of date and it was too late to go get some more.

Anyway, these tasted awesome and maybe one day I will share my recipe.... when I have a better one to remain the supreme chocolate cake maker of the universe mwahahaha!

Pinterest Project - Coloured Sugar

Who doesn't love the virtual crack that is Pinterest?!
It is a fantastic way of keeping track of future projects, design ideas, recipes etc etc. However, it is all to easy to get carried away with the whole pinning part and never get around to the doing part.
I started my Pinterest account to try and organise my ever growing bookmarked web pages, then I got addicted!
So to try to keep up with the doing part of pinning ideas, I will post up things I have pinned that I have got around to. And let you know if, in the words of a blog I read somewhere amongst the ether, did I pin a win?!

First up, DIY coloured sugar.
I found this by random from a blog party link and it hit me as a great money saver and a cute project.

Source: http://www.momontimeout.com/2011/11/how-to-make-your-own-colored-sugar_18.html

It is pretty easy to do, put a few tablespoons of sugar (I used both caster and granulated in my experiment, as well as some dessicated coconut) into a jar, add 2 or 3 drops of food colouring, screw the lid on and shake. Shake and shake and shake until the sugar magically has turned a cute colour!
Easy as that folks! Excuse the rubbish photo, you know the drill with my photography equipment/skills!

So overall, did I pin a win? Yes, yes I did! This would be a fun activity to do with children and will save you money if you are into the cake decorating game, not to mention the bingo wing toning from all the shaking!

Enjoy!

Pineapple Cake

This is a cake I made a while ago, recipe taken from Jenn at Eat Cake For Dinner. It is a fat free (as in no butter or oil went into the recipe) and you would never be able to tell! It is really moist, sticky (the colouring of it is basically caramelised pineapple) and really delicious!

Isn't it a beast?! I used the ring tin just because I had got it from Lakeland (Mmm quality quantum 4 Teflon....) and couldn't wait to use it :) It took a lot more time in the oven than the recipe said because of this, Jenn made hers in a sheet cake tray I think. I made some dream topping to serve it with but a better option would be custard, it is a very puddingy cake.
So for a guilt free pudding I really recommend this one, it used a whole tin of pineapple so you could probably reason that you can get one of your five a day ha ha ha!

Cherry pies & Lemon and lime tarts

Well, it has been a while! Blogging is now back to business, things are on the up again and although you never really get over the loss of a loved one, it isn't good to stay in that sad place forever.

As I am in need of a good dose of distraction (for more than one reason...I will spill the beans soon enough!) I have been getting my craft on! I have also realised how many projects I never blogged about so I will be posting about them in the next few weeks along with posts about things in progress, recently finished projects and other random bits and pieces in the manner of which I am accustomed to doing :)

Right - enough chat, there is pie to discuss.

A few days ago I got bored and decided to bake, as is necessary. But sometimes one is not in the mood for something as laborious as cake. So I made lemon and lime tarts and cherry pies...

 Mmm cherries!

 The middle one got a bit excited!

Mmm limey.... Lime is totally the best flavour ever!

These were quick and easy, I will provide the sweet shortcrust pastry recipe below, it's pretty self explanatory how to construct pies and tarts, the beauty of it is that you can use plenty of things you probably have in the back of your fridge/cupboard, tarts work well with any marmalade or jam and are a good way to use up the end of a jar. There are so many fabulous jams out there it's a shame the humble jam tart doesn't get sexed up more often! I have used pineapple jam before which is really nice, for the next few batches I'm tempted by blackcurrant jam, cherry jam and coconut jam (known as kaya in some places, look for it in your local Chinese supermarket - it is to die for!).

SWEET SHORTCRUST PASTRY

Makes 8oz - I got 12 tarts and 7 pies from one batch.

8oz plain flour

5oz unsalted butter, softened

2tbsp caster sugar

1 egg yolk

Sieve the flour into a bowl, add the butter and rub into the flour. Stir in the sugar then form into a dough using the egg yolk and about 1tbsp of cold water. Wrap in some cling film or a sandwich bag and chill for 30 minutes before use.

Simples!

Linked up to THINK PINK SUNDAYS @ Flamingo Toes!

Obsessed much...?

Banana cream pie cupcakes (or as a single cake) are the business! This is my go to recipe for using up bananas - I'm a weirdo who only eats bananas when they are green and therefore has ripe ones spare for baking more often than not! The concept of these bad boys comes from Jenn at "Eat Cake For Dinner" who always has the most amazing recipes :)
I used my own banana cake recipe and used the English equivalents of the other parts - hidden under the dream topping is banana angel delight (well, the Tesco version of angel delight)! I recommend you make these asap!

