“Well-behaved women rarely make history” ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Salted Caramel and Toffee Cupcakes

Posted on July 15, 2012 by WeightWars

This has to be pretty much my favourite cupcake recipe EVER. It’s a big statement but wow these are amazing. They sound like they will be really really sweet but they aren’t, the flavour is quite subtle and the icing is some of the best I have ever had.

You Will Need For The Cake:

175g unsalted butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar
100g Dulche De Leche
3 Eggs Beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
175g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
a large pinch of salt
2-3 tablespoons milk
75g all butter toffees, chop them

You Will Need For The Topping:

150g Caster Sugar
150ml Double Cream
Two large pinches of sea salt
200g unsalted butter at room temperature

Pre Heat the oven to 190C / Gas 4 / 350F

Whisk the butter and the sugar until pale and light, stir in the dulche de leche gently. You should get a caramel coloured light mix. Gradually add the eggs, mixing well between each addition scraping all the mix in. Add the vanilla and mix again.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt until well mixed. Gradually add to the egg mix, start adding the milk with the flour mix. Mix it until smooth.

Divide the mixture between the paper cases until they are two thirds full. Add the chopped the toffees on top of the mix. Bake for around 20 minutes or until well risen.

Take them out and cool them off. While they are doing that you can make up the topping. This is the best bit.

Put the sugar in a small, heavy bottomed pan, with one tablespoon of water over a low heat. DO NOT STIR. The sugar will gradually dissolve all by itself. Raise the heat and cook until the sugar is a deep amber colour. Remove from the heat and add the cream and the salt. The caramel will bubble a great deal and harden but do not panic. Stir stir stir and the caramel will soften and melt in to the cream and become one.

Photobucket

Leave the caramel to cool and pop over to another worktop. Beat the butter until fluffy, gradually add the caramel cold and beat until smooth. I added some of the toffee pieces that were left over to the mix too as well. Pipe it on to your cakes, sprinkle the toffees on top and chow it all down because it’s gorgeous.

Candy Floss Cupcakes

Posted on July 9, 2012 by WeightWars

What You Need:

Basic Vanilla Cupcake recipe
Pink Food Colouring (Optional)
Candy Floss
1 Amount of Vanilla Frosting

What You Do:

Make up your vanilla cupcake batter. Compact the candy floss in to a cup or mug and then break it up in to the made up batter. I added a little pink food colouring too. Don’t overmix it just fold in the candy floss.

Empty the mix in to awaiting cupcake liners, muffin trays, fairy cakes, whatever you want really. I added a little puff of candy floss to the top of each batter mix and popped it all in the oven. Bake as per the vanilla cupcake recipe.

Make up the vanilla frosting and this time you need some water and the candy floss (or make a cream based frosting which I did) and melt down the candy floss in to a liquid. Then add it / mix it in to the frosting mix. Add to a piping bag and pipe on in your favourite shape. I added some candy floss on top of the frosting.

Then….Enjoy!

Tie Dye Cupcakes

Posted on June 29, 2012 by WeightWars

So the other day I had a bake sale to raise money for Leukaemia Charities at the Man’s work, it was great and we raised £90 in a morning. Not bad going huh?

So according to the lovely people at Mans work the tie dye cupcakes were a big hit, when I instagrammed the picture of them plenty of people asked how did you do it so I thought I would explain. I have to admit they are really pretty and I do love them.

So how do you do it?

You need, a doubled up mix of plain vanilla cupcake batter and a double up mix of frosting. I won’t post a recipe cause you can just use your fav one, as long as the cake is light in colour it will work, obviously the more white it is the better the colours will look. You’ll need a Piping bag too. Colourings. You’ll really need them.

What do you do

First divide your cake mix up in to four bowls, colour each one individually. I used paste colourings because they seem to be brighter but if you wanted more subtle colours then you would be able to use any kind.

The absolutely most important thing to remember is that you NO NOT STIR the colours, just let them sit there all splotchy. They all blend together as one and you get brown not coloured. Bake as the recipe determines.

While they are baking make up your frosting mix. Again split in to four bowls, colour each one the same colours that you coloured the cakes with. Once you’ve pulled the cakes out of the oven and they’ve cooled completely you can start the super pretty piping.

This is where it gets really fun, I loved this bit, you grab your piping bag and put a dollop of each colour around the outside of the bag, again it’s really important that you do not stir the colours, just put a dollop on the outside of the bag. I didn’t fill it up I just added the colours and kept refilling as I used it.

