As regular readers will know I just love baking and try to bake something new every week. I was very excited when offered a new cupcake book to review. For the Love of Cupcakes by Ann Nicol is an illustrated book offering step-by-step instructions to show just how easy it is to make your own cute culinary creations that have become such a phenomenon! Read up on the essential equipment, ingredients, basic methods and recipes, and decorating tips, before choosing from the exciting range of inventive cupcake recipes, from dainty cakes such as Crystallised Violet Cupcakes or rich and indulgent…
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I found a bar of dark chocolate and orange languishing at the back of the fridge so thought I would try making some chocolate orange cupcakes. I used a basic cupcake recipe but added 50g of the melted dark chocolate. When they were cooked and cooled I then decorated them with a simple buttercream icing but added 50g of melted white chocolate which I coloured with orange food colouring. I finished off the cupcakes with a mixture of white chocolate buttons and dark chocolate sprinkles.
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It’s getting spookily close to Halloween so I thought it was time to make a batch of gingerbread men all dressed up for Halloween. I used my favourite gingerbread recipe and whipped up a load. When they had cooled down I decorated them as skeletons with an icing pen. Yummy, but not very scary! Perhaps I will have to get some inspiration from my Halloween board on Pinterest. I’ve seen some amazing carved pumpkins in the shape of Hello Kitty and Bert & Ernie from Sesame Street. Going on last year’s pumpkin efforts I think we had better get started…
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I’ve been dying to try my hand at felt biscuits ever since I saw them on the cover of Mollie Makes, which were designed by Ouissi Gresty. The patterns were quite simple so I bought a copy of her book ‘Felt biscuits’ but I found it a bit disappointing. It’s a small book and only covers patterns for five biscuits (pink wafer, bourbon, shortcake, custard creams and a jam sandwich) but does include a pattern for a biscuit tray and tin. Personally I would have liked more biscuit patterns (garibaldi, rich tea, chocolate digestive, etc) or the patterns which featured…
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I was feeling very brave and decided I wanted to try baking a cake in a jar. I’ve seen them on lots of American blogs, including spectacular rainbow coloured ones. My first problem was finding glass mason jars but I tracked down some Kilner jars in our local bake shop which were suitable. As this was my first attempt I used a white packet mix. I couldn’t find any neon food colouring so divided the mixture in two and added cocoa powder to half the mixture. I then layered the mixture inside the jar with the chocolate layer at the…
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When I was in Waitrose at the weekend I saw some whoopie pies which reminded me I wanted to try a recipe for gingerbread whoopie pies. Apparently late last year, The New York Times proclaimed whoopie pies to be the new cupcake. The cupcake is dead, long live the whoopie pie? I don’t think so, but I’m always happy to try a new baking project. Gingerbread whoopie pie recipe Ingredients 16oz plain flour 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp ground cloves 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg 6oz unsalted…
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One of my favourite activities is baking with Edward. Mixing the ingredients is his speciality! But he also enjoys his role as chief taster 🙂 He was very excited when he heard we had been sent the new range of junior baking products from Renshaw to try for ourselves. Designed with mini bakers in mind, the Juniors range is 100% natural flavours and colours and encourages children to get creative in the kitchen and rustle up edible masterpieces of their own. I baked a batch of simple shortbread and then tried the Magic Melting Icing which, as it says on the container,…
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It’s been a while since I’ve made any gingerbread biscuits and as a playdate was cancelled yesterday I thought I would bake some. I used a gingerbread cookie mix I bought from John Lewis. The mixture smelt delicious and it was lovely to do some easy baking! You all know what an Orla Kiely freak I am so I thought it would be fun to make my favourite stem print into a template for an icing sugar decoration. Simple but effective. You may wonder why I only managed to photograph one biscuit? Let’s just say I discovered my son shares…
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What was I thinking?! When I saw a picture of a Union Jack battenburg cake I was thinking “I can make that”. So I did. Ok, so it doesn’t quite look like the one in the photograph but at least I tried. The sponge cake turned out rather greener than the blue I hoped for and it was quite tricky to slice the cake diagonally! It’s a time consuming project as you need to leave the cake to chill in the fridge through various stages of construction. It’s sandwiched together with layers of buttercream and strawberry jam and wrapped in…