Vanilla Cupcakes with Fondant Icing

My thoughts are turning back to baking.  Apart from the greed factor – I LOVE cake – there is something very comforting and satisfying about baking. It’s a combination of the idea, combining the ingredients, the delicious aroma as it bakes, and the wonderful end result. I was torn between tweaking my brownie recipe and baking cupcakes.  The latter won.

Vanilla – or plain – cupcakes have their moments, and the recipe I found includes ground almonds in the ingredients, which just gives these lovely cakes their extra ooomf!  In fact, I prefer this version to any previous ones and it’s super-easy to make.

I might have mentioned before that I am an icing girl, and there are not many times I prefer a cake un-iced.  With this particular recipe I like to use a fondant icing, as it compliments rather than detracts from, the cake itself.  I confess that I buy my fondant icing, it is just so much easier to open a packet and roll it out. With the help of a stencil and some edible lustre in blue, pink and gold (of course, gold!!) I have the finished result.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you all a peaceful weekend 🙂

 

~ no words ~

Whisky Mac Cake

I haven’t baked for a while because the horrors of real life intervened. But in a desperate attempt to restore some sort of normality to my life, I have been going over all my recipes.  It has been tempting to rely on an old favourite.  A many times tried and trusted recipe.  But curiosity overcame me when I saw a recipe for a sticky ginger loaf……and I thought “how can I tweak that recipe….”

A whisky mac is a lovely warming gingery drink and so I thought I’d see how it translated into cake form.  I suspect, like the boozy banana bread recipe, that it will be subtle, but hopefully give the cake just a little something extra.

This recipe still needs tweaking (I can’t help myself, can I!). I want to swap the butter for oil, maybe add extra dates, and see how I go from there. In the meantime, it is a lovely gingery, slightly sticky cake. Mmmmm….breathe in deeply.

Just right for these “not quite yet summer” days.

Spring

Leaves, textures, variations, colours, sunshine. Beauty in the small things.

Chocolate peanut butter & caramel brownies

I’ve had a craving for chocolate, and recently saw a new recipe for chocolate brownies which contained ground almonds.  Of course, delicious as plain brownies are, a little bit of extra “embellishment” is always good!

Brownies are comforting, dense, slightly stodgy, and very adaptable, and whilst my favourite is a chocolate brownie (I have yet to try cheesecake-type brownies, I’m sure I’ll love them too….) I thought a bit of peanut butter (Reese’s Peanut Butter Minis) and caramel (Cadburys Caramel Nibbles) would add a bit more indulgence.

I followed the recipe (unusual for me, I know!) and threw the extras in just before putting the mixture in the oven.  I didn’t have the correct sized baking tin, and so ensued a lot of pulling out, testing, putting back in, re-setting the timer…..you get the picture!

But in the end I achieved my desired, dense, chocolately, slightly sticky, indulgent chocolate peanut butter and caramel brownies.

And the house smells deliciously chocolatey in the process – breathe….. 🙂

 

Beauty in the small things

A little bit of colour for your day 🙂