I Want It All // Queen

I love Nutella. Oh I love it so much. It's incredible. Nothing really compares to it. My favourite thing ever and my favourite thing to do with it is make hot chocolate. I first learnt that it's best to make Hot Chocolate with proper, real chocolate, not some powdery gumf, at William Curley, as it's much, much nicer. You don't get that horrible powdery texture. It's not watery and it's as sweet as you want it, not as sweet as the manufacturer of said gumf wanted it.
I fall back on this information in times of need - you know those times when you want to eat a kilo of chocolate but only have a few squares? Turning it into hot chocolate always made it last much longer.

I don't do this at home anymore. Instead I make Nutella hot chocolate. It's easy and delicious. Recipe follows;

Serves 1
300 ml Whole Milk
3 heaped tsp Nutella

1.Measure your milk into a sizeable jug, then pour it into a pan and put it on a medium heat.
2. Into the same jug place the Nutella.
3. When the milk boils pour it over the Nutella.
4. Whisk thoroughly to make a smooth mixture, making sure to get the Nutella from the sides of the jug combined.
5. Work up a nice froth then pour into mug.
6. Drink immediately.

When we were first in the flat I realised I would have to get used to an electric oven, and it followed that I would have to do some baking test runs.
The first test I did I was hankering after something chocolatey. I'd only brought my cupcake tins with me, not a whole cake tin so they would have to do, but I ran into the small problem of having no chocolate to use, and then I saw it!! The holy Nutella, usually reserved for hot chocolates and eating straight from the jar when Jonny isn't looking, like a beautiful beacon of chocolate hope.

I whipped up a normal batch of vanilla cupcakes sans vanilla and at the end bunged in a load of Nutella until it looked chocolatey enough. I should have measured it so I can give you precise instructions, but I was caught up with how much of a genius idea it was.
Then I made some vanilla frosting sans vanilla and did the same again. It makes quite a light brown icing, but it's yummy.


They tasted amazing, and I made three more batches in as many days. I think they've taken over Black Bottomed Cupcakes as my favourite chocolate cake, they're much easier to make.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? // Pet Shop Boys

I have a new job! It's all very exciting. I've been there three weeks now, and it's exhausting but great. Much much better than my old job, which I'd grown really fed up of.
I was very sad to leave when it came to it, but I know that I'll still see the people who made it such a great place to work.

Cakes always went down a storm there, so I made some to take in for my last day. I wanted to do some cupcakes (as they're always easy), one load fruity and one load that are a bit different.

For the fruity ones I found a Hummingbird recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes. I don't know what it is about that book, I trust it too much. It was completely against my instincts to shovel a load of chopped up strawberries into a cake case, top with batter and bake. I knew they would turn to some kind of horrible mush and the cases wouldn't stand it, but for some reason I trusted the book and did it anyway. They were rank. I left them to dry out over night and took in half of them for work uniced.. I don't know if anyone thought 'bleearrrgh what on Earth is she feeding us?' as they revealed the mess of strawberries at the bottom of the cake. If I make them again I will do it as follows; Bake cupcake as usual. Hollow out some cake, fill with chopped strawberries. Ice. Much better.

For the other batch I did Hummingbird's Marshmallow Cupcakes, as pictured. My thoughts behind this were that they were the girliest cake I'd ever seen, and it seemed entirely appropriate to make a batch for 12 male engineers.


I liked these a lot, a much more logical recipe, and much much tastier.
The only thing I would change would be to make my own marshmallows and fill the cupcakes with the unset goo, rather than melting shop-bought ones.

Lost // Korn

We have been listening to a lot of Radio 4. I suppose it's what comes from not having a television. I am obsessed with Book at Bedtime, though Jonny says I'm never awake for the end. I feel out of sorts if I miss one.

The other programme I rather enjoy is Woman's Hour. Recently we listened to a whole piece on Madeleines, when I realised I've never had one.

Madeleines are small, almond cakes which are baked in a special shell shaped mould. They are a French speciality, made famous by Proust.

So while touring Waitrose with Jonny during one of our weekly shops we spotted a bag of Bonne Maman Madeleines. I was allowed to buy them, Jonny was looking for an excuse to take some photos of my new tea set (more on this in a moment) and I was looking for an excuse to eat cake.

