Back to Baking

As you all might have guessed, I haven't been doing alot of baking recently! The last time I baked was September and then after that I got a bit poorly - just my silly immune playing up. I was gutted I missed out on christmas baking - I had so many ideas for different cupcakes and wanted to make mince pies etc etc...roll on next year!!

I had Friday booked off work so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get back into baking. My friend Jenny has been going through a rough time and as I was going round on Friday night what better way to try and cheer someone up than with cake...perfect!

I went for something really simple to ease me back into baking - a vanilla layer cake. I know I've blogged about this before but as this was my first time back in the kitchen baking I thought I'd get it on my blog! I was paranoid the whole time the cake was in the oven hoping it would turn out ok and it did!! Hooray! Heres a pic to prove it:

Jammie Dodger Cupcakes

I felt like experimenting a bit this weekend with my cupcake baking and after excitedly noticing that mini jammie dodgers were on offer at the local supermarket I decided that Jammie Dodger Cupcakes were on the menu this weekend!

I used my favourite, fail safe vanilla cupcake recipe from the Love Bakery book (honestly, it works fantastically well every time!) and then hollowed out the centre of each cake with an apple corer. I then filled the centre with smooth raspberry jam. The cupcakes were topped with vanilla butter cream that was swirled with raspberry jam, a sprinkling of shortbread and a mini jammie dodger.

I sent Karl off to work with the majority of the cakes - I am desperately trying to lose a bit of weight since my all in' holiday to Crete so don't need the temptation (apparently they got a big thumbs up though!).

I did keep one for myself which I tucked into as my reward for visiting the dentist this afternoon. I feel like I achieved something this afternoon (not just visiting the dentist..yuck!) but I actually drove on my own to get there! This is a huge thing for me (I'm terribly nervous!) and apart from a kamikaze child riding her bike out infront of me and a mum with a car full of kids nearly going into the back of the car it all went rather smoothly.






Hope you guys all had a fab weekend!

Get together at ours

I have totally neglected this blog over the last few months *pulls sad face* but there has been a good reason! Over the last few months I have been trying my hardest to pass my driving test and finally at the end of May I finally did it! I had to put the baking on hold unfortunately whilst my life revolved purely around driving lessons! I passed on my 2nd attempt and I am SO glad its all over now...it really is the most nerve wracking thing to have to go through.

Anyway...hopefully I will get back into baking in a big way in the coming weeks/months. I feel like with my driving and then going on holiday I really haven't had much chance to even think about baking.

The only small amount of baking that I have done recently was a good few weeks ago when Karl and I decided we would have a small get together at our flat. I couldn't resist cooking up a batch of cupcakes! I made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla butter cream and decorated with my own sugar paste creations...check out the piccies below.







PS I finally treated myself to a new cam after the other one failed to focus on anything. These were the first pics I took with it..excuse the crappyness of them...my photography skills have much improved since these pics were taken!

Housewarming Party and Vanilla Cupcakes

This weekend just gone we attended a housewarming party. It was held by the lovely Amy from Miss Jones Talks Makeup in celebration of her moving into a gorgeous new home. Please have a look at her blog - its full of fab tips on make up and product reviews.

Well, no housewarming party is complete without a batch of cupcakes so I got baking and whipped up some vanilla cupcakes. They are decorated with baby pink vanilla butter cream, a sugar flower and white glitter. I love this little cutter...incase you didn't notice I also used it for the flowers on the Vanilla Layer Cake.

It is a recent purchase and although a tad on the pricy side was well worth it. I will be getting alot of use out of it. It came as a little set with a metal cutter and a mould to give the veining details. They had all sorts of different flowers but this is the petunia. I used white flower paste for these flowers and then used a pink dust to give them the colour and put a silver ball in the centre. Don't they just look so cute!

A good time was had by all at the party and the cupcakes seemed to go down well. Thanks Amy for a fab night!

Mother's Day Cake

I know its super early to be making a Mother's Day Cake but I don't live very close to my Mum so when she visited a few weekends ago I had to be super organised with a present and cake.

Back in September I made her a lemon layer cake out of the Primrose Bakery Cook book which she loved so this time I made the Vanilla Layer Cake for her.