For those who have noticed the recent lack of posts, recent illness left me in no mood to post and the loss of my wonderful Nana will see it rather quiet on the blog front for a little while. I suspect that the newly implemented Made it Monday and Celebration Sundays will go, I feel that the Sunday posts in particular are not worth the time they take to be done on a weekly basis.
xxx

Made it Monday - Red Velvet Cupcakes

As seen on yesterday's Celebration Sunday post, I used this recipe.
Now there were a few things that are not in my favour -

1. I have never had a red velvet cake before so I have no idea what they are supposed to taste like
2. I only have a 6 hole muffin tin
3. This recipe makes 30 cupcakes

If you decide to make these cupcakes then I warn you, the ingredients will look shocking, a cup and a half of vegetable oil and 3 cups of sugar look like diabetes and CHD all rolled into one! Be sure to use a large bowl, the bowl I am using in the picture below holds 4.5 litres, it is pretty full!
When all the ingredients are combined the mixture is fairly runny, I used a ladle to fill the cases with.
The red food colouring (a whole bottle!!) hasn't stained my earthenware bowl but do be careful with plastic ones as they might go red! It is much more vibrant in err.... "person" so I wasn't expecting the results.

Oven shot - rising well and looking pretty red, nice example of how much mess I make when baking!

And the end result! The cakes were more brown velvet to be honest which was disappointing, I might experiment with powder food colouring instead or try to find a food colouring which is artificial, the silly natural ones do seem to lack the oomph of old school e-number versions.
Most important though is the taste...as I have no comparison I have no idea if they taste normal or not. I was worried they would taste vinegary but there is no hint of it! The cake itself is very light albeit with a crisp top, perhaps over baking on my part or something but it is not burnt in any way. I'm not sure what it tastes of, kind of neutral tasting really! I mean it does have a flavour but nothing distinct!
The frosting was made a bit runnier than it should have been because I couldn't be arsed to weight out the cream cheese when it was only a little bit over what it should have been anyway. The frosting should have a health warning of its own! Serious unhealthy goodness! A definite don't ask and I won't tell situation.
It is so good I honestly felt compelled to stick my face in the bowl (I restrained myself).

There are far too many to fit on my cake stand!

If anyone else has made red velvet cakes and can let me in on the colour secret I would love to know!

If you are from the UK and don't have US measuring cups then this website will allow you to convert the measurements, you need to be converting volume rather than weight.

Happy baking!

Celebration Sunday - Valentines Day 2

This week it's all about Valentines themed food! This post very nearly became all about baking as there are so many gorgeous recipes out there! Not everything pictured below has a recipe linked, some are pretty self explanatory. Don't just keep these ideas for Valentines day though, use them to add a little sweetness into a dull week - could do wonders for those of us who have the Monday morning back to work blues!

First up are a few cute breakfast ideas -

Jam heart toast
Source

Heart pancakes

Source

It would be fun to serve breakfast with these darling items (I am not paid to endorse these items, I just googled and these came up!) -

Cute heart tumblers

Heart side plates

Now onto the good stuff! Here are a few recipes that caught my eye -

Red Velvet Cupcakes
These are to die for! Recipe from the lovely Jenn over at Eat Cake For Dinner,
Check out her other recipes too - all divine!

A simple but very pretty way to serve strawberries and cream, this would also
look good used as cake decoration.
Source

The first of two recipes from Martha Stewart, these look adorable!
Heart Cookies

There are thousands of recipes on Martha's website but these caught my eye!
Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes

Last but not least, if you and your lover share the same geeky humour then investing in one of these will go down well! I think it is really cool!

Source

I hope the few ideas here get you inspired :)

Rainy Saturday afternoons....

....Are meant for baking!

 Today's recipes for weight gain and diabetes are - 

* Carrot Tea-cake*

First time I have made carrot cake and it won't be the last! 

The cake is lovely and moist and the cream cheese frosting sets it off wonderfully.

I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's website - Check it out!!

 

* Chocolate Orange Cookies *

Proper American style squidgy delicious cookies!
These will not last long!

So much better than ones you buy from the supermarkets and way better than the ones made from a box of cookie mix, really quick and simple to make so no excuses not to make your own!
I got the recipe from a great new blog I discovered a few days ago called Eat Cake For Dinner - not that I need any more encouragement ha ha ha!
The recipe can be found here - the only changes I made was to substitute orange rind for orange flavouring as that was all I had to hand. Check out the other recipes on the blog, every last one of them look mouth wateringly tasty, I simply HAVE to make the Neapolitan whoopie pies!

Hope everyone else is having a great Saturday whatever the weather!

Baking extravaganza and special banana bread recipe!

Having been unable to do any baking for a while I went into mass production mode when the lovely Tesco's delivery man brought me all my basics with the grocery shopping....

First of all I made about 2 dozen of these -

I got the recipe here, from Land Girl 1980's blog, recently discovered on one of my many late night blog crawls!
They are WW2 scones, flattened into cookies. I did make some scone sized versions but fell in love with the crunchy outer texture and decided biscuits were the way forwards!  I did make some slight amendments from the original recipe by adding some cinnamon (about 1 tsp) and some raisins and sultanas (a few handfuls, I didn't really measure them, just dumped a load in ha ha!) to the mix.
They are best fresh from the oven but will go soft (still really yummy) after a few hours. This might be because I don't have a biscuit tin to put them in. I will have to either dig out an old tin from somewhere or splash out in Poundland ha ha ha!

Later on in the day I made two massive banana breads, one chocolate chip and banana, the other sultanas, raisins, cinnamon and banana. I had a lot of bananas to use up!

Still munching on the banana and chocolate one, great with some cold custard. The other beast was given to some dear friends as sustenance whilst in the process of moving house :)

 

 On the left is the chocolate, the right is the cinnamon.

How to make your own banana bread beast.....