They were ok, a bit boring. We dunked them into our tea (probably not the done thing with a tea set as beautiful as this), which made them soggy. Jonny loved this. I'm not so sure. You got some extra cake at the end of your tea which isn't very nice.
I'd like to try some that aren't mass produced, and also make some of my own as I was given a beautiful mould a few years ago for a birthday, which was a lovely yet daunting gift. I guess hopefully I'll come back to this in the future.


Now for the important stuff! Look at my tea set! Look at it! See how beautiful it is. I am the luckiest girl in the world. I am the proud owner of the most beautiful tea set in the world. It's staggering how in love I can be with some plates.
Where Jonny and I have moved to has some incredible shops, one of which is an incredible vintage interiors shop (I've touched on my secret interior design passion in the past) and I can spend many hours (if allowed) browsing and touching and longing. It is called Nicholas and Steele. The first time I had a proper browse I stumbled on an amazing black tea set, and it was the first I'd laid eyes on that I actually needed. Nothing could match my desire for it.
Unfortunately it sold, but J had wandered in and left his number, and a few weeks later we got a text saying they'd sourced a better set!
This was a much more convenient time, I'd come into a little windfall that I didn't want to waste on nothing, and it allowed me to buy the set which includes 5 lots of delicate tea cups, saucers and cake plates, a milk jug and sugar bowl, and a matching cake stand.

It really is the best set I've ever seen, and I have seen an awful lot of them. It is black, and then it has bright pink big flowers on. I love it.

Earth Song // Michael Jackson

I was asked to do another allotment cake on the back of the Transition Town Cake . It was for the charity Eco Local for a celebration they were having, and was, thankfully, much smaller.

I was very pleased with the turnout of this cake. The icing was the best I've ever done, and it seemed ashame to put on the ribbon, and then all the mini vegetables on top.

But it looked grand in the end, and apparently it went down very well at the party.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow // Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Back in September was my friends wedding, I've posted about practice cupcakes for them.
I spent a day solidly baking, decorating and packing up an large amount of cupcakes, just over 150 to be precise. By the end of it I could barely stand up, I was exhausted.



I also did a large chocolate cake, with a Star Wars topper, made by my fantastic brother, Ollie - Glass Candle Grenades.



The day of the actual wedding was interesting, Jonny was official photographer so I was pretty much alone. His Mum, Rosemary shipped me and the cakes about, which I am so grateful for, it would have been very hard to do it on the bus!

There was a small issue of a tablecloth, which a swift jog along the river at Kingston solved, and then I got my own little peaceful trip on one of the Turks Pier boats up to Teddington, where I was met with more cakes at the Wharf.

Then back to get ready and off to enjoy the wedding. Everything was so beautiful and perfect and I got fantastically drunk.

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter // Iron Maiden

I'm the worst daughter ever. This cake is my Dad's Christmas cake from last year. It took me a year to finish it for him. There is no excuse. I just suck.



It was kept nicely fed and apparently is still in tip top condition and is currently being consumed by him while he's on holiday in Scotland.

I did it with Jonny one evening when all I really wanted to do was sleep, hence why it is so simple, and a little bit rough around the edges. And on a plate, not a cake board.

Brown Eyed Girl // Van Morrison

Jonny and I went to Portabello Road yesterday. I wanted a suitcase and a tea cup, Jonny wanted a flannel shirt. You tell me. Anyway. We both failed in our objectives. You'd be hard pushed to find a suitcase under two hundred pounds, and all the crockery was manky.
Jonny's ideal flannel shirt he'd already seen on a friend, so seeing as it had already been sold I think finding it for sale would be a challenge.

As soon as we got off the tube at Notting Hill Gate it was manic. Oh the crowds. And we were early! We walked from Notting Hill to Westbourne Park and it took forever. It was nicely broken up with stall browsing and a mandatory visit to the Hummingbird Bakery. They were queueing out the door when we arrived, but I was determined.

The service was remarkably brilliant, fast and polite. Though the people behind me obviously had no concept of personal space and kept crowding. Chill out people! There is enough cake for everyone! You will get your turn.

