Cupcakes for spring

I am so excited about the arrival of Spring and I love the weather at the moment, it's such a lovely time of year. These are some pictures of the cupcakes I have made in the last few weeks to celebrate the arrival of lighter nights, warmer weather and all things spring like!



I went to the Country Living Spring fair and had a great time, there was some lovely exhibits and people's creativity was just gorgeous. There are so many things I want to buy!

Honey and oat breakfast muffins

I made some breakfast muffins that are great to munch on for breakfast. They are made from honey, raisins and oats and are just the perfect way to start your day and to eat on the way if you don't have time for breakfast. Just grab and go!

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.

Apple Muesli Slices

It's been such a busy couple of months for me, what with Christmas and starting a new job I've really been feeling quite stressed recently. I love weekends so much and really try to make use of every second and make the time last as long as possible. I think one of the reasons I enjoy baking so much is that I find it so relaxing and calming and I really enjoy eating what I've made during the following week at work!

I started the year thinking it's time for the new year diet. Two days later I decided 'baking wanabee' and 'dieter' don't really add up well and decided to stick to running instead. Good plan I think. I have made a few resolutions this year (none of which are anything to do with the word diet). One is to try and source healthier products for myself and my home. I've started with mineral make-up, lush natural face wash and organic shampoo. Good start! The second is to try and spend the year perfecting the perfect cupcake recipes. I found this really cool website: www.cupcakefetish.com which has loads of reviews on cupcake shops and it got me thinking. So, i'm going to taste and sample all different cupcakes from shops around London and spend many an hour in the kitchen trying out different methods and ingrediants.

I know everyone, likes to have a healithy start to the new year and so I started my January baking with these apple muesli slices (see pic above). I didn't really follow a recipe, i just grabbed a bowl and threw in anything I could find: raisins, sunflower seeds, oats, honey, muesli and a bit of butter and baked it in the oven - they are perfect 'pick-me-ups' for the first weeks back at work.

This afternoon I am going to make carrot and orange soup for dinner followed by fruit and marizpan cupcakes. Bliss!

Magnolia Bakery - NYC

Happy 2009! I had a great Christmas and New Year and hope you did too.

Before I start my New Year baking, I wanted to show you my pics of Magnolia Bakery in New York. We were lucky enough to visit our friends there in November but I was so busy posting about Christmas baking I never had time.

Magnolia bakery is where Carrie went to buy a cupcake in SATC and that is what started the cupcake trend. It was like a dream, the shop was full of cupcakes and larger cakes and cookies and the choice of flavours was just mouth watering delicious! I had the one above in the right hand corner. It was topped with cream cheese and autumn sprinkles and I honestly have never tasted anything like it. It tasted divine. My friend got the one of the left (the cream one) and it was a red velvet cupcake with traditional whipped vanilla icing. Heaven. I couldn't believe how red the sponge was. Deep, dark, smooth, velvet red.

Other flavours included pumpkin cupcakes with maple cheese frosting, german chocolate with coconut-caramel-pecan icing and coconut cupcakes with meringue icing. I wish I could have tried them all!

And just to make your mouth water a little bit more, other totally gorgeous american offerings in the bakery included: pecan pie, bundt cakes, brownies, blondies, whoopi cookies, pumpkin spice cake and devil's food cake.

They really were the best things I've ever tasted. If you go to NY you must try these cakes! And what a cute interior...