Coffee Cakes

Number 3 on my list - Marbled Coffee cakes.

As you can tell, I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment so am making lots of cakes :). The only problem with this is they need eating too...

These seemed to be very simple to make - mix up a batch of normal batter and then halve it and make half into a coffee mixture using 1tsp boiling water to 2tsp coffee granules (suggested that you use espresso, but i just used instant granules), then make the marbled effect like you would normally, with a knife. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake - the cinnamon and sugar made a nice addition to the taste.


Now I'd expect the two different mixtures to rise and bake roughly similarly.. however they didn't. And this is the result - 

An explosion out the side of the cake - I did make a few nice ones, like this:

 I will have to try these cakes again to see if i can stop that from happening (what a shame I hear you cry), but these are definitely ones I'll make more regularly, especially as most of my friends aren't that keen on coffee cakes :D 


I want to make some honey cupcakes soon, and the recipe says to put Chocolate Bees on top of the frosting (and it looks good). Anyone know where I could buy these on the highstreet?
I found them on the internet, they look like this:

MMFC

In a hurry

So this evening, my father comes home from work at about 17.30 with a small request for me - one of his colleagues was leaving them tomorrow, and could i bake some cakes for him to take to work.

My challenge this evening then - create some nice cakes in a very short space of time. Obviously the simplest choice is to make normal plain cupcakes (Americans might think of them as 'yellow' cupcakes - imaginative...)  and decorate them nicely. I remembered a nice looking recipe on my list called 'Princess Cupcakes'. These only required vanilla cupcakes and some buttercream icing (my favourite type!) - simple!

So this is what i created:

They don't look quite like the ones in the book, especially seeing as I ran out of icing and couldn't pipe little stars around the outside or that my father forgot the silver balls when he went shopping... but all in all I'm quite proud of them - this is only my third attempt at piping things, but I'm getting better :). I did have one tiny problem - the buttercream melted and began to seperate - this caused all sorts of problems, and the last few cakes the icing didn't hold together. Instead of leaving it in the fridge to firm up, i decided to scrape it all out of the piping bag and eat it :D I managed to get icing ALL up my arms.. oops? Main thing is - they taste nice, and were appreciated (though they did question why i made pink icing...)

MMFC

In the beginning....

Hello!

Ever since i can remember, I've enjoyed baking. Be it cakes, cookies, biscuits, flapjacks (particularly flapjacks - so simple, so quick, so DELICIOUS and so moreish!). Having gone to university, and cooking for myself, this has become more of a hobby as I have much more time on my hands (even though I do one of the hardest and most time-consuming science degrees I still manage to have lots of free time, I don't understand how) and not a week goes by without some baking creation sitting on the table by the window for all the passers-by to gawk at :D

Recently I was given 3 recipe books ALL about cupcakes (aka fairy cakes). I haven't actually counted how many recipes this comes to overall, but i think its about 250... thats a lot of different cupcakes. I personally prefer recipes that don't involve a huge amount of preparation or are overly time-consuming, so cupcakes are perfect. Now i have to chose which ones of these recipes I want to try! A tough decision you might think? You'd be right.

Other than the fact that i don't like nuts in any form what-so-ever (apart from the slight taste of hazelnut in chocolate spread) and especially almonds (EUGH!) this cuts out, thankfully, A LOT of recipes. I ended up with a list of 154 recipes that I thought I might like to try at some point or another. I don't know how long this will take, and I imagine that this list will be continuely added to (it has already - Gin and Tonic cupcakes - my idea of HEAVEN!) but we shall see what happens along the way! I plan to take photos of my creations, and i might share the odd recipe that I think is REALLY good (though I'm not sure how copyright works on this front... who knows!) and hopefully some of you will get to actually try them... :D

MMFC