At first I ordered a slab of frosted brownie, a black bottomed cupcake and a carrot cupcake. But then a fresh tray of Red Velvet appeared so I changed my mind on the carrot. Jonny has requested to review the Red Velvet, so I'll leave that to him.


We sat outside on the curb to eat the brownie. God it was good. So close to the brownie perfection we seem to be on a never-ending mission for.
Jonny said 'The most important thing about a brownie that has been cooked wll is it makes you wonder ''has this been cooked?' '' which I suppose sums up his tastes. For me it's winning for it's use of whole hazelnuts and crisp top and gooey middle.

I'd bought a black bottomed cupcake to see what cake/cheesecake ratio it had, as I'm never sure if I've put too much or too little on when I bake them. I don't know if it was just this individual cupcake, but it was greatly lacking in cheesecake. The cream cheese frosting made up for it a little, but the cake was dry. And when I bake them I don't frost them, so this seemed really over-sweet.


I think I am arrogant enough to say that I much prefer the ones I make to the one I bought. Wow. I bake a Hummingbird cupcake better than they can.

All in all I feel like it was a little bit of a wasted trip. I had a great time mooching with Jonny. It was perfect in that respect. But I do wish we'd headed to Pimlico to try out the newly opened dessert bar at William Curley.
Soon though. Soon.

Letter From America // The Proclaimers

Libby made a carrot cake for her work. It had cream cheese icing which is delicious but once the icing was on we decided it needed something else to make it look more exciting. We didn't have any sugar paste icing to make an orange carrot so I made a stencil and we sieved cinnamon through it to make it quite plainly a carrot cake.


I was quite chuffed with my stenciling.

There's been a very detailed carrot cake in the past and this was made using the same recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book.

Sugar Sugar // The Archies

I've had a very lazy bank holiday weekend. Though I did cook for 8 people at my house in an impromptu dinner party. I made a risotto! It was the first one I'd ever made. I think it was ok, it all got polished off. So did the black bottomed cupcakes I'd made for pudding.
They were exactly the same as last time, but without the raspberry cream. I had to keep it simple you see. I had a lot to make. I had also dragged out my bread maker and whipped up a loaf to serve warm. I think people prefered that to the risotto!

On Saturday I'd read the lovely Penny's blog, Penelope's Pantry. She'd been making cinnamon rolls out of her leaven starter. And since then I'd been craving something cinnamonny. Which is crazy and wrong, as I am one of the rare people that can't stand cinnamon, ever since going to a party when I was younger and getting rather trollied on home-made cinnamon wine.

So today I decided I needed to make something, and it needed to contain cinnamon. I turned to the Hummingbird Bakery Book again. I don't know why. It's strange for me to use a book so much that isn't Mary Berry. Especially when I've had to edit quite a few of the recipes during use.
I picked the banana and cinnamon muffins. And I doubled the mix so that I could eat some and still take enough to work tomorrow.

I ended up with tonnes of mix. I made 24 muffins and one massive muffin cake after panicking and just shoving it in the first oven proof thing to hand.

They are a bit dense and chewy and the paper cases don't peel satisfyingly off. The cake is a bit flat as the tin I picked out was huge. But they have fulfilled my cinnamon needs. Hopefully for a while.

In other news, I am going on a proper diet. I feel like if I write it here then I will have to do it.

Township Rebellion // Rage Against the Machine

I wasn't very inspired for the title of this one. The MP3 wotsit chose for me.

A while ago I posted that my lovely friend had asked for a bit of assistance with a very large cake she'd been asked to make for Transition Town Kingston's Big Launch Party.


We had a little planning meeting (chips in the pub) and came up with a lot of ideas, the best being an allotment themed cake. It fits with the ethos you see. I can't quite remember what size we considered, but after reporting back we discovered that it was to be much, much bigger. To feed 200-250 people.

So we re-planned.

We ended up making 3 big sheets of cake, just a bit bigger than an A4 piece of paper. Which was less than requested, but any bigger would have been a lot harder and a lot messier.


We made one chocolate, one vanilla and one lemon. We started after work on Friday and ended up in bed at three o'clock. But in that time we did the three cakes and most of the modelling of sheds and vegetables and tripods for the decorating, and I had covered one cake in sugarpaste.


