Week ending April 27th April

Another busy week in my teeny kitchen as this week I have made a granary loaf (unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of this), a lemon drizzle cake, oat and raisin cookies, malteser topped vanilla cupcakes, and cherry bakewell cupcakes. I also have the photo of the almond macaroons and some white and dark chocolate chip cookies made earlier in the week - busy busy time.

I have also been asked for the recipe for the lemon meringue cupcakes so am going to type it out here for those who have asked for it

Lemon Meringue cupcake recipe

Ingredients:

200 gr margarine or butter, softened
200 gr caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
200 gr self raising flour
2/3 tbsp milk

to decorate:

lemon curd
4 egg whites             (I did find this was too much meringue and 3 egg whites would be sufficient in my view)
110 gr caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 170C (fan) 325F or Gas mark 3

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases

Mix together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (I use my free standing mixer - saves on elbow grease))
Gradually add the beaten eggs mixing well between each addition
Add the vanilla extract. Sieve the flour into the bowl and mix again until smooth, adding as much milk as needed to make it smooth.
Divide the mixture between the 12 cases and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until a wooden cocktail stick comes out clean when inserted into cakes

Leave to cool for a few minutes, then using a teaspoon, make a small hollow in the top of the cakes and fill with lemon curd

To make the meringue topping whisk the egg whites until stiff, then gradually whisk 1/2 of the sugar until the mixture is very shiny, fold in the remaining sugar then spoon the mixture into a large piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle.

Pipe a swirl of meringue on top of each cake and pop back into the oven for about 10 minutes until the topping is golden brown

hey presto you then have this

Okay, now back to last weeks baking photos - if anyone would like recipes posted please let me know

Choc chip cupcakes

Almond Macaroons

Lemon Drizzle Cake

 Vanilla cupcakes decorated with buttercream and tooped with maltesers

Oat and Raisin cookies

Cherry Bakewell Cupcakes

A lot of my recipes and inspiration come from Jo Wheatley and her two wonderful Cook Books - A Passion for Baking and her latest one Home Baking - please look at her blog - link below.

Jo's Blue Aga

I also have a book called 1000 cupcake recipes so this could be a very long ongoing blog!!!! 

Yet another baking week in April

Well another busy week in my teeny kitchen, I have done lemon meringue cupcakes, white bread, granary bread, coconut macaroons, creme egg brownies and yet another batch of banana muffins with added sultanas and maple syrup and honey. I forgot to take a photo of the brownies but there were identical to the ones I did earlier so will be naughty and re-post the picture from then.

Here we go with the photos then, first of all I made the lemon meringue cupcakes and there were delicious and so much easier than I anticipated.

Next day I made a white loaf of bread

and very nice it was too - lovely with boiled eggs :-)


Next attempt was coconut macaroons, think I slightly mis-weighed the coconut as I got distracted mid weighing by a phone call - a nuisance call as it happens!, there should have been a bit more coconut added from a new now still unopened packet :-(, but am told they were lovely. 

Yesterday (Thursday) was the day for the brownies for my daughters place of work request for a full-fat Friday!!

And finally today it was the granary loaf quickly followed by the muffins

Tomorrow I have one more mission and that's the almond macaroons - the ones with rice paper on the bottom - if I have time I will post that tomorrow afternoon 

April 5th

Well I managed to add another book to my collection of baking books this week - plenty of scope here as there are over 1,000 cupcake, muffin and tray bake options - blog could get filled up!!!


My first attempt from the new book was for coconut and strawberry jam cupcakes - I really needed to use smaller fairy cake cases but I didn't have any in my store of bits and bobs - obviously need to remedy this asap - note to self - add fairy cake cases to my shopping list !

Here are the pics - first one is of the ingredients and the second one the finished cakes as usual

Its now Sunday and today's the day I have decided to try my hand at decorating cupcakes for the first time, using a recipe from GBBO winner Jo Wheatley's 'A Passion For Baking'

I am very pleased with the results as it was my very first attempt, and I am sure Jo's workmates at the nursery will be happy with them too - I have also since managed to find some more fancy icing icing nozzles while at Trago Mills so the options could now be endless!!!!

Here are the pictures of my first attempt, as usual any feedback gratefully received. I do, in fact, think the icing should have been a tiny bit wetter, maybe a spot or two more milk needs to be added as the 'sprinkles' I was going to shake over just fell off.

Week beginning 31st March

Well this weekend I decided to attempt a saffron cake, some Easter biscuits and another batch of muffins. Saffron cake first

Not as successful as I hoped, I couldn't find out from the cook book whether the oven temperature was for fan assisted or not, so I (wrongly it seems) assumed it wasn't - the cake looked and tasted good, but sank in the middle and the middle bits were better microwaved for 30 seconds before eating,  other than that though it was fine, I would do it again but stick to the temperature given, and also do an overnight rise as its a heavy dough and just takes forever to rise. I wasn't going to post this but I think I need to show failures as well as successes (according to my sister Pauline!!)

Easter Biscuits

Much more successful and reminded me of my childhood Easter times - would definitely do these again and it wouldn't need to be Easter either!! 

Banana & Sultana muffins

Then onto Easter Monday and I decided to make some bread and mini loaf rolls - rolls for bacon butties for brunch - quite successful here methinks :-)

And finally this morning yet another batch of the muffins, for Philip to take half of them to work - seem to have managed a regular order for them or similar as well as for Jo's workplace too!!