Starry’s back, back again, starry’s back, tell a friend.

Yes I found my camera lead so I am extremely happy to have pictures yay! AND look what I have to share with you….

See those sprinkles? They’re Dr Oetkers Barbie sprinkles. They were hard and not that tasty so not that impressed with those. Still they look pretty and the edible sugar was pretty!

From this you would assume I have masses of free time and stuff. Um, no… Work has been a bit manic and I have been very stressed :(. Baking is very theraputic though and with a lovely BF to help with the cleaning up (and eating) it’s even nicer. Works a bit of a sod of late so pretty things cheer me up. The cupcakes were for my moms birthday. Which was last Sunday, mothering Sunday for all you Americans. Take a look at the rest…

I didn’t take that photograph by the way if it doesn’t look like my usual style lol, Sean did. I love those toppers. I didn’t have any letter cutters (Now I do, thank you ebay and Nigella) nor any piping bags (grrrrr ebay seller for not sending them on time). But they were just as effective imho. Cupcakes are all me, icing is courtesy of Betty Crocker, if you’ve ever tried to make butter cream without a mixer you appreciate why I used shop bought. Doesn’t taste as nice but still yummy. Making them rainbow was not so hard. Four layers spread across a cupcake liner…

Is it necessary to do a how to?

I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit :(. I’ve lost enthusiasm I think because it’s not quite how I want it right now but I’m not inspired to fix it… Hopefully I will catch my second win soon!

I haven’t forgotten the fat quarter project just it’s been so gloomy the past week not much oppurtunity for taking photo’s but I will write it up soon.

For now a recipe…

Sunny cupcakes with chocolate syrup frosting

Yummy!

Cupcakes Ingredients:

• 175g S/R or all purpose Flour (buy super sifted or sift)
• 150g Caster/Superfine Sugar
• 150g Butter or Cake Marg (I use Stork SB)
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• few teaspoons of milk.
• vanilla to taste
• food colouring (I used yellow and red)

Icing Ingredients:

• 60g Milk Chocolate
• 130g butter (130g is about 1 cup)
• 130g icing sugar
• 60ml (1/3 of a cup) double or heavy cream
• just under a teaspoon Maple Syrup
• and I put in a cap of cognac because I’m a drunkard j/k

Method

1. Add the flour, sugar, butter then eggs to your mixer. Mix untill smooth. Add your vanilla and then milk till you have a nice dropping consistency. In hotter climates you will have a loose batter. Add the yellow colouring to the mix and blend well, not too much colouring though you don’t want it flourescent.
2. Now fill a prelined tray with one table spoon full of mix each liner.
3. Now add a little more yellow and a drop of red to get orange if like me you didn’t buy orange colouring… I went for a sunset orange kind of colour.
4. Add another table spoon to each liner. You can be neat and try and get them smooth but I didn’t bother just dumped it on top! The cups should be pretty full.
5. Bake for around 12-15 minutes at 180c gas mark 4 or until well risen and brown.
6. Remove and allow to cool a few minutes before putting on a rack.

Now for the icing.

1. Melt the chocolate and add to the mixer with the syrup. While it’s churning and a little of your sugar then add the softened butter. If your butter is unsalted add a touch of salt.
2. Add the rest of your sugar and mix well!
3. Add the cream bit by bit while the mixer is still on. If needed add a little more sugar to firm it up. I added a little yellow colouring to get the caramel colour.

Two toned!

So much to do and not enough time… So what do I do? I blog! Actually I’m waiting for cupcakes to come out of the oven. Because I’m so tired though I’m making rookie mistakes :(. Oh well I’m gonna smother them in icing any who.

I’m not really looking forward to the party now. My sister and I had a falling out last night. She was sposed  to make a scrapbook for the bride to be and I was helping her, by helping I mean I was doing most of the work while she chatted, ate and drank. Well she’s had 3 weeks to make this thing and last night she is rushing to finish it. So I’m cutting and mounting photo’s then she has the cheek to moan at me it’s not how she wanted it! So I tell her do it yourself then! (Ok, maybe I didn’t use those words…) and she get’s in

a huff and leaves. By this time it was 9 o’clock, I had already made my gift, redid my gift cos I got glue on it :S baked and iced 50 sugar cookies, fed Ken and my sister trial cookies, been shopping to get ingredients and the icing bags I had to order in…. AND I still had to bake 36 cupcakes and ice them, relax my hair and iron my dress.

Grrrr so ungrateful! To top it off she never even said thanks for the work I did on it. I won’t go on about it but I am so annoyed it will spoil the day cos I know she won’t just let it lie… sigh! Oh wells.

I’m all done nowapart from getting dressed and icing cupcakes. The nozzle I ordered hasn’t arrived yet. If it doesn’t come before they have to be collected they’re just getting splatted quick fast lol. Ooh it just came right now this minute! Best go ice cupcakes! (The icing is so yummy it’s all I’ve eaten today :S)

Bit of a late one today. I did promise myself I would try and blog every monday and every friday so here I am!

I am absolutely exhausted! I’ve spent all evening baking and icing. 24 cupcakes and too large cakes (which will become a victoria sponge tomorrow, I swear I make too many of those!) and that’s not including having to run to the shops a total of 6 times for ingredients I forgot or ran out of :S. I feel so happy to be able to relax! I bought a new petal nozzle in a decent size and I’ve improved no end yay! I didn’t but one of those rose pin things I just used a wine glass with a flat bottom. I think it worked just as well.

Yes that’s my fridge I am too tired for pretty photos and I was not sure I’d get a chance to take any tomorrow. Richard is coming at 10:30 (!!!) to get both sets of cakes. So up early for me yomorrow to finish. Oh and my kitchen looks like a bomb hit it. Not good!

I also finished a really cute gift set.

The lady that requested it wanted something that could go for a boy or a girl.

I’m too exhausted to blog any more. So I’ll leave you here.

I made cupcakes!

I found some oh-so-cute Donna Hay cupcake mixes in Sainsbury’s and I had to get some. The adorable little cases sold it for me. At 99p each they were a bargain for 12 large cupcakes. Was going to make them for my friends birthday but she was being fussy. So yesterday evening to stave off the boredom I made the chocolate batch. I bought lemon coconut ones too…

They were very easy and made monster sized cupcakes the size of small muffins. My only small gripe is that they didn’t exactly fill the cup cake trays like on the box. I think I may try making some of her recipes from scratch instead and see how nice they come out. The button thingies are sweet but entirely inedible! :))

I also finished the booties off yesterday morning while watching the Prestige (Which was really good!) god knows why I woke up at 6 am!!

All priced, boxed and on Ebay already. They don’t sell for much but they keep me amused.

I prefer this pattern with the crochet strap.