So after oversleeping a little we got back to it at around twelve. Covering the cakes in sugar paste was hard as they were so huge. So they all got a bit of patching in the end.
Putting the bits on was fun, there was debate about whether the chickens were to scale.. I said no, but I was wrong, they looked great in the end.


Then the nervous car journey and unloading. Then the praise and admiration. I hate that bit. I would have quite happily run away, but did the brave thing and got myself a tad drunk over the course of the evening.


They struggled to get rid of it all, one was donated to an allotment AGM, another to Kingston Horticultural Society and I took half of the rest for the lads at work - I think they'll eat anything put in front of them so they shouldn't mind that it was three days old.


I am glad that it's over, it was such a huge project and I enjoyed it a lot, but I struggled a bit with not having the original vision in my head to work to so was a little behind with helping and at points wasn't as helpful as I could have been.

Oliver's Army // Elvis Costello

I was taken for a fantastic supper last night by one of my beautiful friends. We went to Jamie's Italian in Kingston, which I've been to once before. I think when I went with Jonny fund guilt kicked in and we didn't have pudding. But last night I was practically forced into it. You can't get a better friend than one that'll make you eat pudding.
We shared a tuscan chocolate and hazelnut cake which came with poached fruits, and 3 scoops of icecream with a double helping of crushed cinder toffee on top. We had prune and armagnac, vanilla and third I can not remember - that could have had something to do with the wine.
The prune ice cream was lovely, and the honeycomb topping was perfect.
The tuscan chocolate and hazelnut cake was to die for, soft and warm and nutty, with a dark chocolate sauce.

I left feeling completely content and very full. I feel like I have a duty to go back and try the bakewell tart and the tiramisu.

Judy and the Dream of Horses // Belle and Sebastian

Jonny and I have returned from a lovely weekend in Sussex with friends. The weather wasn't amazing, but we managed to get to Brighton for an afternoon, go for a long walk on Sunday, and Jonny and I went horse riding for a little bit on Monday. That was an interesting experience. Jonny got lumped with a bit of a rubbishly stubborn horse, but it was nice to go out onto the forest.
It's our 4th anniversary today. Gosh. It sort of makes my head hurt thinking about it, mostly because I feel old. But can't moan too much, as I got given the best present ever - a hot water bottle with Moomin on!! It's completely gorgeous and made me cry a little bit.
Jonny got the horse ride (maybe not the best present ever), a mushy CD and as requested, a massive carrot cake.

I used (again) the Hummingbird Bakery book. As we were going away with Becci I replaced the walnuts with tea-soaked sultanas, which I thought was a fantastic move. It ended up with juicy little explosions, though I'm not sure that the tea taste lasted enough.
The recipe required 300 grams of grated carrot. 'Pah, thats not much,' thought I, with no idea really how much it would be, 'I can do that by hand.'
I ended up covering the kitchen and myself in carrot. Next time I will get that super whizzy attachment for the blender out for that bit.

I was also wise enough to know that while the recipe said the mix should be baked in 3 parts that I could bake it in one. And not line the tin properly.
I really don't know what was going on in my brain on Friday.
So once I'd made it all and put it in my unlined tin, I realised that it was a humungous cake and would probably take a couple of hours to cook. So I lined the outside of the tin like you would for fruit cake and tied it with parcel string.

It was big.

The string must have caught fire at some point early on as I checked the cake and it all looked a bit black on one edge. Anyway, it cooked in about 2 hours as predicted and the top got sliced off and sampled and then I had it on my lap for the journey to Sussex. Nice and warm.
I iced it that evening with cream cheese frosting, and tiny sugar paste bunnies and petals. There was also a big bunny eating blossom on top in homage to the blossom eating bunny Jonny and I once saw on a walk together. That bit wasn't so great though, as I can't draw, and my brother drew me a rabbit on wheels and my mum drew me a bit of a dodgy but satisfactory bunny, that didn't quite work in sillhouette.

But it was very tasty, and the four of us managed to demolish it in not very long. Sometimes we even had it for breakfast; a good reason to get out of bed early while on holiday.

Sweets For My Sweet // The Searchers

I'm eating a Creme Egg, which handily reminded me I have a blog! Oops.
And then I thought I should probably blog about more than a creme egg, so I got a packet of chocolate buttons too.

