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:

More decorated Lemon Cupcakes

September is a busy month for me baking wise - everyone seems to have their birthdays this month! Next up was my lovely friend Jenny's birthday...

A group of us went out to a local Tapas restaurant to celebrate...the food was AMAZING...the service was SLOW apparently due to them being short staffed. It was a shame this had to happen on Jenny's birthday but everyone seemed to enjoy the food and the company and Jenny soon perked up when we went to a bar afterwards and realised it was cheap drinks for freshers week...we made the most of this!

I made the same recipe for Jenny's cupcakes as I did for my Mum's but decorated them with little baby blue and pink butterflies and large white shimmery butterflies. I originally got the idea from Katiecakes' blog...don't they look cute? But decided to jazz them up a little by adding extra shimmer, little metallic balls, large white butterflies and a dusting of glitter.

Decorated Lemon Cupcakes

Its my Mum's birthday on Monday and since getting into baking a few years ago I always bake her something. This year I thought I'd make her her favourite..lemon cupcakes which I decorated with pretty purple, gold and white sugar flowers.

My parents came up for the day yesterday. Originally myself and the boyfriend were going to go and visit them for a long weekend buuutttt I ended up treating myself to a car!! Yep I couldn't cope with the Honda any longer..I tried for three horrendous months to get to grips with it but I just didnt feel happy driving it..so I sold it and have now bought a lovely brand new shiny white c1...I love it! The car garage was quite a way from our house so my parents offered to come to see us and to drop us off at the car garage to pick the new car up...very helpful indeed! Well I survived the drive back home...it was nerve wracking driving a brand new car down the motor way for the first time..I'd been worrying all week! But I've been out in it a couple of times since and am really enjoying driving it...hooray!

Anyway back to cupcakes! I normally use Rachel Allen's recipe for lemon cupcakes but as I was so impressed with the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Love Bakery book, I thought I would try their lemon cupcake recipe as well..I think the quantities are quite similar anyway. It produced lovely fluffy and moist cupcakes which I then decorated with the Rachel Allen recipe for lemon butter cream. I spent most of my evenings last week making all the little flowers and butterflies and had many occasions where I had to explain to people why my hands were bright purple in colour! I love the finished cakes though and think the purple works really well. My Mum was very impressed and insisted my Dad took lots of pics for her before she ate any!

Amazing Chocolate Cake

Back in June it was Father's Day and my Dad's Birthday. After making my Mum both birthday and Mothers day cakes I had been promising my Dad that I would bake him something too. Unfortunately, we were away on holiday for Father's Day and couldn't get the time off work to see him on his birthday. So a few weeks ago we decided we would visit for a long weekend..perfect opportunity to bake a cake for my Dad!

I've made this cake before for Karl's birthday and blogged about it then. It really is a gorgeously moist cake and tastes amazing with a bit of cream on the side! Its a Nigella recipe but I've changed the filling and topping to chocolate butter cream...I'm a tad obsessed with butter cream!

If you've read my past posts you'll know that I've just passed my driving test and am slowly getting used to driving on my own. A major major achievement was made on the trip to my parents - I drove the whole way there....3 whole hours on the motorway. It was scary and tiring but I felt so proud of myself for doing it. I still smile now when I think about it! For poor Karl it was rather traumatic - he not only had the job of helping me with driving on the motorway but also hanging onto the cake and a huuuge bunch of flowers that I had bought my Mum to say thanks for the car. The poor guy couldn't move an inch! Luckily the cake and the flowers got there in one piece and at about half ten we sat down to a big slab of cake and some cream each!

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!

Oreo Cupcakes...again!

This weekend has been an odd sort of weekend. Its one year since my gran died. I still miss her terribly and wanted to do something in memory of her. Going to the grave seemed awfully depressing so on friday I bought a huge box of her fave chocs and we drove up to Fairhaven Lake in Lytham (one of her fave places)and sat in the car (we wanted to go for a walk but it was raining!) and ate a huuuge amount of chocolate. It was a great way to remember her...just wished I could have shared the chocs with her.

Saturday, Karl disappeared off out to a stag do so I had the place to myself...I made sure I had stocked up on girly movies and plenty of food and snacks. I had a fab evening to myself eating yummy food.

Anyway..back to baking! I love all things oreo as you may or may not know and it appears so do the lads at karls work! As a sort of wedding present to the aforementioned stag I agreed I would make a batch of orea cupcakes...

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!