Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges: Cherry Cake

 Lately, I haven´t had time for blogging nor for baking and cooking, as I´ve been really busy with other projects.

It´s also been a long time since the Bakers&Friends met up so after nearly one and a half years we finally got round to getting together to catch up over lunch and as is the norm, we all brought savoury and also some sweet snacks. I had some glace cherries that needed using, as I didn´t get round to making a Christmas cake last year, so decided to do a Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge and make  Mary Berry´s cherry cake. which I wanted to try. Also it was the first time I used my Bundt mould too!!

The bake is not a difficult one to do if you follow the recipe closely despite it being a technical challenge although without the recipe I´d probably be lost. I didn´t alter anything and the result is a lovely spongy cake. Although glace cherries are not my favourite, I really liked this cake and it was a hit with my Spanish Bakers & Friends so I´ll definitely be making it again although it can be quite hard to find glace cherries in Spanish supermarkets!!

The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Bakewell Tart

OMG, I started doing this blog post about 2 months ago at least and didn´t get any further with it!! Things have been really hectic what with birthday parties, ballet shows, parent´s visits etc, not to mention a 10 mnth old screaming baby that is spending more and more time awake and is not happy to be sat anywhere and is constantly disgruntled....hence making it difficult to do anything, let alone blog or even bake and/or cook!!! By the time, I finally get the kids off to bed I´m not so far behind myself as I am constantly knackered!!!

So going to keep this blog post really short but sweet...kind of like me,really....hehehe!!!As I love both Cherry Bakewells and Almond Slices, both of which you can find the recipes on my blog if you click on the links, and as I´ve never actually made a Bakewell Tart before, I decided to make it for this "month´s" Great British Bakeoff Technical Challenge. I wasn´t worried about this bake as I´ve already mentioned I´ve made both Cherry Bakewell tarts and Almond slices which are very similiar and in my opinion fairly easy bakes. I can imagine that they could be more difficult if you didn´t have a recipe to follow though. The hardest part is the shortcrust pastry as it got very sticky and broke quite a lot...I think the best tip I can give you here is to roll it out on top of clingfilm and then place another layer of clingfilm on top of the pastry so it´s between the rolling pin. However, this Mary Berry recipe(click on the link for the recipe) does not disappoint and it is worth the effort as it´s delicious...I´ll definitely be making this again!!As I made it quite awhile ago, I don´t remember if there were any other issues or difficulties in making this bake.

The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Sachertorte

It´s been awhile since I did a Great British Bake Off technical challenge so it was about high time I did do one and with my husband´s Saint´s day and my birthday looming up, it was the perfect excuse to make this Sachertorte, particularly as my husband is somewhat of a chocoholic!

I have made a Sachertorte once before to a German recipe I´ve got so I wasn´t too fazed with this particular technical challenge as it is much easier than it actually appears. The thing I dreaded the most was piping the word Sacher across the cake as my piping skills are somewhat lacking to say the least!

Mary Berry´s Sachertorte recipe is easy to follow and results in a delicious and professional looking cake,which is lovely and moist.The cake is fairly straightforward to make. Things you have to watch out for is overmixing the flour,I think I did this but I´m not sure how as when I cut into the cake it had various air bubbles in the sponge which has never happened to me before with any cake.Also,the recipe tells you to whisk the egg whites till stiff but not dry so I was a little uncertain as to what this meant and whether I whipped the egg whites to the correct stiffness!

I practiced piping the word "Sacher" a couple of times onto greaseproof baking paper but a plastic wallet would be ideal too before finally piping it onto the cake when I was happy with it. As you can see, it´s not 100% perfect but I was quite pleased with the end result as it´s ain´t half bad for an amateur baker like myself!

Cooking Spain Region by Region: Andalucia: Soplillos: Almond Meringues

Originally, I was only going to publish two main dish recipes and one sweet recipe but in the end I thought what the heck, I love desserts and cake..why not do two. While looking into typical Andalusian dishes, I came across this cake or biscuit, which I fancied making as it like a cross between a meringue and a macaron and it does not disappoint.It´s light and airy texture makes you want to go back for more.

