Minnie Mouse Cupcakes

So I kinda have a obsession with Disney and last weekend me and my best friend had a baking day including making these cute Minnie Mouse cupcakes.

 Again I used the basic chocolate sponge recipe where all the ingredients weigh the same as the eggs. Please note that the cocoa powder and flour together should also equal the weight of the eggs You can use however much you like, however here is the amount I would roughly use. If the eggs weight 130g then I would do 100g flour and 30g cocoa powder.

We baked the cupcakes and then used the traditional vanilla buttercream icing, which is 250g icing sugar, 80g softened butter, 25ml milk and a drop of vanilla essence all whizzed together in the mixer and then put into a piping bag.

The fun part is the decorating. Minnie's ears are Cadburys Giant Chocolate Buttons and to make the bow we used red fondant icing and white balls (similar to silver balls) for the dots. 

These are very simple and easy cupcakes and ideal if you are hosting a party or to make for someone as a gift.

Disney loving xoxo

Easter Nest Cupcakes

You can tell I am home for the weekend, as the baking begins. I have decided to take the weekend off from Uni and writing my dissertation to enjoy being with my family, and of course doing lots of baking!

Yesterday I make Easter Nest Cupcakes for the family to enjoy.

I used to basic classic sponge recipe as I have explained earlier in this blog. You weigh the eggs, then whatever the eggs weigh, everything except the baking powder and vanilla essence should weigh this too. So my 2 eggs weighed 120g, so my flour, butter and sugar was also 120g - very easy to make cakes this way!!

I divided the mixture between 12 cake cases, not filling them too much as wanted to be able to decorate them!

Once cooled, I made glace icing, iced the cakes and covered them in hundreds and thousands.
I then made butter icing and piped a little nest on top of the cake and placed mini eggs on top.

They looked so cute and tasted good too. I got a little snap happy taking pictures!
Happy Easter! xoxo

A trip to an Alpaca Farm

On Thursday myself and then girls wanted to take a break from the library and enjoy a day out. We had no idea where to go so turned to Groupon for ideas. We are students so a spa day is WAYYYY to expensive and nothing else took our fancy!

Then we found a voucher for a trip for 4 to an alpaca farm on the edge of Sheffield for £10 for 4. It seemed like a bargain! I then found a voucher for 15% off local Groupon deals so it came to £8.50, £2.25 each for a day out for students is perfect.

We drove out of Sheffield to the farm which was on the edge of the Peak District. When we first arrived we were confused and not sure what we were doing or where to go. However we went into the visitors centre and gave the lady our voucher who gave us a token each. The token allowed us to go through the gate and into the farm.

The family started the farm when a family member was ill and it gave something to take her mind off things, the farm has grown and grown since. There were so many alpacas it was crazy! We had bought some feed so fed them and ran away when they spat at us!!!

At the farm there were also some cool wallabies and Shetland ponies and a horse. 

It was a fun day especially as we had a selfie stick to play with so took loads of photos and tried to take selfies with the alpacas too!!

Afterwards we headed back into Sheffield and had tea and cupcakes at Fancie. I had a tasty salted caramel cupcakes and iced caramel latte.

Next we want to go and enjoy afternoon tea at Fancie, it looks excellent value!

Thanks Groupon! xoxo

Sunday Funday

Finally some beautiful weather after two weeks of storms: wind, rain, flooding, hail, snow - Great Britain has seen it all!

My family and I decided to make the most of the glorious weather and go for a walk :)

Now we love going on long hikes and it seems that since before Christmas every weekend we have been on a walk. I love them, being out in the fresh air admiring the beautiful countryside, visiting new places and seeing nature at its finest. We usually try to do a long walk and end up at countryside pub. (In another blog I shall try and remember some of my favourite walks and the pubs to visit!)

Today we didn't have very long as my sister had to go to work, so we decided to stay local. We parked in the small village of Chenies near Chorleywood and enjoyed a walk to the Cock Inn in Sarratt. This time the pub lunch stop was half way through the walk, which was lovely! I had pork and leak sausages served with chips and beans. The perfect traditional pub grub! 

Going slightly off track here but I must admit I am not a fan of these new 'gastropubs' that are springing up these days, rather I am fonder of the traditional English pub serving hearty food. The Cock Inn is definitely a lovely traditional pub!

Anyway it was a lovely walk but very muddy in places (was glad I wore my knee high wellies rather than my ankles ones!), and I thought I would share some photos with you.

The River Chess

Looking up the hill to Sarratt

Lucky I wore my green and pink wellies from Boden - a brilliant purchase, lasted me 4 years so far!!

On returning home I decided to do a spot of baking, I made Mickey Mouse cupcakes. I used glace icing and then using Disney cutters created the Mickey toppers! They were very quick and easy to make and would be perfect for a children's birthday party.

I also made apple crumble. It has been a lovely tradition for my family to have apple crumble on a Sunday in the winter by the fire. Recently I have been making my apple crumbles in individual ramekins and they have been going down a treat. I stew some baking apples with golden caster sugar, I like my apples to be very soft and mushy but others like it still have a crunch to their apples. For the crumble topping I wizzed together in a food processor 59g butter, 50g sugar and 100g self raising flour. The apple crumble in individual ramekins usually take 25 mins in the oven at 180 degrees.

Have a good week xoxo

Cupcakes and Cakes

My favorite thing to do at the weekend after a long week at work is bake, and in particular cakes! I love experimenting with new designs to decorate my cupcakes and also look for inspiration on Pinterest :)

I usually use a simple cake mixture, however one tip that I was once told was to weight the eggs before you start. Two eggs will usually weight around 132-136 grams. Once you have this number the rest is simple, note this number down and all the ingredients (except for the baking powder and vanilla essence/cocoa power) should weight this amount.

Cream sugar and butter together for a good 5 minutes. Add one egg and a teaspoon of the flour, then add the other egg and a teaspoon of flour. Mix all the ingredients together but not for long. The trick is the less you mix the ingredients the fluffier the cake will be. When I first started baking I was told to mix all the ingredients together for as long as possible and my cakes never rose. I then discovered that you should try to mix all the ingredients for as little time as possible!

Anyway hope those couple of tips are useful! Here are a couple of images of my favorite cupcakes and cakes that I have made recently (and there is the picture of the melting snowmen I made at Christmas on my previous post!)

Enjoy xoxo