Currently Craving Cupcakes...

I've been rather busy of late, what with final year exams, preparing for my trips to Gambia and Poland and sorting out the house ready for the big move back down South... and all this stress is driving me to cupcakes! All I'm craving right now is a pretty little cake smothered in butter icing! I've recently started up a Tumblr blog and there are so many inspiring little blogs out there filled to the brim with gorgeous, and tempting photos. If you're on Tumblr please drop by and say hello! But in the meantime I thought I'd share some of the lovely cupcakes I came across on Tumblr...

(sources: via Tumblr)

What's New Cupcake?

Well Lovely people! I hope you've had a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas?? I've had a wonderful Christmas full of family, fun board games and food! I hope you've all been spoiled by Santa as well! I've been lucky enough to got some great gifts from my generous family and friends :) I shall no doubt be blogging about some of my many Christmas presents over the next few weeks, but to start it all off, I'm going to tell you about a brilliant book my little sister bought me... What's New Cupcake?

There are some gorgeous cupcake recipes, and some incredibly imaginative ideas for frosting and decoration... I love this cupcake Ring Bling! and here are some more of my favourite cupcakes from the book... (excuse the rubbish photos!)

Fur Ball and String Monster Cupcake

Karaoke Cupcakes

Artist's Palette Cupcakes

Jungle Fever Cupcakes

An Apple A Day Cupcakes

Rubber Ducky Cupcakes

Sand Castle Cupcakes

Pantry Pets Cockroach Cupcakes

Festive Stuffed Turkey Cupcakes

I can't wait to get stuck in and start baking! I'm feeling inspired by this wonderful book, and all that remains is for me to get back to Leeds, buy some ingredients and get baking!

Carrot, Orange and Walnut cupcakes!

I had the day off work so I decided to bake a few cupcakes! I absolutely adore carrot cake but I have never actually ventured to make it myself, so I thought I's take the plunge and make some carrot, orange and walnut cupcakes... (I also bought ingredients to make strawberries and cream layered cupcakes, but that's for another day and another blog!)

Ingredients

2 large eggs

175g golden caster sugar

150g sunflower oil

200g sifted self-raising flour

3 tsp mixed spice

2 carrots, coarsely grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

finely grated zest of 2 oranges

2 handfuls of walnuts

100g soft cheese

icing sugar

Method

1. preheat the oven to 180 degrees, or gas mark 4. Get your cake cases all ready to go: the recipe makes 12 large muffins or 24 small cupcakes.

2. Beat together the eggs, sugar and oil until they are light and fluffy. It's best to use an electric whisk, but to beef up your biceps then beat by hand.

3. Gently fold in the flour, carrot, spices, vanilla extract, walnuts and half the orange zest until it is all thoroughly combined.

4. distribute the cake mix into the cake cases, place in the oven for 20-25 mins until well-risen and golden. Put the cakes on a cooling rack for 10-15 mins before icing...

Icing

1. Place the 100g of soft cheese into a bowl and add icing sugar until it is the desired thickness and sweetness.

2. Use the remaining orange zest to garnish your cupcakes

And finally.... ENJOY! If you make them let me know how they go, you can also change the recipe adding raisins, sultanas, or chopped nuts.

The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful!

I bought two beautiful new glass cake stands in the sale, only £4 for each tier! So I thought it only right that I bake some new cupcakes to adorn my new cake stand! The first batch I made were Peanut Butter Cupcakes with peanut butter icing:


INGREDIENTS

55g butter
225g soft light brown sugar
115g crunchy peanut butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
225g plain white flour
2tsp baking powder
100ml milk

(frosting)

100g full-fat soft cream cheese
50g peanut butter
25g butter
225g icing sugar

I have also made some Chocolate Orange Cupcakes:

85g butter, softened
85g caster sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
85g self-raising white flour
50g chocolate chips
grated rind and juice of 1 small orange

(Topping)

1 orange
55g caster sugar
15g toasted flaked almonds

However.... something went profoundly wrong somewhere in the baking process... and they sunk... a lot! I think I was probably daydreaming whilst mixing the ingredients and didnt measure them out properly. The one good thing is that they tasted amazing, zesty and sweet, but they were very tricky to eat as they were about 0.5 millimetres thick. Hehe... I think I might have to try them out again tomorrow.