She was very impressed with the recipe and said it was very moist and had a good flavour to it. It took her and my Dad a week to eat it and apparently even a week on it still tasted nice.

Sorry about the rubbish pics! I seem to be writing that alot recently on here..but I tend to always make my cakes the day that I need them so they are fresh but my time keeping is so crap that normally I only just finish the cake/s in time and am literally rushing out the door when I'm trying to take pictures.

Vanilla Cupcakes and Nelson's 2nd Birthday

When I got invited to Nelson the dogs 2nd birthday party my brain starting working overtime thinking of ideas for themed cupcakes to take along to the party. Of course the party was more of an excuse for everyone to get together, have a natter and eat cake than a birthday party but Nelson seemed to love all the attention from everyone!

After much pondering I decided to stick with a vanilla cupcake. I used the recipe from the Love Bakery book - I love this recipe! It is by far the best vanilla cupcake recipe I have tried! I bought a little doggy bone and a little doggy paw cutter for the sugar decorations and kept to a blue and white theme. The only slight problem I encountered was colouring the butter cream - I wanted it to match the blue of the paws and bows but it hadn't crossed my mind that butter cream is off white....I ended up with green butter cream..panic!! I added a tad more of the colour and it seemed to right itself but ended up being a slightly darker shade - no one seemed to mind though as they tucked in!

Sorry about the poor pictures - I was literally running out the door with my cake box when I realised I hadn't taken any pictures!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberry Icing and Chocolate Cupcakes

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentines Day to all my readers :) hope you all get lots of lovely treats and yummy chocs from your special someone.

I am not planning on doing much for Valentines Day this year. Last year as it was our first Valentines Day together we went all out on the presents...but this year we have just paid for our first holiday abroad together so are putting all of our money towards that instead..plus its our official 1 year anniversary next month so we have chosen to celebrate that instead.

We were going to go out for a romantic meal on saturday night to celebrate Valentines but in the end decided we were too poor to! We ended up making curry and naan breads at home and washing it all down with red wine. It was definitely the right decision to stay in...the food was luuurvely!

For a good few weeks I have been planning on making Valentines cupcakes. I couldn't make up my mind which sort to do so in the end I made two batches. The first was vanilla cupcakes topped with candy floss pink butter cream which was strawberry flavoured and then fondant red and pink hearts to decorate. The second batch was chocolate cupcakes with chocolate butter cream and a glittery pink sugar rose to decorate.

I was unsure how the strawberry flavoured butter cream would turn out..having never used flavourings before and only being able to get my hands on supermarket brand flavouring at the last minute, I was pleasantly surprised. The strawberry butter cream combined with the vanilla sponge made a nice change to just plain vanilla butter cream.

I felt a bit let down with my chocolate cupcakes...I have made the recipe before from the Primrose Bakery book and loved it but this time it just didnt turn out the same way as before and for some reason it seemed to spread side ways rather than rise and my cupcakes looked a bit of an odd shape.

Nevermind though... I think with the decorations they do look very cute!

Blueberry Burst Cupcakes

This is the first recipe I've made out of the Love Bakery cupcake book. This book is well worth a read for all you lovelys out there who like making cupcakes. The book is full of lots of fab recipes from the basic vanilla cupcake to more unusual flavours such as rhubarb and custard.

The sponge of these cakes is plain vanilla - I really liked this recipe for the sponge. It seemed to rise really well and was lovely and fluffy. I will definitely be using this recipe again when I want a batch of vanilla cupcakes.

I then used an apple corer to remove the centre of each cake and filled the cake with a spoonful of blueberry jam. I used St Dalfour's Wild Blueberry jam and it was definitely worth the extra pennies. The jam has a very high fruit content and is not sweetened with additional sugar but with fruit juice.

I then topped the cupcakes with a swirl of vanilla butter cream. The recipe called for cream cheese frosting but I'm always a bit against topping my cakes with this as they don't keep as well. I bought some new Wilton nozzles recently as I had got a little bored with using the same ones. I thought this one would make a nice alternative! I then popped a few blueberries on each cake.