Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

Cupcakes are always my favourite things to bake because theres so many different kinds you can make that you'd never get bored. This time I decided on some toffee cupcakes.

So for these, I used this recipe for cupcakes.

• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 180 g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 80 g unsalted butter
• 150 g muscovado sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

The original recipe had dates in as well but I'm not a huge fan of dates so I opted to leave them out.

Just put everything in to a bowl and mixed well. Then it was placed in cupcake cases and baked for twenty minutes on 180 degrees.

After the cupcakes were made, I used a shop bought toffee sauce and pricked the cakes a few times with a fork before drizzling the sauce over the top of the cakes so it would soak it.

Finally, I made a butter icing by just combining vanilla extract, icing sugar and butter before piping it onto the top of the cakes. They were then decorated with a few chocolate chips and more toffee sauce. Easy!

Smarties and Kit Kat Rainbow Cake

So it was my housemate's 21st birthday and she asked me to make her a cake. I thought to myself, what wonderful creation could I put together for such a monumentous occasion? And this is what I came up with.

For this cake, I had to bake three seperate layers for the inside. Each one would be a different colour. I opted for green, blue and red but you could use any colours you wished. The recipe was just a basic sponge cake.

• 225g/8oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
• 225g/8oz caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 225g/8oz self raising flour
• milk, to loosen
  
  
  I mixed together the butter and sugar first until it had a smooth, creamy consistency and then added the eggs and vanilla extract. After all of that was mixed together, I sifted the flour into the bowl and made sure it was all mixed together properly. The mixture had to be of 'dropping consistency' and so I had to add just a small amount of milk.
  
  
  Once this was done, I seperated the mixture into three and added the food colouring to each seperate bowl. The cakes were cooked on 180 degrees for 20 minutes and then left to cool.
  
  
  The next step was decorating the cake. I chose to use a chocolate fudge butter icing, putting a small amount between each layer to hold it together before coating the whole cake with it. Next, kit kat fingers were placed around the entire cake and smarties were sprinkled on top.
  
  
  This is what the cake looked like inside ...
  
  
  
  
  
   This was a really fun cake to make and it certainly went down a treat at the party. It might have taken quite a bit of work to decorate but I couldn't have been more pleased with the end result!
  
  
  
  
  

Rocky Road Cupcakes

So today is my first day of this blog, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about it but the general idea is it's going to be about all the wonderful (I hope) treats that I bake.
Starting with this, post number one - Rocky Road Cupcakes.

So for these, I basically just made a load of chocolate cupcakes using this recipe:

• 150g butter, room temperature
• 300g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 280g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 350ml water

Whisked all that stuff together in a bowl and added a few marshmallows and chocolate chips. Then put those bad boys into cases and into the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes. After letting them cool, I combined icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter to make icing and piped them on to the cakes. (Side note - my piping bag actually broke before doing this is instead, I used a freezer bag with a hole cut in the corner. Does the job just fine!)
After icing the cakes I used crunchy chocolate balls, marshmallows and chocolate chunks to decorate.

I made these cakes with a 8 year old girl for a fun activity. You don't even wanna see some of the other stuff we made (lots of blue icing).