. When I said I was going to make soplillos,people looked at me and said "eh?" as they´d never heard of them before.However, they were very successful...everyone who tried them liked them and it is hard to resist eating more than only one. My daughter, who doesn´t always try all the cakes and desserts I make, even ate 4 in one day! They are also fairly simple and quick to make. So, here goes with the last but not least, final recipe for Andalusia and then it´s on to the next region, Aragon. Any suggestions of what I should make?Anyway onto the recipe, which is adapted from a book called something like La Cocina de Andalucia:

Ingredients (makes about 32-35)
150g ground almonds
200g sugar
3 egg whites
Juice and rind of one lemon
A pinch of vanilla sugar

Method:
1. Beat the egg whites while gradually adding the sugar, till it forms stiff peaks or so that when bowl is turned upside down over your head,none falls out.

2.Add the lemon juice and peel, almonds and vanilla sugar and fold them into the meringue carefully, taking care not to knock any of the air out. The mixture will have a very grainy appearance.

3. Line a baking sheet with baking paper and fill a piping bag, fitted with the Wilton 1M nozzle, with the meringue mixture and pipe out evenly sized meringues. Leave enough space between each meringue as they spread in the oven and also don´t pipe them too big as they lose their shape.

4. Place in a preheated oven at 140º C and bake for 25 minutes.

5.Leave to cool..don´t try to take them off the baking paper too soon otherwise they may stick to the paper a little.

Malteasers cake

My husband´s birthday was looming and I was searching for a cake that I could make him as he´s not keen on fondant or buttercream (I didn´t realise at first that this cake also has buttercream!!) so I usually make him a chocolate cake.Not really an easy feat to decorate as his birthday falls in July and it´s so hot that everything melts!! I had been wanting to make this cake ever since I first saw it on a fellow blogger´s blog, Baking Cakes Galore, so now was the perfect excuse.I want to dedicate this recipe to Rosie from Baking Cakes Galore as she was very inspiring and also very encouraging in the early days of this blog.

I cannot take the credit for this recipe because as mentioned,I saw the recipe on Baking Cakes Galore and pretty much followed it to the letter.Two things to note when making this recipe, I´d never realized before how difficult it is to find and buy Malteasers where I live. My husband had to buy me two packets from a vending machine at the university because I couldn´t find them in any of the shops. Plus he could only get white whereas I had wanted to alternate white and milk chocolate Malteasers on top. Also, because it has been so hot lately I was worried about the Malteasers and the buttercream melting so put the cake in the fridge, which probably dried it out a little!On the whole though this cake was delicious and I shall be making it again in the future!

As I said, I hardly changed anything in the recipe although I couldn´t really taste the Horlicks in the cake itself so next time I might add extra Horlicks. Horlicks is a malted milk drink sold in the UK but Ovaltine is also very similar...unfortunately I don´t think there is a similar alternative in Spain! I´d be grateful to any Spanish readers to let me know if there is something similar. You can probably buy it online or in British food shops in Madrid or Barcelona or along the coast!!The recipe also states two 37g bags of Malteasers, I only used one of the bags as often I tend to think that less is more!

Peppa Pig cake & some recent bakes

 
I have been on a mad baking roll recently and I haven´t had time to blog about them,particularly as time is very restricted these days. It was my daughter´s second birthday not long ago and as she is obssessed with Peppa Pig,I decided to make her a Peppa Pig cake,using the buttercream transfer technique I learned on my buttercream course with Fabricando Delicias.I hadn´t practiced or used this technique since and as it was about two or three years ago my memory of how to do it was a little bit rusty, so I had to refresh it by watching some great tutorials I found on YouTube.