News update from my sugary world;

A lovely friend has asked me to do a cake with her for an event, and we had a very excited planning meeting. We've now been told that they're expecting two hundred people!! So that's all very exciting and nerve wracking. It's just under a month away so expect more on that...

Some other lovely friends thought of me (me!!) for their wedding cake, and they are thinking about having cupcakes. I'm relieved that they want cupcakes. It will ease me in to the world of weddings I think.
They also asked Jonny to do the photography! We're like some kind of wedding enterprise.
Please enter possible business names in the form of puns in the comments.

And I have been geeking out and reading as much as I possibly can on Doctor Who forums, and it looks like Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor will have a sweet tooth!
This makes it just a little bit easier for me to move on from Ten. Though why couldn't he have had the sweet tooth?
You can never go wrong with David Tennant eating...

Comfort Eagle // Cake

A second lot of cupcake practice for the big batch. It's this weekend! Eep! I'm starting to think I must be mental for agreeing to make 75 cupcakes.

This practice went well. I didn't overfill the cases and they rose beautifully. This time we were organised enough to remember to put vanilla in the frosting.
Jonny doesn't really get my frosting style. But I don't like to put loads on and I don't like it to look like we've slathered it on with a hot knife. Even though we have.
I can't explain why. I just prefer them to look a little rustic.

Enjoy the following cupcake porn!

Civilised // Pitchshifter

Will decided that it was time for my long-awaited Yumchaa reveiw, and we went for lunch yesterday.

We headed to the new Camden shop which is completely unnoticable unless you know where you're going.
We had a look at the range of teas and tried to order. There was only one woman serving. It was lunch-time. In Camden. It took a while, to say the least. None of the food was labelled, so she had to run off what the sandwiches were, despite there not being much choice. I don't want to dwell on the sandwiches, as thats not really my interest, but they were toasted beyond belief. And took forever. Mine went in first and came out last. I had to swap with Jonny as my teeth wouldn't have coped.
Anyway, we eventually got our tea in nice white pots with accompanying strainers and we found a seat.


The actual shop is beautiful. It's all mismatched furniture and rustic looking cottagey kitchen tables, paisley wallpaper, brick walls and a beautiful light feature with hundreds of different lamps. There are lots of tables but still plenty of space to move around.
It aims for cosy, welcoming tea shop. It fails. It's got no actual atmosphere. It's too quiet. The cakes are displayed on a counter top in cheap baking trays.
It attracts trendy businessy type people, it's more laptop friendly than come and slump for half an hour and enjoy tea. It's more come and look like you care about tea while doing work.
I know that Yumchaa have quite a large student customer base. Well, I assume this as they have deals aimed at getting students in to work, which is very nice.. but.. it makes it feel more like Starbucks.
It's trendy. Aimed at yummy mummies and art students and metrosexual business men.
Which is fine. I have no problem with any of those stereotypes. I lie, clearly.
But anyway, it's just not for me. My ideal tea shop is sofas and books and friendly relaxed service.

Let's move on to the important part of a tea shop, the tea!
The whole business is based on bastardised tea. They have good policies, loose leaf, tea pot, fair trade, good quality, but then they take this fantastic tea and add stuff. Dried fruit, flowers, spices, caramel, nuts and chocolate.
And it's not even stuff that compliments or enhances the natural flavour of the tea. It drowns it out. I think it destroys it.
If you want to drink something that tastes like dried flowers then just take some dried flowers and add boiling water. Please? Don't bring good tea into it.


They do sell the lovely tea unbastardised, I will add. And I will happily drink this. They have the tea leaves in little cups for smelling when you order so you can make an informed decision on what tea to have.
If you're lucky they will make it clear that you don't have to have fruity flowery spicy nutty chocolatey tea, but this varies from shop to shop in my experience.

And now for the cakes. There were about seven varieties to choose from. I picked a brownie (always a good indicator), a slab or rich looking chocolate cake, and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.

The brownie was good, a lovely texture, a bit too nutty, but nowhere near chocolatey enough. Still the best of the three.
The chocolate cake was dry, only saved by the icing. Still, ok I guess. It was edible.
The lemon drizzle cake was stale. Old, dry and (I thought it was) flavourless. Like they'd forgotten to drizzle it and then left it out on the side for four days.

