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!

When cupcakes go bad...

So this weekend I didn't make it to either of Outsider Tart's cupcake days (but I WILL next month for sure) as I had to meet Dennis from Ann Arbour y'day and today I wasn't feeling well. Unfortunately I spent a great deal of y'day feeling unwell too and I think a cupcake had something to do with it...gasp!

Myself and Dennis popped into Selfridges while out yesterday and I bought a Lola's lemon cupcake for me and an Oreo for Manny. He loved his (as usual!) but mine was undercooked - the batter was a bit sticky, had a layer of what looked like raw batter and the frosting tasted like plain butter. Pout. I'm cutting back on my cupcake consumption and I really get pouty when one that I have isn't v.nice. I'll be thinking hard before I give Lola's another chance as the last one I had there wasn't that great either - the base always seems a bit stinky/wrong! Bring back the good old Lola's cupcakes please!

Hooray for Oreo cupcakes!

After a long walk through St James Park to Partridges Market we bought a massive feast of Crumbs and Doilies goodies including 4 mini Oreo cupcakes and 2 lemon cupcakes :) As usual they were utterly fantastic - I managed to snarfle one of the Oreo cupcakes while Manny ate the rest (tubby!) and it was really nice and the Oreo frosting was fantastically chocolaty! The lemon one was really nice as well - soft base and lovely lemony frosting - they really are in the top 5 cupcake makers in London! And they definitely have the best sprinkles - today we had some cow ones on one of the Oreo cupcakes, and on Manny's lemon cupcake we had little fishes! Ultra cute and sprinkletastic!

The pink cupcake was bought from outside Partridges store - I think it was part of the store, but I didn't care I just spotted the pink cupcake and had to have it! It was really tasty and the frosting was raspberry flavoured - it tasted very homemade and had a tonne of frosting on!! Luckily we walked LOTS today so it made up for all the frosting :)