Vanilla cupcakes with pretty flowers

Here are my latest cupcakes I made - they are vanilla flavour with white icing and sugarpaste flowers. Aren't they just the cutest things?

Valentines Shortbread hearts

I made these shortbread hearts for my friend who was staying over the weekend, they are so delicious and they really melt in your mouth. They don't take long to bake either and spinkled with red sugar look divine.

All you need is:
150g/6ox plain flour
100g/4oz slighlty salted butter, softened
50g/2oz golden caster sugar
red sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 150c. Put the flour in a mixing bowl and rub in the butter until it forms fine crumbs. (I love this doing this and it's especially easy sat in front of the tv!). Then stir in the sugar. Work the mixture together until it forms a ball and knead it brieflt until smooth. Sprinkle flour onto a work surface and roll out gently, if it starts to split keep pushing it back together. Cut out the desired shapes using a cutter and place them gently on an ungreased baking tray. Keep rolling the mixture out until you have used it all. bake for 35-49 minutes, it should still be pale when you remove from the oven. Cool and then sprinkle with sugar, if you don't have coloured sugar then caster sugar is fine. Perfect to give to your loved ones on Valentine!

Chocolate chip cookies

I love lazy sundays and I just seem to have enough of them! This morning I had a huge bowl of warming porridge with a mug of hot coffee and sat in bed reading the sunday morning papers! Bliss.

This afternoon I made cookies with some red and green chocolate chips that came from America.

To make them you need:
250g/9oz butter, softened
50g/2oz caster sugar
100g/3.5oz light brown sugar
300g/10oz self-raising flour
2 tbsp milk
Chocolate chips - I used a large handful

Simply preheat the oven to 180c and line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Take a large bowl and beat together the butter and sugars. (Yes, 250g is a whole packet of butter but it's worth it!). Once the mixture looks nice and fluffy stir in the flour and milk and stir together using a wooden spoon.

Divide the mixture into small balls and place them on the baking tray leaving enough room to spread. Flatten each one with your finger tips. Bake for 20 minutes and leave them on the tray to cool for 5 minutes before transferring onto a wire rack.

Serve on a cold winter's afternoon like today with a big mug of tea. Lovely.