When you squeeze the bag the colours come out and you get the tie dye effect, they will all be different and it really does look really pretty.

Cake Pops

Posted on June 26, 2012 by WeightWars

Cake Pops, they are totally the newest cake thing on the block, when whoopie pies and cupcakes fail Cake Pops take over, plus they are smaller and so a little treat rather than the mammoth treat that cupcakes can turn out to be. I have to say I’m only a fan if someone else is making them! They take a bit of practice and patience but they are well worth it.

So I thought I would do a step by step guide so that you can have a good idea of what makes up a cake pop and how they come together, however fiddly they are simple.

First bake yourself a basic cake, a moist cake is helpful but honestly it doesn’t matter.

You will need:

A Basic Cake – Either Devils Food Cake or Sponge Cake
Some Buttercream Icing
Sticks
Decorations
Either some Candy Melts or Melted Chocolate

What you need to do:

Make your basic cake and let it cool. Break it up in to peices and either rub chunks together and make cake crumbs or put them in a blender. I made a sponge cake and used natural colouring to make it purple.

I totally cheated and purchased a tub of buttercream you could make your own if you wanted for the purposes of these I tend to buy it.

Start mixing the buttercream in to the crumb mix a dessert spoon at a time until the mixture starts becoming a big ball of cakeyness.

Start to work the mix in to lots of balls.

Then pop them in the fridge. While they are cooling it’s ideal to start getting your coating of choice melted and ready for them. I’ve done these with chocolate and candy melts and both are good, the candy melts are great fun and good colours.

This bit can make or break your process. Make sure your covering is completely melted and at a good consistency, and get your balls out the fridge *snigger*. You need your sticks here as well, you can buy cake pop plastic lolly sticks or wooden sticks. Dip them in the coating pop them in to the ball about half way, no further. This bit is vital, don’t stir the balls in the coating, dip them, roll them, but don’t stir them. They tend to collapse if you stir them.

Then pop them in something that will allow them to stand up, I find Florists oasis really helpful and then decorate while the coating is still wet.

For inspiration if you fancy the cake pop challenge I suggest you check out Bakerella who is the queen of internet pops.

Go forth and make little cakes!

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Posted on June 20, 2012 by WeightWars

The perfect summer cupcakes and they are completely amazing, honestly we are in taste sensation territory. They are perfect for a picnic or summer party, post BBQ scrummyness too. You lose all dignity eating them but it’s totally totally worth it! It’s really important to use fresh strawberries to add moistness, I found these cooked nicely in around 17 mins too (fan assisted) so keep an eye on them. They are really light and the frosting really compliments.

I LOVE this recipe, I’ve amended it from a Hummingbird Bakery one.

You Will Need:

Cupcakes

120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter (room temp)
120ml whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
12 large strawberries chopped in to small pieces

Cream Cheese Frosting

300g icing sugar sifted
50g unsalted butter (room temp)
125g cream cheese, cold (I used full fat Philli because the low fat is too runny)

What you need to do…

Now the recipe says 200g digestive biscuits but personally I think this is mad! It’s just for decoration so about 5 would be enough.

So whack the oven on at 170C (Gas 3) to pre heat.

Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter in a bowl and beat slowly until you get a sandy consistency.

Pour in the milk and vanilla extract in the bowl and beat them together until smooth (make sure that you scrape in stuff around the ages so all of the ingredients are mixed in and smooth). Add the egg and beat well for a few minutes to make sure everything is well mixed and smooth.

Divide the chopped strawberries between your paper cases. I put a dollop of mix in the bottom of the cup before I put the strawberries in to stop them sticking to the bottom and soggying up the paper cases. Fill the cake cases 2/3 full and pop in the oven for 20-25 minutes (although our fan assisted was closer to 15 minutes).

Photobucket

Leave to cool in the tray slightly and then pop on to a cooling rack to cool for a while. Roughly smash up some digestives and then put them in a food processor until fine in texture (it’s not in the recipe but I added a bit of ginger to spice it up). Put them to one side.

The Frosting

Beat the icing sugar and butter together, it should come together but not be smooth, more of a sandy consistency.

Add cream cheese all in one go and beat until completely incorporated. You need a medium – high speed.Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy (around 5 minutes) but don’t over do it because it can go runny quickly.

Decorate with your digestive biscuits.