I made the cake the day before her "party" and then set to decorating it the day of the party,covering it with fondant, mixing the buttercream and the colours etc.I had a couple of issues covering the cake with the fondant,due to the fondant cracking and tearing.I think this was mainly due to it being a pretty thick cake! I then set to on doing the Peppa Pig figure and piping it all in with a star tip nozzle. All in all,the decorating part took me ages, all morning practically but I was very pleased with the result, even though it wasn´t completely perfect.The worst thing was we had to cancel the party as my daughter had a fever and wasn´t very well and then I started feeling ill later that night so hardly anyone got to see all my hard work before it got cut into!!!

Here are some other recent bakes that I´ve made and am very proud of.
My first red velvet cupcakes with fondant butterflies, a hot milk sponge  cake for my friend´s daughter´s 1st birthday and white chocolate cupcakes with buttercream and embossed fondant hearts.
Hopefully, you can see that I am learning lots of new techniques and improving my cake decorating skills and I´ll try and share these as and when I have the time.

Simple and Quick Garden Insect Cake

 I offered to make my friend´s daughter a birthday cake but didn´t want to make a cake that would take too long or be too complicated to make, especially the decorating part,seeing as I have relatively little time to bake.Also the lack of fondant etc played a fundamental part in my idea for this cake.

I chose to make Delia Smith´s All-in-One Sponge (this is more or less the recipe I used minus the butter icing), which I flavoured with lemon rind and juice and then filled the cake with raspberry jam and fresh whipped cream. I then made a Lime Velvet Frosting and had a slight disaster,which I managed to rectify and coloured it a mint green colour to represent the grass. I iced the cake with a spatula and tried to get it as smooth as possible. I blasted about 5 Oreo cookies in a food processor for a couple of seconds till they were crushed and looked like "soil". I then sprinkled the "soil" over half the cake,then placed some worm sweets in the soil and some chocolate ladybirds on the grass and there you have it,a very simple and quick birthday cake that looks pretty.

Valentine´s Cupcake Course with La Fábrica & Valen Cupcakes

 Cupcakes are really gaining in popularity here in Spain and now it is possible to participate in cupcake courses even in Ciudad Real.The most recent cupcake course which I took part in, was held in conjunction with La Fábrica, a company which holds various workshops for all manners of crafts and Valen Cupcakes, a self-taught cake decorater, with the topic of Valentine´s Day.

The course started at 11pm and finished at 2pm and was held in La Fábrica. There were about  6 or 7 of us so it was nice to meet other cake fanatics.The course was very professional. Valen,the teacher gave us lots of information and tips about the materials needed, for example the different paper cases, measuring cups and spoons, piping bags and different nozzles, colouring gels, essences available etc. He made some buttercream, which he flavoured with sweet or marshmellow essence and gave us each some buttercream and we coloured our buttercreams various colours with toothpicks.He also gave each of us an icing bag and various nozzles and showed us how  to pipe a rose swirl,stars, leaves and even a rose, depending on which nozzle you used!

We were then let loose to decorate four cupcakes as we wished and unleash our creativity.My mind went blank. First of all, I used my peach buttercream to pipe little swirls. I found that sometimes it wasn´t very neat and was a bit blobby and a bit gappy (which Valen explained was because I was lifting the piping bag too high) so I sprinkled some gold balls over it to try and hide the gaps!!I then had two goes trying to do a rose swirl,one with pink buttercream and the other with white. I was pretty pleased with the end result but wished they were a little neater or more perfect. I topped the pink rose swirl with heart sprinkles and some red edible glitter although I was a bit heavy-handed with it!!Then I piped orange stars around the white swirl and topped it with a single red heart. I also tried my hand at a rose but couldn´t start it off so Valen showed me how to start it off and then I finished off piping the rose. It was not the best rose but for a first attempt,I was quite pleased with it, I then hurriedly piped some green leaves and some swirls in between the leaves. So all in all I was happy with my efforts although I´d have liked a little more time to do the decorating and try and make them neater as I ended up rushing the rose!One girl had not done any decorating before and her cupcakes were much better decorated than mine!!!I really need to practice my piping skills!!