Oh and when I ordered the cakes I was handed them on a tray. I requested forks and was pointed to the table of what I assumed was take-away cutlery. How wrong I was. We had to use wooden forks. Apparently this is sustainable.
But it's not. Metal cutlery is reusable... fair enough wooden for takeaway. Metal for eat in please! I used my teaspoon in protest.
There was also a lack of sugarpots, I had to use a little plastic sachet which automatically ruined the illusion of class and atmosphere of the entire shop by leaving torn up bits of paper left on the table.


My friends think I am overly fussy for not loving yumchaa. And I know that it is mostly my snobbishness that prevents me from liking it. But I can't help that! I have standards and I will not be tricked into believing that I am consuming tea in the epitome of civilisation.
There are better places to go. Sorry.

I only feel the need to apologise for not liking it as a lot of my friends enjoy this place, and I am massively outnumbered. But meh. It's the truth.

Pictures to follow, J is away on business.

Billy Brown // Mika

Yesterday was the birthday party of one of our best friends, Will.
We managed to keep it a complete surprise from him, and I think it was a total success in the end, well he seemed happy enough.


When I make cakes for people I like to put some thought into them, make them a bit more personal. I had two ideas for Will.. wine and guitars.
We decided against making a replica of his beloved bass, as it's beautiful and a cake would just be a charicature of it, and its imperfections would have probably annoyed him.
The other idea, wine, needed practice and I ran out of time and didn't fancy taking the risk of errecting a cake held up with wine bottles without knowing if it would work or not.
So I had to re-think. Will is one of my only friends who has an interest in proper chocolate, he thinks the darker better.
So I gave myself the challenge of making the chocolatiest cake in the world.

I made the actual cake on Thursday evening, using James Martin's cola cake recipe, the only chocolate cake recipe I trust to work now.
I planned to fill it with a dark ganache and top it with Helm Magical Icing and then put as many chocolates as possible on top, all bought from William Curley.

I'd asked my dad to buy some 70% chocolate for the ganache, as Will would approve but it wouldn't be so dark everyone else would hate it.
So I happily made the ganache but when I tried it.. bleurgh.. it was bitter and unpalatable. We checked the packet and it had been 85% chocolate. It could not have gone in the middle of the cake, and I had to get back to the office.
It was decided we'd take the risk of adding sweetened cream cheese, in an attempt to keep the perfect consistency but make it a bit more edible.
It worked, sort of. It solidified in the cake, so wasn't the gooey filling it should have been, but it was still tasty.

Helm Magical Icing is a mixture of butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and evaporated milk. It makes a silky smooth covering that you can just pour over the cake, and it gives it a lovely shiny coating.


Then the fun bit of covering the cake in chocolates, cinder toffee and nuts. We were quite pleased with how it looked in the end, and I think everyone at the party liked it, even if they didn't manage to finish the Libby-sized portions I dished out.

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap part two

Libb is napping on the sofa, she just told me to stop distracting her from the nap. I blame her day of sugar and cake for this afternoon nap. Up to now she has eaten:

• Weetos
• Hazelnut Hot Chocolate
• Blueberry Muffin (skinny)
• Carrot Cake
• Cheese and Pickle sandwiches
• Cupcake trimmings
• Frosting
• Carrot Cake
• Marmite Rice Cake
• Coffee Cake
• Cupcake (with frosting)

She also had two apples which apparently makes it all ok. Thats just under 50% of all things eaten today containing the word "cake". I'm surprised she's not eaten any cups if I'm honest.

Anyhow this extensive cake eating is half due to lots of birthdays at work and also training for her 75-cup cakeathon thats coming up at the end of Feb. She brought round 6 of the trial cupcakes at lunch and we set to work making the frosting; butter, loads of icing sugar and a spot of milk, unfortunately libb had got "goseberry" food colouring but thought that gooseberries were yellow not green so we ended up with a pastel green icing instead of the pale yellow she'd planned for.

The frosting was lovely, firm but still mouldable for easy decorating. We were working against the clock as Lib only has a 45 minute lunch-break, and quickly discovered that you need a big bowl to make this icing as most of the sugar ended up on the floor when first combining it with the butter.

