Week ending 27th July 2013

Another hot week again here in Devon, and once again I decided to increase the heat in my teeny kitchen with some baking, and although today the weather has been a little rainy - it is not any cooler!!

Four different recipes this week, none of which I have tried before, and I also used my brand new Madeleine tin for the very first time..... first picture before baking, second one taken after baking and is minus two which were sampled ;-). These are cherry almond Madeleines. 

I then made some shortbread, trying a different recipe using part plain flour and part rice flour, the result was beautifully short - this could be the way to go for shortbread I think, for me anyway.

I also made some strawberry rose cupcakes - the strawberry part was 4 ozs of jam incorporated in the cake mix and the rose part was rose water added to the pink butter icing - very nice and fragrant too.

And finally I made some chocolate orange cupcakes - orange zest in the cake mix and dark chocolate and cream for the ganache - it should have been orange flavoured chocolate but I couldn't find any in the supermarket on Thursday so I added a little orange essence to the cream and chocolate mix. It was also a huge quantity of ganache so have frozen the rest to use at a later date.

See you all again next week x