Week ending 19th January 2014

A slightly shorter week for me this week so not too much baking, I managed a white loaf, some white chocolate and cranberry cupcakes, some banana, honey and cinnamon muffins, a lovely apple and cinnamon cake, and a batch of stem gingernut biscuits - ginger is a favourite of mine and I have to say I am very pleased with the result of these.

Now the photos and first up are the white chocolate and cranberry cupcakes decorated with plain buttercream and topped with white chocolate buttons - lovely and chocolatey - one for those of us with a sweet tooth

Swiftly followed by the banana, cinnamon and honey muffins, these were very light and fluffy - good recipe 

Next came the apple and cinnamon loaf, it also contains sultanas and chopped walnuts, and is lovely, soft and light with a nice apple layer in the middle

Bread next, another successful loaf courtesy of Jo Wheatley's book again, A Passion for Baking http://www.josblueaga.com/

And finally this morning I made a batch of stem gingernuts 

Week ending 12th January 2014

A few more cakes, bread and biscuits this week.

I have managed a crusty white loaf, some oat and raisin cookies, some coffee cupcakes, some lemon cupcakes and my first attempt at pop cakes. I have to say the first stage of mixing and baking was easy enough, but I think maybe I need a better quality chocolate for the coating as the white in particular was very runny, or maybe leave it to cool down a lot more before attempting to coat the pops, although the milk chocolate was better in this respect and also the same brand so maybe I just need some more experimentation.......  I will put up a picture although the end result could be better :(

First the lemon cupcakes - they have lemon curd in the cake, a lemon butter-cream icing and some gold glimmer sugar to decorate

Next the coffee cupcakes decorated with coffee bitter-cream and topped with a malteser 

Next a nice crusty white loaf

Another batch of oat and raisin cookies

And finally the cake pops, first picture as they came out of the tin then the decorated ones - not as good as I would have liked, but as I said I will need to practice ;-)

January 4th 2014

First blog of the New Year :-)

I started with another giant cupcake, made 3 loaves of bread - 2 white and 1 granary, a batch of oat and raisin cookies, used my mini muffin pan to make 24 mini coconut cupcakes, and also made some normal size carrot cupcakes. My next project will be pop cakes as my daughter gave me all the kit for Christmas - so watch this space next week 

First of all the bread, not all baked on the same day I would hasten to add

Giant cupcake 

Mini coconut cupcakes

Oat and raisin cookies (now all gone!!)

And finally the carrot cupcakes - these have a cream cheese flavoured topping and sugar nibs to finish