We popped the icing on top of the cakes and shaped it with a hot knife but I found it very tricky to get a rustic heap of icing, Lib says I smooth it all too much, anyway this was just a trial run right?

Anyway with the base of yellow (oops I mean green) frosting on we added the finishing decoration. Blue, pink and white sugar balls where accompanied by sugar dolphins, Hearts and stars respectively so we ended up with two blue, two pink and two yellow (the stars were white & yellow). It was immediately apparent that the green didn't really go. A pale cream/yellow base would have allowed the decoration colours to stand out much more clearly but at least this time there's a next time and I think there's some powder yellow in Libbs' cake toolbox so I'll remind her of that when I bring her a wake up cup of tea.

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap

Part One.

I have begun the grand cupcake rehearsal. I'm full of fear and excitement as I've put myself up to make 75 cupcakes for a big district guiding event at the end of February.
Which is probably crackers, as I've never attempted a cupcake in my life, and have always been a bit anti-cupcake, more of a fairy cake girl, and then I was a bit snobbish for this trend which is seemingly tailored for yummy mummies.

Anyway, the challenge was too tempting. So.

Practice run one;
Vanilla Cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book.

I used to enjoy a wander along Portabello Road to the Hummingbird Bakery. Made a hard day at work and long journey almost worth it. And they are one of the most highly regarded cupcake bakers in London.
So I put myself in their hands and currently have some buns in the oven.

I only got 7 cakes, not the 12 I should have. I assume this is because they realise most people would pop to the supermarket for bun cases, which is standard size, whereas I've used larger ones.
The mix was like pancake batter. It seems to be mostly milk. I have no faith in the professionals and I doubt that they will rise.

Watch this space...



One Hour later...
I think I must have over-filled the cases, but they taste gorgeous! I'll have another go soon and put less mix in. Tomorrow I'll have a bash at carving these ones down and icing them..

Hollaback Girl // Gwen Stefani

A long week was rounded up by a delve round the bakeware section of TK-Maxx, with the lovely Becci.
We found a lot of great stuff, including a black le creuset tea pot! £10! It's beautiful and Becci snapped it up so I'll be round to hers for tea soon. I saw a lot of stuff that I would like, but resisted everything apart from four mini loaf tins.
Cakes are good, but tiny cakes are excellent. I don't know why.


And when you have new loaf tins, there is only one thing you should christen them with.

Banana Bread!

We used How to be a Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson, for the recipe.
We didn't change anything, other than soaking the finished loaves in a bit of rum and glazing them. Oh and I put a split in the cake half way through cooking, which is an old William Curley habit. Jonny thinks it was unnecessary. I don't.


The bananas were not ripe as the recipe states, as it was a spontaneous decision to make it today and we had none in stock. I just made sure that they had a proper good mash before going in.



The cakes have turned out beautifully. Moist and moreish. I'm not allowed to eat anymore though until I've had some lunch.


The only problem I had was that we cooked 1 recipes worth, but took quite a lot out of the large cake in order to make the small ones. This means that the big cake is wide and a bit flat, even though it has risen and definately did not sink when cooling.

Spit It Out // Slipknot

I take back anything good I may have said about Candy Cakes, and remove any chances I might have given them.
I had a moment of weakness when all I needed was cakey stodge. A nice muffin, a nice blueberry cheesecake muffin.
They didn't have one, but the man serving, still a bit bumbling and rubbish, pointed me in the direction of a raspberry and apple one.
They didn't have much variety, so I plumped for that one.

I can see now why I was pointed towards that one, it obviously needed selling, though why anyone would let produce like that be sold lord only knows.
It was heavy and solid and had none of the soft crumb that the blueberry cheesecake did. It was completely off and flavourless.
I suppose it would have been hard to tell, due to the obscene amount of icing on top, which had leached through to the top of the muffin, making it the best bit as it was slightly moist and edible, but I dread to think how long the cake had sat in that shop, and how many others were in a similar state.

They did have more stock, but that seemed to have replaced the variety of muffins, and it included macarons. Ugh. I can't even be bothered to write about the vanilla one I bought. They weren't interesting and they weren't amazing.

Hopefully the residents of Kingston will learn how lazy this shop is, and it will fail in a small amount of time. However the general appeal of brightly coloured humungous cakes might be too much for some people to resist.