Wednesday 25 January 2012

Ugliest cakes in the world?


These are my chocolate cupcakes. The ugliest cakes in the world, don't you agree?

The recipe seemed simple enough:
100g plain flour
20 cocoa powder
140g caster sugar
1tsp baking powder
40g marg
120ml milk whisked together with 1 egg

Beat together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder and butter. Add milk & egg mixture in two parts. Make sure it's not lumpy. Pour into cake papers, bake at 170C until risen and bouncy, with nothing left on the cake tester stick when inserted.

Sounds easy, huh? Well, the mixture didn't go as far as it was meant to, and for some reason, rather than making fewer, I just assumed it would perhaps expand a lot and made the 12 I was expecting. Uh-oh... I should trust my instincts. Some didn't rise enough, and they were just too small for the size of the paper cases.

The paper cases! Now we come to one of the main issues. I think they've grown! They seem FAR too big for my muffin tin all of a sudden. So the cakes ended up a right dodgy shape and not cake-like at all. Ridiculous.


Looking at it again, I can see a very ugly man's face surrounded by a Victorian lace collar....
For the frosting, I mixed together butter and icing sugar, as normal... Then I melted some dark chocolate and mixed that in, rather than my normal procedure of just some cocoa powder. That didn't seem too happy either, and so the cakes got a bit uglier....


Hurrumph. If not the ugliest cakes in the world, they're definitely the ugliest ones I've ever made! However, they do taste quite nice. And, it was the inaugural bake of my new Kitchenaid mixer - which was A-Maz-Ing. Apart from being an element in the ugliest cake competition, it was brilliant. I love it. 



Sunday 15 January 2012

Time for teapots...

I haven't bought or received a new teapot in ages. It's a bit like an addiction, teapot collection. 

I could treat myself to a new Le Creuset teapot... It would match the gorgeous pie dish I got for Christmas. Then I could also get the espresso cups to match!


Sunday 8 January 2012

Lamenting the loss...



I am lamenting the loss of Christmas.

Christmas was a time of relaxing, of remembering the people you love and why they're important to you.

It was a time of merry, jolly, fun, frolics, and calm.

Now, it's back to real life, back to the lack of sleep due to the worry of finding somewhere to call home. Of spending all day searching for a house to view, only to find out nothing's right once you get there, knowing that the next day is just to be filled with more worry.

And it's having no time to do any quilting! Not having the patience or mental space to dedicate a moment to the thing that you love. I even went to a new fabric shop yesterday with the hope that I'd be inspired, but nothing. I'm sad.

Monday 2 January 2012

Makes of 2011

Here's a round up of the quilts I made in 2011 - I thought I'd made more!