We were given a little booklet with the cupcake and buttercream recipes at the end of the course and a good time was had by all. The course cost 25 euros so was definitely reasonable and well worth the money. I look forward to the next one and would thoroughly reccommend it!

Under the Sea Cupcake Course with La Dulce Ambar

 At the end of November,I took part in a cupcake course given by La Dulce Ambar here in Ciudad Real....yes,I´ve only just got round to blogging about my experience. It was held in a house in the country,en route to Carrión de Calatrava, the worst thing about this was the fact that it was very cold in the house (and I´m a real frigolerá!!) and despite the fire, my feet were freezing the whole time.Also,because of the fire it was pretty smoky and my clothes and hair really smelt of smoke afterwards.

There were four of us on the cupcake course and everyone was really friendly.It´s great to meet other people who have the same interests as you and to make new friends. La Dulce Ambar aka María was very informative and helpful and  gave us lots of useful hints and tips. She showed us how to make fondant from scratch although I doubt I´ll be doing this very often, due to the lack of time I have to bake and decorate cakes.I´ll probably stick to bought readymade fondant or sugarpaste.
                                       
 She then showed us how to colour fondant. I coloured mine a light purple colour as purple is my favourite colour and it seemed fitting for an octopus.She then showed us how to form the octopus´s head by making a teardrop,elongated shape and then using sugarcraft tools how to shape the mouth and make two tiny nostrils and impressions where the eyes were going to be. We then got two balls of white fondant which we flattened and stuck on to the head, then did the same with two black balls and then an arch shape in blue for the iris of the eye. I did my quite small as I prefer it to look small and delicate although the smaller the fondant you are working with,the tricker it is to work with and handle. A lot of patience is definitely needed in these cases as it can easily break!
We then rolled out 8 even strips of fondant and bent them to form the octopus´s legs, then let them dry before assembling the octopus on top of the cupcake. It probably took us about 1hour at least just to make the octopus but it looked pretty impressive when it was finished so was well worth it! I nicknamed him Ollie the Octopus!                  

We were then shown how to make various buttercream flavours including cream cheese,lemon and Nutella or Nocilla buttercreams.We then turned to piping,not my best skill and one which definitely needs honing. I can´t remember what nozzle we used but I think it was supposed to turn out looking like waves but mine was  more like frills or ruffles:
   We then had a go at piping the cream cheese buttercream.The course lasted about 41/2 hours, from 10-2.30pm and time was fast running out,plus I had to dash as had booked to eat at La Cabina for my birthday. I had to rush putting my octopus together and then María cut a fondant fish and a starfish out to decorate my other cupcakes with but it was great fun and I learnt a lot. We were also presented with a very professional-looking booklet with the fondant, buttercream and cupcake recipes so it was definitely worth the time and money. I look forward to taking part in more of La Dulce Ambar´s cupcake decorating courses!

My third Christmas Cake

 Life with a toddler is certainly hectic-I hardly have time to cook or bake,let alone blog. I think I may be starting to sound like a broken record though!! I had to make this year´s Christmas Cake while my mum was visiting so she could look after Chloe while I got on with the cake. I decided to try out this Delia Smith Christmas Cake recipe this year, modifying it slightly as I couldn´t get any currants so added more of the other dried fruits plus apricots.


I thought I had dried the cake out a little but over the next couple of weeks until Christmas, it got a liberal soaking in brandy. I didn´t get round to decorating it until Christmas Eve,when we were at my parents´house and my mum could once again take care of Chloe, so I could finish off the cake! The day before Christmas Eve I marzipanned the cake using Dr. Oekter´s ready-to-roll marzipan-no time to make it from scratch just at the moment!- and apricot jam to stick it on.

                                                   
 After leaving it to dry overnight,the following day I made the royal icing and iced the cake, as smoothly as possible! I then cut out some fondant stars with the leftover fondant from my cupcake course and some biscuit cutters and stuck them on the top with a little bit of water.I then decorated the stars and the cake with silver balls. I also stuck a pretty Christmassy ribbon around the cake (I think I added the ribbon directly after icing the cake before adding the stars and silver balls). I think it´s my prettiest Christmas Cake yet and am pleased with the result. i just wish I had more time to practice and make more elaborately decorated cakes!
                                                     
As for the taste of the cake itself, it was a little dry at the ends (my fault or that of my oven!) but lovely and moist in the middle, fruity but not too heavy! I have to say that I think I enjoyed last year´s cake more so I´ll be sticking to that recipe in the future.

