Lemon sponge cake

Nobody can come and visit me these days without being greeted by some kind of baking welcome! I always try and make sure there are some lovely home baked cakes or biscuits in the house when people come around. I made this cake for my parents who came to stay at the weekend. We had a great weekend together wandering around London and St. Albans in the hot sunshine!

I made this using 4oz margarine, 4oz of caster sugar, 4oz of self raising flour, 2 eggs and a tablespoon of lemon juice to add some zesty goodness. I then added lime juice to the icing sugar so it was a bit of ting and a bit of tang! I love the freshness of lemon and lime and they are perfect such such sunny weather!

You make my day!

I was tagged by the lovely Rosie for a 'You make my day' award! What a lovely thing to recieve. I've decided to pass this tag onto three of my favourite blogs who I read as much as possible.

They are Claire @ Make and Do (Claire was my first friend in the blog world and I love reading about her life in Brighton and all the amazing things she makes).

Marie @ A year at Oak cottage (I dream of escaping to the countryside and love looking at Marie's pictures and the amazing food she cooks).

Anamika @ Sugarcraft-india (Anamika makes the most beautiful cakes)

You all make my day!

No cook chocolate bites

I made these for my friend. She can't eat eggs and this was the only recipe I could find at the time that I thought she would love and would be easy to carry with me on the train. They taste delightful and I would recommend them to anyone who may not know a lot about baking but's wants to make something that is easy and tastes divine.

You can adapt the recipe to include things from your own kitchen cupboard that may not be included in the recipe. I added cherries and seeds to mine.

To make these you will need:
200g/8oz rich tea biscuits (or digestive biscuits if you prefer)
75g/3oz of butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50g/2oz raisins
100g/40z dark chocolate
I also used about 30g of seeds and about 10 glaze cherries chopped up into bits.


Butter a tin, I used a 7 inch sandwich tin. The next step is to crush the biscuits. Place the biscuits in a strong bag, preferably one with a ziplock! Then use a rolling pin to crush the biscuits. This is a great stress reliever and I really recommend it after a day's work! You want the biscuits to look crumbly while some of the them should be in little bits.

Melt the butter and syrup over a low heat and then remove and stir in the cocoa powder, raisins, seeds and cherries if using and then add all the biscuit crumbs. Use a wooden spoon mix it all well together and then spoon it ino the tin and press down.

Melt the chocolate and then pour it over the biscuit mixture and chill in the fridge for about an hour. Chop into little squares and eat. Be warned it is very morish!

Sugar flowers

I made these sugarcraft flowers to decorate my cupcakes and practice my piping bag skills. They are so easy to make but you will need a piping bag with a star nozzle (sizes 12, 8 and 5 should all work well). When creating any patterns with an icing bag you need to make sure that your icing is thick enough so that it will hold its shape when piped. Bear in mind though that if it's too thick it won't squeeze through the tube properly.

To make royal icing you need:

2 egg whites

1ml (1/4 teaspoon) lemon juice

500g icing sugar, sieved

5ml (1 teaspoon) glycerine

First measure out the lemon juice and add it into a bowl with the egg whites. Sift some of the icing sugar into the bowl and mix using a wooden spoon. Stir in more icing sugar until it is of a thick consistency and then beat well. Keep adding more icing sugar until the mixture is thick and will create a sharp peak when you lift the wooden spoon out of the bowl. Then simply add any colouring you wish and spoon it into your piping bag and away you go!

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...