Ready, Steady, Bake!

As you may know from my post earlier in the week, this week was National Cupcake Week. And that meant I spent most of yesterday baking. I made two different batches of cupcakes, the first was banana split cupcakes which have gone in the freezer until Tuesday when I can take them out and decorate them in time for my Birthday! Yay!

The second lot were rocky road cupcakes which I've been saying I'm gonna make for ages but haven't managed to until now. The base was a chocolate cupcake, it was topped with caramel icing and finished with mini marshmallows, walnuts, raisins and chocolate syrup which I also made.

Chocolate Syrup is used quite a lot in America but is pretty difficult to get hold of here in England. When I was looking at recipes for these cupcakes yesterday loads of them used chocolate syrup so I had  look around at recipes and managed to figure out how to make it. It couldn't have been easier and didn't take longer the 5 minutes. It really finishes the cakes off, in looks and taste, it will keep for a couple of months in the fridge and can be used for all lots of the other things, a sauce on ice cream, chocolate milkshake when added to milk being some of them.
 

 

National Cupcake Week!

This week is National Cupcake Week, now in it's 3rd year, it celebarates all things cupcake! Take a look through my old posts to get some inspiration for your baking, there's chocolate get well cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, Easter cupcakes and vanilla cupcakes with creamcheese frosting.

I kicked off my celebarations for the week by finally getting around to buying the Hummingbird Bakery's cookbook and I'm planning some cakes to make later in the week so keep your eyes peeled, I'll soon be posting about them.

What are you waiting for? Get baking!

Bread

When I was on holiday last week, I watched the Great British Bake off. It got me thinking that the last time I made bread was about 5 years ago so, the first thing I made when I got home was bread. I found a book on bread, had a read and decides what it was I was going to make.

The first thing I made was a Stromboli style loaf. It had Mozzarella, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Spicy Salami and Basil. It had been demolished within 5 minutes of me taking it out of the oven- I think that’s a good sign-Of course I did I did get a picture first.

 The second thing I made was some ‘Panini All’Olio’. This is Italian bread that uses Extra Virgin Oil in the dough to give it a distinct flavour. They’re made in different shapes. The first (Shown back left and right in this picture), is tavalli, twisted spiral rolls, I think they look really good but I found it hard to get them to keep their shape. The second is the carciofi, this literally translates to artichokes, because they look like artichoke heads, This shape is created using scissors to snip cuts into them before baking. The final is filoncini (The central roll), named because of their shape’s likeness to fingers.

 

 

 The last thing I made (Or should I say attempted to make) was a basket. Again inspired by The Great British Bake Off, I had a go and making a basket. It didn’t go too badly considering it was my first attempt and I had nothing to go on except what I’d seen on TV the week before. It got a little stuck to the bowl and some of the joints weren’t great, but I’m pretty sure I know how to do it next time!

Beach Cake

My sister was clearing out her photos the other day and she found some pictures of a cake that I'd been looking for for ages and thought I'd lost!

I made it using two cakes, one for the sea and one for the beach, one chocolate and one Madeira.

This was probably the second properly iced cake I made, a good few years ago now. I was a beach theme for my grandma and it has to be one of my favourites although, looking back at it now my icing could have been a bit better!

More Cupcakes!

It was one of my friends' birthday's a couple of weeks ago and she wanted some cupcakes for her party so, naturally I was who she called for some help. I went round to her house and helped her make some cupcakes, and sad as it it I was pretty excited because she has a better oven than me!

Here's the results and I can safely say, they tasted great!