Stars & Moon Cupcakes

December has been a hectic month, what with preparations for Christmas etc,leaving me with little or no time to blog or even to make mince pies and my Christmas cake!!
I just about managed to squeeze in these cupcakes,which I made for a friend´s little boy´s first birthday. The cupcake was a raspberry jammy cupcake, a recipe taken from Hannah Miles´s Big Book of Cakes and Biscuits, with a chocolate buttercream which I found a little too sweet, maybe owing to having run out of Tate and Lyle icing sugar and having to buy a different brand that was actually flavoured with vanilla and not noticing till it was too late! I then coloured some left-over fondant from my cupcake course(this is an upcoming post!) yellow and using my star and moon biscuit cutters,cut out the fondant shapes and placed them on top of the cupcakes and ta-da!!! star and moon cupcakes....made fairly quickly and easily!

Halloween Eyeball cupcakes

 Once again rather behind on my posts!!I love Halloween and this year was even more special as it was the first year that I could celebrate it with Chloe! I can´t wait till she´s a bit older to hold a Halloween party for her and her friends!This year though we celebrated Halloween in a pretty mudane kind of way. For starters, I had to work till 9pm so there was no trick-or-treating but I think she´s still a bit young for that anyway. There was a Halloween part at her nursery school,which she dressed up for...we managed to find a cute little witch´s costume.

The day after Halloween (All Saint´s ) is a bank holiday in Spain so I decided to whip up Annabel Karmel´s Halloween Eyeball Cupcakes although instead of the vanilla, I used lemon rind to give them a nice lemony flavour. As I didn´t have much icing sugar, I made some glace icing,half of which I coloured green using yellow and blue liquid food colouring. I then used assorted sweets for the eyeballs and to make the faces. Unfortunately,they don´t look quite as good as the photos pictured on the recipe webpage but nevertheless these are easy to bake and great fun to make and decorate with your kids. I tried to involve Chloe by trying to let her help me mix the green icing but all she wanted to do was to try and eat it and then wandered off to find her daddy!!Maybe I have to wait till she´s a little older to try and do some baking/cooking with her. I´m looking forward to when we can bake/cook together!

Best Ever Carrot Cake

Since starting back at work after the summer hols, I´ve hardly had time to cook,let alone bake or blog, particularly since Chloe is going through a rather clingy phase and it´s hard to get anything done. I made this carrot cake the week before I went back to work and haven´t got round to blogging it until now or baking much since!! So, without further ado and because time is of the essence, here is the recipe I used. It´s adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book and if I remember correctly I used half of the recipe to make a smaller cake(which is the recipe I´ll be giving you!) I had a lot to live up to as both my mum´s and my aunt´s carrot cake are delicious and they use different recipes to me....but this recipe was just as good as theirs!!!

Ingredients:
2 eggs,beaten
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 cups of finely grated carrot
1/3 cup of sunflower oil

For the cream cheese icing:
125g Philadelphia cream cheese or similar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup of butter at room temperature(softened)
2 1/2 -3 cups of icing sugar

Method:
1.Grease and flour a round cake tin of about 20cm and line with greaseproof paper.
2.Preheat oven to 180ºC.
3. Mix flour,sugar,baking powder,cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda together.
4. Mix eggs,carrots and oil together and then add to dry ingredients.
5.Pour cake batter into cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean.
6.While baking prepare the cream cheese icing. Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Then add icing sugar gradually mixing well after each addition until icing has spreadable consistency.
7. Leave the cake to cool for 10 mins.
8.When cool ice the top with the cream cheese icing as smoothly as possible.

