A star for a star

I made this cake for a star person. It was a raspberry and white chocolate chip cake and tasted delicious, however it was trickier than I first thought. I had a new silicone star cake tine which I really wanted to use, and a new recipe too. The fan in the oven had broken previously but instead of waiting for the repair man I decided to bake anyway, using the oven on the conventional setting. I made the cake using buttermilk as I find it makes the texture of the finished cake to be scrummy. However, not really knowing how long the cake would take in an oven I am not used too, mixed with a runnier than normal cake mixture meant the top of the cake cooked a lot quicker than the middle and the cooking time turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. In the end though the cake was delicious and the recipient loved it. 

In the pink

I really wanted to try out new icing methods and try to make some cupcakes that looked more professional. I experimented with the strength of colour pink and also which icing method looked best. In the end I was pleased with all the designs and quite like the uniqueness and variety of the cupcakes.

The urge to bake

These blueberry muffins and chocolate cupcakes were the result of being home alone and bored one night. It doesn't look too over the top but this was only about a third of what I made. And there was nobody to eat them at the end of it. But when you have a friend on skype for three hours, the kitchen to yourself and most important the urge to bake what else do you expect?!

Millionaire's Shortbread

I wanted to try something more technical, so when most people were relaxing on a Friday night with more than a few glasses of wine, I was busy in the kitchen. The result was Millionaire's Shortbread. I took this recipe out of an old fashioned baking book my grandmother gave to me. The shortbread and caramel was made from scrach and the chocolate on the top was melted dairy milk. This was the first time I had made caramel, and the only thing I was sure of was to keep stirring and watch it like a hawk. It really wasn't as difficult as it looks. One thing I will say is not to let it set too hard in the fridge as it was a nightmare to cut into bite size pieces. I think my caramel could do with some more work, maybe slightly less too but on the whole this was a great success and I received lots of compliments. I was even given orders to make it again as we have a great friend coming to stay near Easter time and she was most upset to have missed it first time round.

A new book, a new recipe

As an early Christmas present, a lovely person gave me the Hummingbird Bakery Baking book, which I may say is amazing! So before Christmas when work had finished and everyone was doing their last minute shopping, a friend came over and we trialled one of the recipes. Now I know these look like simple buns, however they are apple pie cupcakes and very nice they were too. It was a simple recipe. We made a basic cupcake mix and in another pan the filling of an apple crumble, using Granny Smith apples, butter, sugar and cinnamon. To make these cupcakes, we half filled the cases with cake mix and topped them up with the apple mix. As the apple mix was heavier, it sank into the mixture and they took the same amount of time in the oven as simple cupcakes. We sampled a couple when they were fresh out of the oven and warm, and they were delicious. For a desert at a dinner party, I recommend these, warm, with cold vanilla ice cream, yum! We decorated them with simple water icing and topped them off with Christmas decorations, ginger men, red and green crystals, stars and gold glitter and good old fashioned silver balls.

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 
I think I am most proud of this cake, I looked at loads of different designs other people had done but in the end I decided to freestyle and let my creativity produce the design. I first covered the fruit cake with marzipan and white regal icing. I then made up some icing sugar with water to a thick consistency to use as the glue. I rolled out green regal icing until it was about the same thickness as a one pound coin. I cut out mini holly leaves and then rolled small balls of the red regal icing. I stuck these onto the cake using the icing 'glue'. The bow puzzled me for a while but in the end I cut out two long strips of rolled out red icing, again about the same thickness as a pound coin, and stuck this onto the cake using the glue so it was asymmetrical. I then cut five more strips of red, two with the triangular end which I stuck onto the red icing already on the cake, I folded another strip to make the curl of the strip and then repeated with the other side and then covered the join line with the last smallest strip. Et voila! 

Most people didn't believe I had done the cake myself, and my grandmother thought I had bout the cake so didn't look to impressed at first. Until I explained it was own masterpiece. I have to say, it was the biggest compliment! 

I hope you all had a fabulous festive season and haven't got too many of the January blues!

Rudolph the Red Nose Fridge Cake?!

Rudolph the Red Nose chocolate Reindeer! So as I was hosting a dinner party for a bunch of young professionals, where Port was the main theme, I thought I would reduce the sophistication with a few Christmas treats. I made a simple tiffin or fridge cake using chocolate, butter, golden syrup, twix bars and raisins and decorated them using candy and pretzels. They went down a treat at the dinner party and there we not many left the next day. It just goes to show, when chocolate is offered, it doesn't matter how old you are or what the treat looks like for it to prove popular!

The best sort of men...

Going back to my childhood and making gingerbread men in time for Christmas. Again, I had never made these little ginger treats before but I had great fun decorating them, and they were appreciated by all the family.

Banana Bread Inspired by Breakfast

After trying banana bread whilst waiting to pay for breakfast one morning, I knew I had to give it a try. This was my first attempt at making a sweet bread, and it looked pretty good! It didn't taste quite the same as the one I had sampled in the shop but the person I had been pestered by for weeks to make it thought it was pretty yummy! The bread itself was really moist and there was a strong taste of banana, so a great success.I