Very Early Mother's Day Cupcakes

Don't panic everyone...its a few more weeks till Mother's Day! I just have to be super prepared as my Mum lives a few hours from me so I won't get to see her on Mother's Day. I always make my Mum something for her birthday and for Mother's Day - she adores lemon cupcakes so I made a batch of these using the fab Love Bakery book and prettied them up with lots of sugar flowers.

I honestly didn't think this batch of cupcakes wanted to be made this time. I normally don't have any trouble making cupcakes but I guess I haven't made them in awhile so am a bit out of practice.

I was nervous all the way through mixing as the mixture didn't look like it normally did. Then I popped all the mixture into the cases only to realise I'd picked the wrong cases from my cupboard..these cases never seemed to have enough strength to them and always seemed to flop in the over...goodness knows why I hadn't thrown these cases away! So I ended up having to spoon all the mixture into new, better cases! Once in the oven they worked their magic and rose nicely and I happily got on with making my lemon butter cream. As I went to fetch my piping bag from its usual place I realised the crucial part of the coupler was missing which sent me into panic mode for the second time. Luckily after turning my kitchen cupboards upside down I found it and got on with decorating!

Here are the finished result...my Mum loved them and apparently after her journey back home last night sat down with a glass of wine and a cupcake..perfect!

Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

I had a day off last Friday so as Valentines Day was around the corner and Karl loved my attempt at sugar cookies so much the last time I made them, I thought I would give them another go.

Obviously for the theme of Valentine's Day I went for a heart shaped cookie. It did cross my mind before I started that a heart shape looks easier to ice than the butterfly shape I used last time (hooray!). To be honest though I ended up getting distracted and then I got a bit behind and I had plans in the evening so the whole day just felt a bit rushed! The outline was a bit easier to pipe (I still need alot more practice!) but I couldnt seem to get the consistancy of the royal icing quite right and on some cookies it just didnt flood right, plus I really wanted to spend alot more time decorating them but just didnt have the time..hey ho...they still look quite cute and Karl has eaten nearly all of them in 2 days so they can't have been that bad.

Still lots of room for improvement me thinks - I don't feel as though I have quite perfected the technique just yet! I had a trip to the cake shop on Saturday and bought myself a new piping nozzle which is alot thinner than the one I've been using and looks better made as well. Fingers crossed this will help...hmmm what shape cookie to try next?!!

Anyways..I hope you all have a fab Valentines Day whatever you've got planned! My lovely Karl is apparently cooking stir fry for my tea and we've bought a scrummy looking Gu dessert for afters (well I have to have a day off from baking sometimes!).

Oreo Brownies

Ever since I bought the Lorraine Pascale book, Baking Made Easy, I have been itching to make these Oreo Brownies. In all honesty I don't know why its taken me so long - you all know my obsession with Oreos! I remember watching Lorraine show how to make these in the tv series that went with the book and thinking what a genius combination!

So this weekend I finally got round to making them..why on earth did I not make these sooner?! The brownie recipe was gorgeously moist and super chocolatey and adding Oreos to the mix made them even better. If you don't have quite the same obsession as me for Oreos the recipe did make suggestions for other things that could be added, such as pecans. As I seem to have ended up with a cupboard full of Oreos (how did that happen?!) I think I can safely say I will be adding Oreos to mine for awhile.

I sent Karl off to work with the leftover brownies and apparently they were polished off pretty quickly. It seems the lads at his work also share my Oreo obsession!

To top it off..it made my day that when I tweeted to Lorraine Pascale on twitter that I'd made her brownies and how much I liked them, she tweeted back to say thanks!! It may have only been one word but it showed she'd taken the time to read my tweet and respond..hooray!

Iced Butterfly Cookies

I treated myself to a Peggy Porschen book with my birthday money 'Peggy's Favourite Cakes & Cookies'. I was so impressed with the cookies decorated with royal icing I couldn't wait to have a go myself.

The cookies in the book are absolutely beautiful and full instructions are given on how to make the cookies and then the different consistencies of icing needed to decorate them.

I've only ever used royal icing once before when decorating a large cake to put little dots all over it so that doesnt really count at all...so basically I was a complete novice! I actually thought I was pretty ok at piping since I pipe butter cream onto cupcakes allll the time. However, ask me to pipe an outline onto a cookie...the pressure is on and my hands are shaking like mad!

The recipe made a huuuge amount of cookies...think I had about 30 in the end...so plenty to practice on. Have a look at my piccies...I don't think they are a bad first attempt but definitely something I want to keep practicing. I sooo want them to look as perfect as they do in the book!!

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!