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

Christmas Eve

This has been a busy week running up to Christmas. 

I'll post the photos with explanations rather than list everything this time.

First, to start the week off, I made 24 mini Victoria sponges for Jo's work place last Thursday for Friday morning delivery as it was her birthday at the weekend - I made 18 jam and butter-cream ones and 6 lemon curd and lemon butter-cream ones.

Then on Friday I made a dozen blueberry muffins and also a dozen chocolate cupcakes and covered them in a white chocolate butter-cream and topped with some gold sugar crystals

Then it was down to the Christmas items

I managed to ice and decorate the mini Christmas cakes and the Christmas loaf cake on Friday morning - keeping it simple this year and using my new tree and holly leaf cutters

The loaf cake should be covered in a gold shimmer, it doesn't show up very well and I think the gold must have sunk to the bottom of the spray can, I will have another shake and spray later I think

Then on Monday next on the list were the Baileys mince pies - very yummy pastry with Baileys in the pastry :-) There were, in fact, 14 but two had to be tested for quality control you understand ;-)

I also made the Mary Berry mincemeat streusel from her programme on the television this week. This has now been cut into 16 pieces and is ready to transport

Finally, for this side of Christmas anyway, the Christmas Ham

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all who read my blog - thanks for looking xxx

Week ending 14th December

A little more baking this week, Christmas cakes due to be iced next week but I did manage to get the marzipan on this week, and have also managed a white loaf, another giant cupcake, some mini ginger cakes with an orange butter-cream filling and topping, some plain cupcakes with a festive green swirly topping and festive sprinkles, plus a raspberry hazelnut meringue roulade from Mary Berry's Baking Bible.  

First of all I started the week on Sunday with a large white loaf

Then I made another giant cupcake - third one I've done now, getting a bit better at the icing hopefully, need an excuse to make another one now please ;-)

Then I decided it was time to marzipan the Christmas cakes so the marzipan had time to dry out before the icing went on next week

Then mini ginger cakes with a nice little topper of mini gingerbread men, (good old sainsburys) and an orange butter-cream filling

and next the plain cupcakes with a festive topping in green - the topping is actually darker than it looks in this photo

Finally, for this week anyway, I had a go at a raspberry meringue roulade, which I have to say is very moreish - not good for the diet but hey ho its Christmas !!

Come back next week to see what I decide to do about the tops of the Christmas cakes (still undecided at the moment)

7th December

Seems I have not updated my blog for three weeks - thank goodness for my photos being stored in date order!! 

First of the last three weeks baking consisted of blueberry muffins, a new recipe for chocolate hazelnut cupcakes - very yummy especially if you are a Nutella fan!!, some lemon cupcakes with lemon butter-cream and sugar nibs. I also made a large white loaf. Off to a 50th birthday surprise for the weekend so no more baking till the following week.

The following week I made another giant cupcake - this one was for my daughters birthday and I had to transport it (very carefully) by train  to Surrey - it arrived safely and undamaged - phew! I also made a family favourite - oat and raisin cookies, plus some mini Victoria sponges with a lemon curd and butter-cream filling, some vanilla cupcakes with a chocolate and vanilla butter-cream topping - using my newly acquired large duo piping set and I finally got around to making 8 mini Christmas puddings which I put a low oven overnight in a large pan of water.
The kitchen smelt like Christmas the next morning :-)

Finally for this week (so far!) I have made some mincemeat cupcakes covered with a brandy butter topping and a Christmas themed decoration, some vanilla cupcakes with a 'sweety theme' topping and yet another batch of those oat and raisin cookies- I'll be able to do them in my sleep soon but they are delicious - thanks to Jo Wheatley and her book A Passion for Baking

Feel free to leave any comments or questions at the end.

Thanks for reading