Best Carrot Cake Recipe In The World {Probably}

Posted on June 18, 2012 by WeightWars

So this recipe has got to be my all time favourite carrot cake recipe, it’s the perfect balance of flavour with moistness and it’s healthy cause it’s got a tonne of carrots in. Right? Anyway I heard if you eat it standing up all the calories fall out and you burn more just holding the cake up. As always you can download and print the recipe here.

So to make the best carrot cake ever you will need:

300g Soft Light Brown Sugar
3 eggs
300ml of Nut oil/Sunflower oil
300g Plain Flour
1 Teaspoon of Bicarb of Soda
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoon Ground Ginger
1/2 Teaspoon of Salt
1/4 Vanilla Extract
3-4 Carrots grated (around 300g of carrot before it’s grated)
Two Handfuls of Raisins
100g Shelled Walnuts, chopped
Extra Shelled Walnuts to decorate the cake with

2 round cake tins lined with greaseproof paper on the bottom

For the Frosting You Need

450g Icing Sugar
75g Unsalted Butter
190g Cream Cheese (always use full fat) COLD

So what you gotta do….

First, whack your oven on at 170C (325F) or Gas Mark 3 depending on your oven of course.

Put your sugar, eggs, and oil in a large bowl and mix and beat until all the ingredients are well mixed. The mixture sometimes slightly splits don’t panic if it does.

In a separate bowl put the flour, bicarb, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, salt, and vanilla extract. Slowly add it to the oil mixture and it will start to become thicker. It does get really thick. Don’t panic.

Stir in the grated carrots, raisins and walnuts until they are evenly distributed.

Pour (if you can – spoon if you can’t) the mix in to your cake tins and smooth over with a pallet knife. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown yadda yadda yadda.

While they are doing their thing in the oven whip up the frosting. Plop all the icing sugar and butter in a bowl. With a fork or hand whisk start to mix them together, just until the mix is a little wet, if you try to mix it straight away you’ll have a huge snow storm on your hands and quite likely your worktop, your clothes, your ceiling and possibly your cat if they are in the room. Once you have the mix slightly damp then add the cold cream cheese to the mix. Blend that sucker until it’s all come together. Beat it some more until light and fluffy, don’t overmix though because it’ll separate. Yuck. It’s a delicate balance so pay attention.

Leave the cakes to cool slightly before tossing them on a wire cooling rack. When the cakes are cold, put one cake on a flat plate or cake stand, spread cream cheese frosting on top of one cake and squish it with the other half.

Now the fun bit. Cover the cake with frosting. All over and generously. This frosting is pretty amazing and totally approved by the most important and revered taste tester in the world.

Decorate the top with your left over walnuts and if you like cute little white chocolate carrots from Sainsburys. It looks really nice with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of the cake.

Guilty Pleasure: Paris

Posted on June 15, 2012 by WeightWars

So one of my major major soft spots is for Paris. It’s full of tourists, it’s not that clean, and it’s expensive as hell but it’s so beautiful and I don’t mean the Eiffel Tower or the Champs Elysée but just the buildings and the streets and the iron work.

A few years ago the man took me to Paris for our wedding anniversary, I wore stupid shoes and ended up with blisters as big as my heel which was agony but it was so beautiful I didn’t care. We wandered the Musee D’Orsay, walked up and down the Champs Elysée, pottered through the back streets, and stayed in the tiniest, cheapest, hotel we could find. We explored the Metro, rode buses, and loved all of it.

There is something magical about Paris, it’s not just the antiquated sense of Romance, it’s the amazing things that happen there, the little things you see that make you think about all the wonderful things in your life. I snapped this one last we were there, it makes me smile still every time I see it, what an amazing day for those people.

Something I love about Paris is that there is just art everywhere, the artists on the streets are sometimes really amazing and I adore just exploring the city, I talk a little French as does the man, it’s enough to get us by on the streets and get us a table at restaurants. I’ve never actually gone to Paris with enough money to spend on art so I can’t wait to go back and be able to actually get something that I like.

Lets face facts here. Something I’ve never really admitted. Ever. I love Romance, I love it. I love Champagne and laughter, I love strawberries and cosy dinners on a table for two, I love intimacy and spending time with your best friend in the world who happens to be the love of your life. I’m a sucker for a romantic story, I love it, hearts, twinkly lights and everything in between. Paris has it in SPADES. It’s all about the Champagne, it’s all about the Opera, the Moulin Rouge, and the nightly light show.

