Cupcakes

I made these little cuppies for my daughter's cheerleading club open day. They're designed to look like ice creams - they're lovely and summery and look fab when stacked on a cupcake stand.
I made these too but don't love them anywhere near as much as the cute ones above!

And my beautiful girl came third in the cheer contest, I am such a proud Mum!

Lily's 6th birthday - Nigella's birthday custard sponge & real raspberry cupcakes

It was my eldest daughter's sixth birthday earlier this week, it was a school day so her party is coming up. Any birthday celebrated in our home comes with 'My Birthday My Rules', luckily so far our girls haven't realised the extent to which this could work in their advantage so all that was requested was for a couple of gifts to be opened before breakfast & hot dogs for dinner, fine - a nice, easy day for me!
So, off she went to school with a batch of raspberry cupcakes to share - They're actually vanilla cuppies with raspberry frosting, Lily asked for pink frosting so to keep it colouring free I blitzed some raspberries in the blender and whipped them into standard, unflavoured buttercream. I made the mistake of thinking I'd pureed the raspberries for long enough to obliterate any seeds but it turned out crunchy so I spent half an hour forcing it through a sieve, not fun so my advice is to really sieve the raspberries before adding to your buttercream! The frosting (when crunch free) was delicious and I'm planning on trying it on a white chocolate mud cake next, watch this space!

So when Lily was at school her sister and I had a go at making Nigella's birthday custard sponge, she'll have a 'proper' cake on the day of her party but we couldn't let her actual birthday pass without some candles being blown out and I always turn to Nigella for simple but delicious cakes. The custard powder you add to the cake seemed to make a standard sponge cake really moist and springy, my only advice would be to make the chocolate icing in advance and let it cool a bit before spooning on top, that way you still get the oozing down the sides look without loosing the majority of your icing to sit in a puddle around the base.

And Lily blowing out the candles

If you want to have a go at the sponge you can find the recipe here http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/best-birthday-cake-118 or in her book Feast which I highly recommend.

Cupcakes, chocolate variations...

So, I've decided this week to try out some new cupcake flavours and designs, the top is a chocolate caramel cupcake with peanut butter frosting topped with a shard of peanut brittle, peanut butter frosting is amazing, do try it when you get a chance. To the right is a black forest cuppie, dark chocolate filled with morello cherry conserve and topped with ganache and a cherry. At the bottom there's a chocolate with white chocolate chips topped with white chocolate Italian meringue buttercream. Finally on the left is a plain chocolate with milk chocolate Italian meringue frosting.

If you've not tried Italian meringue buttercream yet, you totally should, it's not sickly sweet like a swirl of plain buttercream and it pipes beautifully.

Have a nice weekend, L x