Rose and Earl Grey Cupcakes

My friend make a request for some cupcakes - rose and earl grey. The base is a normal earl grey cupcake and the frosting has a light rose water scenting.

Unlike last weeks disasters, these turned out really well. Its absolutely the easiest kind of cupcake to make - boil some milk, pop in 4 teabags and let them simmer. Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then add flour and milky tea. Viola! Recipe comes from the Primrose Bakery book which I really love. Ironically I was a little disappointed with the actual bakery when I went down to London, but the cupcakes that come from the book are fab. Its where I got my 'staple' recipes for lemon, rose and these. And those are three of my favourites.

Nearly ran out of frosting (it's meant to be spread on, not piped) but JUST got enough out the end of it. Phew! Its always a bit of a worry when you make coloured frosting because there's no way you'd ever get the colour to exactly match with another batch!!

Chocolate and Coffee Loaf

Its been yet another weekend full of baking.


Yesterday I spent the day making applesauce spice cupcakes for my aunts birthday today and then tonight I've made the Chocolate and Coffee Loaf from Hummingbird's Cake Days book. I remembered late this evening that I'd promised to make some 'thank you' cookies for a friend's dad tomorrow but because of the solid two weekends of baking, I didn't have any plain flour left so it became the gift of cake!

It was actually really simple to make (and thank goodness for that because I was shattered...). SR flour, brown sugar, cocoa, eggs, butter, a tablespoon of coffee and milk. Lined a loaf tin and that was it!!

Just waiting for it to cool now so I can slice it and pop it into a box for him. Lets hope it's all nice and consistent all the way through!!

Third time's the charm...

The weekend has been a total disaster for my baking. I wrecked a batch of red velvets on Friday, ballsed up a batch of muffins for my dad and then tonight when I made these double lemon cupcakes, the original bases went all wonky and gross and starting to come away from the cases.

Breaaaaathe.....

Except I didn't. I totally flipped out and got upset. Must stop doing that.

So in the end I made a batch of rose flavoured bases and topped them with the lemon frosting and some flowers. They've ended up looking sort of okay but if I'd had more time I'd have rather done something prettier on top.

They're for my boyfriend's meeting tomorrow - hope his colleagues like them. :)

Red Velvet Explosion

It doesn't always go right when I bake. I mean I have a pretty good idea when things are all going to pot, but this time I'm not even sure what I did wrong! But last night it certainly did....

My friend had asked me to make 20 red velvet cupcakes with white frosting for her son's birthday party. I used the recipe from Cake Days and doubled it. Hummingbird reckons the batch would result in 12-16 cupcakes so I make two batches together. Everything was fine until I added the cocoa powder/red colouring/vanilla to the mixture and it, uh, didnt mix.

It's a little difficult to see but there were specks of cocoa and red food colouring that didn't quite mix with the rest of it. I wasn't happy with it but thought I'd bung them into the oven to see if it would disperse when cooking and it may not be noticable. It was.

The little pockets of dye must have just exploded in the oven and resulted in a rather messy batch of cupcakes. I was really disappointed - mainly because I'd wasted 2x the ingredients for red velvet cupcakes and a good portion of my evening. I also discovered the old Kenwood Chef from the 50s might be great, but it's mix speeds of 'still' and 'fast' don't always cut it.

So I popped out to Tesco to buy more ingredients and started again. Except this time I just made one batch with the intention of doing the rest this morning.

Shockingly, the batch that was meant to make 12-16 actually resulted in 23!!

It looks a little bit like Heinz Tomato Soup but it can assure you it didn't taste that way!!

They came out the oven looking pretty good. A couple had 'bubbled' at the edge a little but they to tend to do that a little if you overfill the cases. I've adopted the method of using an ice cream scoop to make sure the sizes are consistent and it's really worked.

I waited this til morning to make the frosting as I like to frost them right after it's made. I used double the amount of vanilla frosting that the recipe calls for because I piped it on, rather than spreading it as they suggest. But that's what my friend wanted. :)

I'm not going to lie - I'm not keen on the frosting. I thought it looked a little amateur but there wasn't much I could do. I wasn't sure if it was the consistency of it or the fact I was using a new nozzle but I really didn't like the way they came out. My friend was pleased with them though when I delivered them today and they looked much better when displayed on the trays she picked out.