I have a serious soft spot for a bit of love and whether it’s mine or other peoples it never fails to bring a real smile to my face, I mean really you’d have to be a serious sad cynic to not have a part of you go a bit mushy at a wedding, or when you see a couple hand in hand walking along. It’s special, that magical thing that can’t be seen or understood by anyone but the two people it’s between.

Paris has a huge chunk of very happy memories for me and the part of me that loves Paris forgets about the blisters, the pain and the pigeons and just remembers that sense of happy that I, we, feel there.

Outside of the romance there is amazing things to see, I love the museums, seeing those pieces of art so revered by so many, the Mona Lisa is in Paris, Starry Night by Van Gough, amazing Renaissance pieces, furniture that is a work of art in itself. It’s estimated that 30,000 artists live in Paris, and you can see it everywhere. I can’t explain it but I love the feeling of art all around, I’m not an artist, I can’t draw, I’m a lousy painter, but I can see what I like and I know what I love.

And really the museums are beautiful themselves…

I can’t wait to plan our next trip and really enjoy exploring the city in comfortable worn in shoes that don’t cripple me after the first day. I look forward to doing it some 50lbs lighter so that I can really start to enjoy the experience of exploring rather than struggling around the city.

I can’t wait to see the things we didn’t manage to last time. I can’t wait to feel the love again!

Strawberry Strudel Afternoon Cakes Recipe

Posted on June 13, 2012 by WeightWars

This is a pretty recent addition to my cake making but they are very tasty despite not being all that pretty or difficult to make. They really are simple to make too which is great for me, guilty pleasure #28736 = easy cakes.

You can download a printable version of this lovely recipe here

For The Cake

75g Sugar
60g Butter at room temperature
1 egg
550g Flour
20g Baking Powder
teaspoon Salt
235 ml Milk
Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
355g Strawberries, chopped

For The Strudel

60g Sugar
30g Flour
Teaspoon Heaped Cinnamon
30g Softened Butter

Sorry for the weird amounts, this was originally handed to me in cups so I’ve done some rough calculations, this is what works for me.

Pre Heat Oven to 190C / Gas 5 / 375F & grease a muffin tin or pop some liners in it.

Put the sugar and butter in a bowl and cream those bad boys together.

Add your egg and beat it right in to the Sugar/Butter mix.

Separately mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, add it slowly to the butter mix alternating with the milk.

Stir in the Vanilla.

Now you have a choice now, you could blend the strawberries in to a puree (save a few) or you could just chop them up, when you’ve decided fold the strawberries in to your mix. If you decided to purée the strawberry dip the ones you held back in a mix of sugar and cinnamon.

Fill the muffin tin/liners with your mix and if you held back some strawberries pop sugared ones on top of the mix. Put the muffin tin to one side.

In a bowl mix the Strudel mix together with your fingers until you get a crumble texture. Sprinkle the crumble texture over the top of the muffin mix in your tin and pop it in the oven for around 20minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

So I warned you these bad boys aren’t pretty but they taste divine so it doesn’t matter. I call them my afternoon cakes because they are great for a little sit down with a drink and a natter with your nearest and dearest. Now if you popped the strawberry on top in my experience, the cake kind of collapses in on itself, you could add the strawberry half way through the cooking time which might help with this, but I kinda like the result of the little cakes with the strawberry in the middle.

If you don’t add the strawberry they usually look like this

Either way they were a huge hit with my boy and kept him quiet for a golden 6 minutes. Priceless really.

Stationery

Posted on June 11, 2012 by WeightWars

So my first guilty pleasure I’m going to talk about is Stationery. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just I love pretty stationery, I will happily pay more for a USB stick if it’s pink or has a cool design (USB are so modern stationary!), I stockpile cards as I see them for peoples birthdays that could be 6 months away, I just love stuff that looks pretty.

I think it’s why I like baking too, you can create really beautiful things from a set of raw ingredients, stationery is an essential product which you can make beautiful (or the magical elves in the stationary factory can anyway). Modern stationery includes things like computer skins and mouses, iPhone skins and cases, laptop stuff as well as diaries, filofaxes and all kinds of other things.

I could never have a Filofax. I think they are a great little invention but I love the changes that a new year and a new diary brings. One of my most favourite places in shopping land is Paperchase. Some girls get excited about shoes (I do sometimes), others about dresses, me about brightly coloured address books.