There are various ways in which you could decorate this cake. You could sprinkle chopped up or whole pecans or walnuts on the top, grate some carrot on the top or even make some fondant or buttercream carrots(I´m going to have a go at this in the future!). I chose to do a simple circular line pattern using a fork as you can see in the top photo!

Apple & Pecan Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glace Icing

I made this cake for my husband´s birthday even though it´s not a very birthdayish looking cake but he doesn´t really like buttercream or fondant and in this way, I can also practice my cake decorating skills with chocolate!

This cake is moist and not overly sweet so is great for those who haven´t got much of a sweet tooth. The recipe is taken from the book: Best Ever Chocolate Cakes & Slices by Konemann....however it´s not very 100 Mile!!Here´s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder,sifted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup oil (I used sunflower oil)
2 green apples, peeled and grated
1/3 cup of pecans,chopped

Method:
1.Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a 21x14x7cm loaf tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix flour, cocoa and sugar together, then add the combined eggs and oil and beat until ingredients are well mixed and there are no lumps and mixture has increased in volume.
3. Fold in pecans and grated apple.
4. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 mins or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

When cool, you can decorate the cake as desired. Instead of the decoration suggested in the recipe, I made a simple chocolate glace icing, using icing sugar, cocoa and water,which I made by guesstimation and iced the top of the cake with, then I decorated the cake with pecan nuts and Dr. Oetker´s Chocolate Hearts, which can be found in LeClerc.

Ladybird cake for my daughter´s first birthday & Annabel Karmel´s white and dark chocolate cupcakes

 I can´t believe my daughter has finally turned one!! The year has flown by and it´s been a busy but enriching one full of joy and happiness. My little baby is no longer a baby,now she´s a little girl! They grow up far too quickly in my opinion.

I was busy preparing her first birthday party,preparing and decorating the Annabel Karmel White & Dark Chocolate cupcakes and making and decorating her first birthday cake, a ladybird cake plus preparing two salads and other party food. Luckily, I had my parents´,my inlaws and my husband´s help but parties are definitely hard work....maybe next year we´ll have the party in a ball pool place so all I have to do is stick to making the cake!!!It also means that I´d actually get to spend more time with my daughter on her actual birthday!

I made the cupcakes on the Friday two days before the party and froze them,then took them out to defrost early on the morning of the party. I made the white chocolate buttercream and decorated them with red heart sprinkles and yellow and white star sprinkles.

The ladybird cake was a Hot Milk Sponge cake made the day before the party. I found this link about a ladybird cake, which helped me a lot. I covered the cake with red and black fondant and cut black fondant circles out for the ladybird´s spots using a bottletop (a great tip from the link I found)! Who says you need fancy equipment to decorate cakes? The leftover white fondant I had was rock hard but as I had a bit of white chocolate buttercream left I used that for the whites of the ladybird´s eyes but unfortunately it wasn´t quite as neat and round as I´d have liked and two more black fondant circles for the pupils. I was going to use pipe cleaners for the antennae but couldn´t find any so used the bendy part of two straws instead. I covered them in black fondant and then made two small balls for the feelers of the antennae. I was pretty pleased with the end result!

Lemon Curd Butterfly Cakes

I made these butterfly cakes a couple of weeks ago using my Quick & Easy Lemon Curd but have only just got round to blogging about them now. These are light and fluffy sponge cakes filled with tangy lemon curd, taken from Delia Smith´s Complete Cookery Course...Here´s a recipe for Delia´s butterfly cakes similar to the one I used, only the lemon curd is replaced with orange curd and just substitute the orange rind and orange juice in the recipe link for lemon rind & juice.

Butterfly cakes take me back to my childhood. I loved them and my Gran used to make them frequently but filled them the traditional way with jam and cream. Hmmmmmhhhh, delicious! They are so delicate and pretty too- they definitely suit their name!