Just hope the birthday boy is pleased with them.

One Way Or Another...

Next up on my list of things to try was blondies. I do love brownies but find them a tad clawing. So thought the mixture of white chocolate and pecans may suit my palate a little more. I took the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book and was determined to follow the recipe to the letter. Unfortunately they didn't turn out perfectly.

150g of white chocolate was to be melted with 125g of butter over a pan of boiling water.

Then add 150g of caster sugar and stir briskly.

Add 200g of sifted flour and 2 eggs to the mixture, continuing to stir to make sure it doesn't turn into scrambled eggs. It will seperate a little (looks a little like oil on the mixture) but don't worry - it's fine.

Add 100g of pecans (the recipe called for 120g but I only had one bag!) and combine.

Line a tray that measures 33cm by 23cm by 5cm with grease proof paper and pour the mixture in.

Bake at 170 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Sadly as you can see they didn't really turn out like the blondies in the recipe book....

I was worried they were going to be very dry because the top was very browned. I cut them into 12 peices and the inside is actually really lovely and moist.

Shall definitely try them again at a slightly lower temperature. Although the recipe calls for 170degrees, I know my oven runs a little high so dropped it to 155 and checked after 35 mins. However it still looks as though I need to tweak it a little next time to get the same texture on top that Hummingbird have got. But I'm not too worried - they tasted delicious!!

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 9 (however they were pretty big - you could reasonably cut them into 15 peices and then they'd be 7pp).

Ginger Shortbread

I absolutely loathe and deteste ginger. All kinds of ginger. In everything.

So when my colleague mentioned she was taking some ginger shortbread to our other colleague in the states when she travels to the sales meeting next week, stupidly I offered to make it as opposed to her buying mass produced stuff. It was stupid for two reasons.

A) I hate ginger. See above.
B) I've only ever made shortbread once before.

And both of those problems sort of showed themselves tonight when I came to make it. Sadly its turned out very crumbly and I'm concerned it's not going to make the flight to New York very well. It may taste nicer than store bought stuff but there's a reason the stuff you get in Baxters is designed to travel!

I used the recipe from The Essential Baking Cookbook which called for both ground and crystalised ginger. Initially I didn't have any crystalised ginger and considered making it without, but thought if I was going to do it I'd do it right. So off I popped to the shops for some.

As you can probably imagine, it wasn't exactly a difficult recipe. Just your normal shortbread recipe with ground ginger and ginger peices thrown in. But, as I said above, the shortbread came out very buttery and crumbly (and difficult to split up) but my boyfriend said it tasted pretty good.

Also I felt a bit like a chef with a common allergy - it was virtually impossible for me to taste it as I made it. It wouldn't have mattered how 'nice' it tasted, I'd have thought it tasted vile.

Note to self: stop offering to make things for people unless you're certain you can do it properly.

Cuckoo's Bakery in Edinburgh

Yesterday we went to Cuckoo's Bakery in Dundas Street because I've been wanting to try it for a while. I was told about them when their website went up and have looked over it since they opened on Valentines Day this year.

I absolutely loved how kitchy it was inside and how homely it all looked. The owner chatted to us for a while and explained it took a while to find the display case they use for their cupcakes but I'm glad they held out. Its a large haberdashery unit with glass to let you see the cupcakes inside.

The cupcakes were delicious too - I had an Elvis which was banana and chocolate chip base with a peanut butter frosting. Absolutely delicious.The cake was a touch denser than I was expecting but the peanut butter frosting was absolutely beautiful. There was a huge amount of choice on offer and I was very torn as to which cupcake to choose. Ultimately I brought home a Black Bottom Cupcake and  Red Velvet to munch on with my friend later.

We ate the 'leftover' cupcakes this morning after breakfast and were really impressed at how good they still were 24 hours after we bought them. The Black Bottom had the delicious surprise of gooey chocolate cream in the middle. Always a winner with me.

Needless to say, I loved their cupcakes at Cuckoo's Bakery. Easily the best cupcakes I've had from a bakery in Edinburgh and I'd heartily recommend them.