Friday 26 August 2011

Valentines Cupcakes?

Ok i'll just get straight to the point, these are the cupcakes i made earlier today. Vanilla sponge coloured pink althought its not very obvious in the picture:
















I made chocolate buttercream and piped it from the centre outwards to make it look like a rose, then sprinkled little heart sprinkles. I think they turned out pretty cute, here's the recipe for the buttercream:

100g butter/marg
150g icing sugar
50g cocoa powder

(This probably decorates about 10 cupcakes, also if you want the chocolate flavour stronger take some of the icing out and add more cocoa powder.)

Cinnamon, ginger biscuits and very tasty cupcakes :)



Our local shopping centre has just got a brand new pretzel stall, which has the nicest cinnamon pretzels EVER. So i decided to do something cinnamon based, cupcakes of course! I used a regular cake recipe adding cinnamon at the end ( recipe below ) but decided that it could use some different flavours, and as i'd been to IKEA recently and bought "ginger thins" i decided to use them in the recipe as well. This is how they looked not decorated:

Sorry about the photo quality, my camera'snot very good
It wasn't me who ate it, i promise
 Recipe - makes 12

4 ounces sugar
4 ounces marg
4 ouncesself raising flour
2 medium eggs
Teaspoon of vanilla flavouring (optional)
2 tablespoons of cinnamon (add more or less if you want)
4 ginger biscuits
Icing sugar
Water

1./ Pre-heat the oven to 180°c (fan).
2./ Cream the butter and sugar together with a electric whisk until light and fluffy.
3./  Add 1 egg and a tablespoon of the flour(to stop the egg from curdling)then whisk until combined. Add the other egg and another tablespoon of the flour and whisk until combined.
 4./Add the remaining flour and whisk in with the cinnamon.
5./Put 3 of the biscuits in a sandwich bag and hit with a rolling pin untilbroken into small pieces and crumbs.Mix these in the cake mixture then put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe into cupcake cases which have been placed into a muffin tray.
6./ Smooth the mixture in the bun cases and put the remaining biscuit in a sandwich bag and hit until it is fine crumbs.
7./Sprinkle this over the mixture but don't mix in.
 8./Place the cupcakes in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Don't open the oven before 10 minutes otherwise your cupcakes will sink in the middle.To check if they are done, put a skewer in the middle of the cupcake, if it comes out clean they are done.
9./Take out of the oven and place on a coolling rack or bread board to cool before decorating.
10./ When cool, place the icing sugar in bowl and keep adding teaspoons of water until the right consistency.
11./ Dribble the icing over the cupcakes.

This is the cupcakes after they have been decorated :
Abbie x

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Paramore Riot and My Chemical Romance 15th Birthday cake

So as a birthday present for one of my best friends i decided to make a cake. The day before we were meeting up.Yes, stupid I know. As he is completely OBSESSED with Paramore and my chemical romance i thought i would base the cake on that. Nothing too complicated, just a plain cake covered with fondant icing. I also cut up rectangle and square pieces of fondant and painted on different band album covers and the band name font thing. I wrote 'Paramore'with no problem, until i knocked the red food colouring bottle all over it and it ended up looking terrible. Yet another stupid mistake. Anyway it was midnight already so i finished the next day. This is how it turned out:

















A bit messy but still pretty good i think for my first properly decorated cake.
By the way, i am a bit obsessed with cupcakes so there will probably be many on this blog.

Abbie x

First Post!!

Ok, i thought i'd introduce myself before doing a 'real post' to do with baking.I'm called Abbie, as you have probably gathered from the name, i'm 15 and live in the UK. I love to bake and read baking blogs so i thought why not make my own? Well now i have, so i hope you enjoy!

Abbie x