Tuesday 12 October 2010

A whole lotta baking going on

Some of the people who follow my Twitter seem to think I bake a lot. I don't really, but baking is never far from my thoughts. For example in meetings when they're 'downloading' about 'moving in the right direction', 'bottoming out' and 'parking ideas in the carpark', I tend to be sitting updating my list of cupcakes I must bake rather than stir frying ideas in my intellectual wok. There are never enough days to bake all the things I want to and this is when I miss Iron Cupcake - it was a perfect excuse to bake. At least this month we have Cupcake Camp, and the list of ideas for that is v.long.



However sometimes my list gets cast aside when something else takes my fancy and I leave work early to knock up some cupcakes. This usually occurs after a particularly bad day in the office - I find baking soothes me. Last month I spotted some rather cute looking cupcakes in Jamie Magazine. The accompanying story was about a girl, Georgina Bragg, who is a piercing artist by day and a cupcake baker by night. My kinda girl. The recipe was for some very simple, but very tasty lemon cupcakes and as I had  a few lemons mooching round the fridge I decided to make them. I added a little chunk of my new favourite chocolate, Green &  Black's white chocolate into the batter of each cupcake before baking and they were delish! The frosting didn't work as well unfortunately - it tasted really good but didn't stiffen up very well. I took them to work and no-one seemed to notice as they were eaten in seconds!



Slightly less successful were my attempt at the Hummingbird banana cupcakes. The cupcakes turned out well but as you can see the frosting really didn't want to get hard. All I can say it was one of the hotter days of last month!



They did taste really nice, with a banana base which was really moist and flavoursome. I used my favourite caramel Bonne Maman Confiture De Caramel in the frosting and although it didn't set to stay in lovely swirls, it did taste delicious!

Finally, we had a bake sale to raise money for the flood victims in Pakistan last Tuesday so I decided to bake two lots of cupcakes. I made some malted cupcakes with a vanilla and maltester frosting and some good old vanilla. Two seconds into baking my mixer, yes the one I bought just over 3 months ago, broke. So everything was done by hand. Alas I only don't have any picture of the vanilla cupcakes as I was using my phone (the day before my mixer exploded my camera stopped working also..damn), but they were pink and very glittery.


I loaded up a few boxes of cupcakes and schleped them into work in the morning rush hour and I was so happy at how excited everyone got when they saw them - everyone except the 'lady' who organised the sale who didn't say thank you to any of the bakers, and insisted on telling people I'd bought my cupcakes - grrrrr. Jealous much -  her cake was drying than Gandhi's slipper I'm told. My cakes sold out in about 15minutes and I was so happy to receive a lot of emails from my co-workers telling me they enjoyed them and offering to be my taste tester! I think her cake ended up in the bin. All I can say is KARMA!

12 comments:

Unknown said...

I've made the banana ones from hummingbird before and I think they taste more like muffins than cupcakes. I made them as a test batch for the first iron cupcake in june 2009. so a long time ago!

what do you think?

I heart cupcakes said...

Hey Kelly - mine came out a quite light and moist and not really muffin like. I did thin they weren't going to work as the mixture was quite thick but thankfully they seemed ok.

Izzy said...

LOL, I sympathise with the jealous colleagues, my workmates love bake day too!

I heart cupcakes said...

Thanks Izzy - I can't believe some people are so sad!

Baking Addict said...

Sorry to hear about your mixer and camera. Well done on the bake sale! Your cakes look delicious. Jealousy is so ugly, good thing there is karma. I'm really excited about cupcake camp too but can't decide what to make. My list of things to bake gets longer everyday. Iron Cupcake has definitely left a gaping hole in my baking life.

I heart cupcakes said...

Thanks v.much - I have a shiny silver Dualit mixer now but am saving for my Kitchenaid (again!). And I got a nice new camera out of it too :)
I'm the same - can't decide, although I have two ideas that I think are the ones I'm going to practice this weekend. I do wish Samantha would bring it back - it gave you a good reason to test out different ideas

Lisa said...

What beautiful little cupcakes.

I heart cupcakes said...

Thanks ever so much Lisa

blackbookkitchendiaries said...

you have a pretty website, so glad i stopped by:) and the cupcakes are so fab! thank you for sharing sweetie.

I heart cupcakes said...

Thanks BBKD - I'm just stuck on your site drooling over the pavlova!

Manny said...

All those cakes were lush, I never thought I'd enjoy a banana cake but they were lovely. The malted ones were amazing :)

Your cakes go down a storm wherever you bring them and I'm not surprised, you really are talented :) It must be all the love you put into your baking xxx

I heart cupcakes said...

Thanks Manny - my favourite tester by far :)

Love is my secret ingredient..shush ;)