Cupcakes - Susannah Blake

Mr Chris surprised me with a little gift... a cupcake recipe book by Susannah Blake. 

After working my way through some of the recipes it has definitely become one of my favourite books. The recipes are easy to follow and the results are scrummy.

Here are some of the ones I have tried so far....



 Banoffee
The cupcake version of my favourite dessert. These have banana and chunks of toffee in the sponge, then whipped cream, sliced banana and a drizzle of dulce de leche on top. They go down well!




Orange and Almond
I think these should have risen more but unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on one of the ingredients, potato flour, and as a substitute I used grounded potato flakes used for instant mash. They may not look impressive but they were still very tasty. 



Coffee and Hazelnut Praline
My first time making praline, which is actually a lot easier than I thought and fills the kitchen with a very nice aroma.

Rose Water
I didn't know what to expect from these as I hadn't come across Rose Water before. I thought they might taste like the sweets, Parma Violets (most people would think that's a bad thing as they taste a bit perfumey but I like them).

They were actually very similar to vanilla cupcakes with just a slight hint at the Rose Water flavour.

My Neighbour Totoro

I'm a big fan of the Studio Ghibli films and my favourite has to be 'My Neighbour Totoro'. They're not to everyone's taste as they can be a little "out there" so imagine my joy when Mr Chris also fell in love with Totoro and instantly went online to find me some Totoro friends. 

I've lost track of how many times we've watched the film but it seemed like the obvious choice of cake for Mr Chris' 25th birthday.

This was my first ever attempt at covering a cake with fondant and making fondant models, so although it has its flaws I am very pleased with the result.
I used a white ready to roll fondant and tried to colour it myself. After several hours of kneading it was eventually green, not the green I was hoping for but green enough. One frustrating hour later it was eventually on the cake.

Prior to making this cake You Tube tutorials led me in to a false sense of security that fondant icing is easy peasey. Despite the amount of icing sugar I threw down my fondant didn't want to leave the kitchen surface, and the times it did I'd roll it too thin and it would tear. Nevertheless, I am persistent so I got there in the end.

As for the modelling, I seemed to be a natural at this which I can only assume is thanks to my child hood days playing with plasticine, and I guess Totoro's aren't particularly tricky.




Mr Chris loved it, and I think our friends approved too. I'm also very pleased to say this led to Totoro becoming a favourite of Chris' niece.

Spreading the Totoro love :)









In the beginning

So this is the first entry in my blog and I'm not sure how to start. 

I've been a busy baker over the last year and I'd like to include a number of those cakes in this blog, so I'll probably back date my posts until I'm up to the present day. For now here is where it all began :) 

These are some of the earliest pictures I have of my baking.
From September 2010 -
Spread a little colour with rainbow cupcakes - well maybe not these ones as I didn't quite get the vibrant colours I was hoping for. 
Bakergal shows us how it should be done.

Ignoring the above, rainbow cupcakes are incredibly easy to make. Just separate your cake mixture in to bowls, add a drop of food colour to each bowl, and place a dollop of each colour in to your cupcake cases. 
To get the bright colours, make sure you use the right type of food colouring. It took me some time to trigger this but gel paste colours are the way forward! A tiny drop goes a long way and gives a fantastic colour which you'll see in my later posts.


18th March 2011
Given the same recipe (a vanilla sponge with orange flavoured icing) my colleague and fellow baker went head to head to raise money for Comic Relief. We had to stick to the recipe but could add our own creative flare to it. For £2 buyers got one of each cupcake and were asked to vote for their favourite.
Sadly I failed to get a picture of the competition but this is what I went in to battle with.
Two-tone icing always seems to impress and what goes better with orange then chocolate? 
I was champion by 4 votes but more importantly we added £48 towards the money raised for comic relief.


2nd May 2011
A very quick batch of cakes whipped together for my friend... yep you guessed it... Erin. 
Erin was my partner in crime at Uni. We don't see each other much these days but there's usually an annual reunion with one due again soon. 
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