More cupcakes

I thought I would post up the rest of my cupcakes for you to look at. I made these when I made the flower ones below. These i decorated with silver balls and home-made icing flowers. I've been practising with my piping bag lots recently and I made them by simply using a flower nozzle tube and leaving them to dry over night. They are so easy to make! The difficulty is removing them from the grease-proof paper without breaking them as you can imagine they are extremely delicate!

I just can't express my joy at finally getting the intenet, i've been wanting it for so long now and it's makes life so much simpler and easy. I can log-in whenever I like now! It does mean that i'm slowly getting addicted to facebook but oh well!

I also sprinkled some coloured sugar on them too to add extra effect. Yum yum! I just can't resist a nice cupcake! Pure childish bliss!

Cupcakes for a princess

I'm so happy because as of this morning I now have the internet! Which means I can keep up to date with my blog more and read everyone's blogs that I so love on a daily basis! Woo-hoo! Since I moved here I've beeen going to the library to use the internet (we live next door to one!) but this is so much better! We've even got a brand new spanking desk to work from too so I'm very happy today! Ages ago I bought this beautiful cupcake book called 'The Crabapple bakery cupcake book' but once I had got it home I realized that all the measurements were indeed in Austrailian cups. So I thougt I couldn't use it but now I have a cup I finally got around to trying it out. The recipes are not very simple but I have got the hang of it now! And I've learnt two really great tips for cake baking! One is that is your butter is too hard (i.e. you forgot to take it out of the fridge!) then put it in the microwave for 5 seconds at a time to warm it up. Secondly, if the recipe requires milk (which it did) warm that up in the microwave too as cold milk will cause the mixture to shrink and may result in a tough cake!

I've also been busy trying out the art of sugarcraft. I have found some great sugarcraft books in charity shops and made the roses for the cupcakes using pink sugarpaste. I will try and put a step by step guide on how to make them on my blog soon!

Flapjacks and muesli bars

The last two things I baked I didn't follow any recipes! I made flapjacks and muesli bars. First, the flapjacks. I took a large mixing bowl and rather than weighing everything out, I just poured in lots of oats, added some caster sugar, a few tablespoons of syrup, a touch of honey and then poured some melted butter over the top and mixed it all together and popped it into the oven. I was convinced that the mixture wouldn't stick together but amazingly it did! It also tasted delightful so I was very plesaed with my throw it all in recipe!

Next was the muesli bars (I made these on the same day using the same technique). Out came a large mixing bowl, in went a large amount of rice krispies, followed by some some pumkin seeds, some chopped nuts, a few chopped dried dates, shredded coconut, more syrup and honey, a little more melted butter and I mixed it all together, squashed it down into the tin and left it in the fridge! Wow, I couldn't believe how well they turned out!

The first baking rule my mum taught was 'when baking always measure out the exact ingrediants first!' This is definitely true for all cakes and most biscuits but not flapjack and muesli bars it seems...