Some of my current favourite things one the site are

£3.00

Tickets notebook with elastic closure and special expandable file for storing your tickets and receipts

£5

Large exercise book with Paris design cover

£6

£10.33

£7

Design notebook with polypro cover, elasticated closure, pocket at back for notes and business cards.

£6.50

£6

Now I have a house full of notebooks and journals, but I do love a nice thing or too, it encourages me to write stuff down and keep an accurate diary. I love pretty pens and pretty pen cases. I embrace this and Paperchase merely encourages this little obsession.

Now I start a whole new world of work in September and I’m already stockpiling stationery. I don’t what it is but I am really attracted to pretty things and pretty functional things really do make my life brighter! You can’t buy happiness but you can buy spotty pens and that’s similar.

A pack of 5 fun and colourful retractable pens with gel ink.

£4

Patriotic Cupcakes Recipe

Posted on June 8, 2012 by WeightWars

Now being patriotic is definitely a guilty pleasure. I’m not a great royalist but I can’t get my knickers in a twist about them either, they stand around be rich and generally wait for their eldest to die. So the weekend just gone was the Diamond Jubilee – celebrating the queen being in charge of us for 60 years. Only the second time in history that that has happened. Yay.

The greatest thing about the Jubilee celebrations is that we got a four day weekend. What could be better? Sadly my poor step mother was working the entire thing (she works in a local cafe) so I decided to send over some cupcakes to cheer her up. Guilty pleasure number #38273 I love cheering people up with cake. So I made these over the bank holiday weekend.

The red white and blue would work well for any patriotic American’s out there too, also just general celebrations, the colour combo works really well and is completely adaptable. You can download a printable version of the recipe here.

You Will Need:

60g Unsalted Butter, it needs to be at room temperature.
150g Caster Sugar
1 Egg
10g Cocoa Powder – do not get cheap stuff, I would totally go with Green and Blacks
20ml Red Food Colouring – Dr Oetker is awesome.
1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
120ml Buttermilk – if you don’t have Buttermilk you can make it by getting a tablespoon of white wine vinegar and adding it to milk. Let it stand for 5 minutes. 1 tablespoon of WW Vinegar to 1 cup milk.
150g Plain Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Bicarb of Soda
1 1/2 Teaspoons White Wine Vinegar

For the Icing

300g Icing Sugar
50g Unsalted Butter
125g Cream Cheese – keep it really chilled

This should all make enough for 12 cupcakes, maybe a little more depending on how you decide to ice your cakes.

What you need to do:

Preheat the Oven to 170C / Gas 3

Mix the Sugar and Butter in a mixing bowl until it’s a sandy consistency.

Turn up the speed and add the egg and beat until it’s well mixed together and smoothish.

In a separate bowl mix together the food colouring, cocoa powder, and vanilla extract, it should make a dark paste. I mix it for a while and it makes a great paste, you’ll need to spoon it out of the jar and in to the sugar and butter mix.

Mix the two really well ensuring all the mix is combined including scraping the sides of the bowl. Turn the mixer down and add half the buttermilk, mix some more and then add half the flour. Repeat both until all the buttermilk and flour are mixed together with the butter mix red stuff.

Beat until it’s all lovely and smooth. Add the salt, bicarb and vinegar and beat that sucker again for a few minutes. You should get a lovely glossy mix of reddish gorgeousness.

Spoon that gorgeous looking mix in to paper cases, I usually fill them just over half way and they rise beautifully. Bake them for around 25 minutes, do the skewer test and if it’s clean they are ready.

Leave them for a while to cool and empty them out to a cooling rack until they are fully cooled before icing them with the gorgeous cream cheese icing.

To Make The Icing

Put the icing sugar and unsalted butter in to a bowl and mix – prepare yourself for a storm of icing sugar all over the place to start with. I recommend softening the butter to help this a bit, and an apron on you.

Add the cold cream cheese and beat until they are lovely and smooth, then beat for about 5-7 minutes until it’s lovely and fluffy, it’s a knife edge though, beat too long and it will separate so don’t over do it. Any signs it’s going runny stop immediately. Immediately I tell you.

Icing and decorating these little cupcakes is guilty pleasure #36452 so I’ll explain how I did it, piping bag, closed star nozzle and start from the outside of the cake working inwards and be generous with the icing.

I just added some blue glitter and some little flags that I picked up from my favourite online cake shop, and they were ready!

A whole sea of celebration

Hope you had a happy jubilee weekend !

Guilty Baked Pleasures