Christmas Cupcakes

These are a plain hot chocolate cupcake that I knew stayed moist for a while with a chocolate ganache buttercream on top. Then I made little Christmas puddings out of sugar paste, yum yum!

I only wish that I had Christmas cases!

Strawberry Cupcakes

Sometimes all you want is a simple cupcake.

This is a vanilla cupcake,  I squeezed in the strawberry jam once they cooled down then I blobbed on some vanilla buttercream (I like to add a little milk to make it slightly softer).

Cake Pops

This was my first time making cake pops at home, due to slightly over baking my lemon cupcakes...I think they were a success! They were much easier than I expected although slightly more time consuming than normal cupcakes.

I loved that my boyfriend thought I was a genius for having come up with cake pops! 

Happy Halloween!

For the Trick-or-Treaters I packed up these Hummingbird hot-chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing and a broken crunchy topping.
Having a child scream: "Oh My God! Best house EVER!" definitely made it worth while!

Lemon and Lime roulade

This lemon meringue roulade is a Mary Berry recipe, she has a really great book for Aga baking. Although we haven't devoured it yet (it's perfect for freezing) we trimmed off the edges to make it look better and they tasted yummy! It's a plain meringue baked with flaked almonds sprinkled on top then a lemon curd filling with lime zest.

Treacle Sponge

This was my first time making a Treacle Sponge, I had never even heard of them until my brother in law requested one! Super easy to whip up the cake batter itself but the steaming was tricky when they were individually wrapped like requested in the recipe so I put the lid on the pan and it worked fine. 

I made a simple vanilla custard to go with, it was wonderful. Apparently they only take a minute or two in the microwave, maybe next time!! 

I just picked a recipe randomly online but the Nigel Slater one is supposed to be great! 

Click here for his recipe.

Paul Hollywoods Egg Custard Tarts

Paul Hollywoods' Egg Custard Tarts, I wanted to do these since they proved so difficult on the TV show and I'll admit I had to redo the pastry because the recipe that Paul has asks for a whole egg which completely drenched my pastry dough. Once I realised that it went fine but I did a large one instead of mini cupcake sized ones to save time. 

The only thing I didn't particularly like with this recipe was that the only flavouring was nutmeg, in future I think I would add a little lemon zest to the pastry to spruce it up. 

Find the recipe here.

Lauren&James' Wedding Cake

This summer was my sisters' wedding so I before I left on holiday (about a month before the big day) I made all of the cakes and cupcakes (Carrot, Chocolate Guinness and Vanilla/Raspberry) and froze them, seeing as they are such moist cakes I didn't even have the slightest worry that it wouldn't work.
Only I returned from my holiday 2 days before her wedding to see that there had been a power cut and the freezer and turned off, cakes were all thawed.
It was definitely a challenge to get it done that next day and night but it was good fun with help from family and it made it!

Pumpkin Spice Whoopie Pies -For Men-

I usually have a vow to never use cake mixes but we were in TKMaxx and we found this Pumpkin Spice mix so considering pumpkin anything is so hard to come across in the UK we decided to grab it. Super easy (obviously) and really tasty but there is the looming feeling of guilt when you know you've cheated!

Millionaires shortbread

Everyone has that one page in their recipe that is sticky and falling apart from use. For me that page is this one, its so popular.
A layer of shortbread then caramel topped with chocolate, they are super rich but you have to slap yourself to stop from grabbing a second helping. At least I do...
I will admit that I messed up the ratios a little bit, I think it would have been better had I used a bigger tin and therefore had a thinner layer of caramel and shortbread.

Click here for the recipe x