I have recently died my hair red and am about to start my dream job.
I like reading, baking, sports, shopping, charity fundraising and day trips.
That's enough about me.
Recent bakes have included chocolate orange cupcakes, Jamaican rum and ginger cake, marmalade cake and biscuits.
The chocolate orange cupcakes were a dark chocolate cake base, with orange syrup drizzled over while still warm. They were then topped with a white chocolate and orange buttercream icing. It was my first attempt at piping icing and I thought they looked quite messy. It was fun though and is a skill I'm going to improve! The orange flavour in the cakes didn't come through as much as I'd hoped but once improved I'll post the recipe. Here's the finished article. My camera quality isn't great!
The Jamaican rum and ginger cake was a bake I did for Clandestine Cake Club and was inspired by Usain Bolt and the Jamaican Olympic team who trained in Birmingham prior to the Olympic Games. That took two attempts as the first cake came out too dark, and on tasting had too much treacle in. I changed the quantities a little and the second cake came out looking much better. It seemed to go down well at CCC so I was very pleased indeed! It was a very dark and sticky cake, and wasn't very sweet. There was a definite kick of rum! To see a photo of this cake look up 'Clandestine Cake Club' and find the write up of the Birmingham event 'Inspired by...'.
Biscuits aren't very exciting, but I will tell you they were delicious, and here is a photo of me and boy, 25, enjoying them with a Friday night drink! I may include the recipe in a future post as they were so scrummy. A very quick and easy bake!
Finally the marmalade cake... A recipe I haven't tried before, and a cake I'm unlikely to eat as I hate marmalade. It's for the Macmillan event 'World's biggest coffee morning', so I'm hoping it tastes okay. It's still waiting to be iced, but here's a sneak preview...
To fuel my passion for baking me and boy went to the Cake and Bake show at Earl's Court in London on Saturday. It was a fantastic day out, and we saw lots of baking celebs, from competitors on the GBBO to the one and only Paul Hollywood! I only have a few grumbles about the day...
1) Too many people. Was almost impossible to get near the stalls and the queues for the cafes/toilets... THE QUEUES!
2) Food was far too expensive. No sandwich is worth £5.
3) Too much emphasis on cake decorating/cupcakes/sugarcraft.
Having said that, I loved the bread making demos as it's something I'm not very good at, and picked up lots of tips and tricks. We also purchased a cake wire cutter, a rotating cake stand and some goodies from the Macmillan stall.
Looking forward to Cake and Bake 2013 in Manchester, and hope they take note of the feedback from this year!
Must go and bake some more goodies for my hungry family x