Easter Biscuits 1

Blogging these days is having to take a bit of a back seat as I don´t seem to find the time to do it, much less visit other blogs! Take these Easter biscuits for instance, I made them about a week before Easter but I´m only just getting round to blogging about them now!! They were a recipe again taken from Hannah Miles' Big Book of Cakes & Cookies and contain sultanas and marzipan. As I didn´t have enough icing sugar to make royal icing, I coloured some fondant yellow and decorated the biscuits with that and some silver balls. As you can see, this is only a quick post...I´m hoping to blog about some butterfly cakes I made recently asap!!!

Mother´s Day Cake

With this Mother´s Day being one of the first I´ve spent with my Mum for a long time and seeing as I´ve never baked her a cake before, I thought I´d make her a Mother´s Day cake from Hannah Miles´ book The Big Book of Cakes and Cookies. However, I couldn´t find shelled pistachios and also all the pistachio´s I could find were salted, plus I wasn´t sure if I´d be able to find organic or free from pesticides roses so ended up making a sponge cake, which I filled with my Lemon Curd. I then made some lemon glace icing, which I iced the cake with (as smoothly as possible), then using some red fondant I had left over from my Valentine´s Day cupcakes, I used my heart plungers to cut out some red hearts which I stuck to the cake and I made a quick fondant rose based on what I had learnt on one of my cake decorating courses. I didn´t use cutters or anything for the rose and it was made in a bit of a rush but I don´t think it turned out that badly. It´s the thought that counts anyway! It tasted pretty yummy though although it was slightly overdone round the edges.....I think my oven thermostat has broken! That´s my excuse at least! Being a mum myself now,I´m finding it quite hard to keep up with my blog and visit other blogs and leave comments so my apologies for that but will try and visit them when I have more time!

Belated Valentine Heart Biscuits

I made these Valentine´s biscuits based on a Hannah Miles recipe last week but haven´t got round to posting about them till now. The biscuits were a plain biscuit recipe but were delicious and I decided to decorate them with royal icing in pink and white polka dots similar to the Christening biscuits and a design that appears in the Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits, only mine don´t look quite as pretty as those in the book.I also piped I heart U on some of the biscuits for variety and extra piping practice!!! I think my decorating skills are improving slowly but surely, just wish I were quicker! Unfortunately they´re not quite up to the level required to sell them professionally ; ( Also, most people that tried them found the royal icing too sweet,my husband and mother-in-law included, which meant I was the one who ended up eating the majority of the biscuits! I don´t think I´ll ever be able to set up my own cake business in Spain....they just seem to find fondant and buttercream etc too sweet!

White Chocolate Chip Cupcakes for Valentine´s Day

I´ve been dying to try out my Sugarcraft heart plungers from China,which I bought for Chloe´s Christening cake then never used, so with Valentine´s Day looming up, I thought it was the perfect opportunity! I also had some white chocolate chips from Asda(ordered and brought to me by my mum as you can´t get them here)so thought I´d try out the following White Chocolate Chip cupcakes based on a recipe from my cupcake calender.

I decorated the cupcakes with a simple & quick Glace icing, then coloured some fondant red and set to with the heart plungers,cutting out small,medium and larger hearts,which I stuck on overlapping one another.Once again,very simple but this was more about trying the plungers out etc and I was hoping it would be more striking than it actually turned out! All in all, I was very pleased with the plungers, they were very cheap but did take awhile to arrive, they are very easy to use.My one complaint is that they didn´t always cut the fondant hearts out completely(but then that could just be me!) but I found that if you held the plunger down for a few seconds,you got a neater cut.

Here´s the recipe for the white chocolate chip cupcakes:
Ingredients: (makes about 18 cupcakes)
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 cup caster (superfine)sugar
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup (about 100g) white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp bicarbonade of soda (baking soda)

Method
1.Preheat oven to 175ºc (350ºF) and place 18 cupcake cases (I used cases with red love hearts on to ooze more Valentine Day love) in a muffin tray.
2.Stir all cupcake ingredients together except the chocolate chips for 2-3mins.
3.Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Spoon mixture into cupcake cases and bake for 20mins until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.
5. Leave to cool and then decorate.