I recently treated myself to a copy of Queen of Crafts, a great book full of recipes and ideas by Jazz Domino Holly. It’s a lovely book to flick through for some inspiration although there aren’t many new ideas in it. However, a recipe for button biscuits caught my eye. I love buttons, have a huge stash to decorate my sewing projects, and thought biscuit buttons would be fun to make. I used my own biscuit recipe, divided the mixture into two and added blue and yellow food colouring to both halves which I picked up at Iced Inspirations, my…
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On the 19 September 2010 I started a Day Zero list: a place to record my goals, discover new challenges, and gain motivation to achieve them. I have a list of 100 things I want to do over 1001 days. The list is due to be competed by 16 June 2013. I’ve been busy this month with baby stuff so it doesn’t feel like I’ve had much time to complete any of my actions! 11. Identify 100 things that make me happy this wasn’t too hard and I made it into a pretty word cloud with wordle 13.…
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I love Halloween and have been on the lookout for inexpensive craft and baking items on the high street. Fortunately Poundland is on a mission to make it easy and cheap for everyone to have a happy Halloween. With growing popularity for the holiday, it’s easy for kids to get swept up in the excitement, often leaving parents not knowing where to start. So Poundland has come up with some ideas to set you off in the right direction. If you’re throwing a Halloween party there are a whole host of decoration and dressing-up products from Poundland, which make it…
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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 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,…