Strawberry Champagne cupcakes

Two years ago on my wedding my husband and I chose for cupcakes instead of a big wedding cake. I think they look so much cuter than a plain old wedding cake and on top of the ease of not having to cut a cake for over 100 people made us to opt for delicious and oh so cute pink cupcakes. They ended up being a huge success and perfect for our party wedding.

Last week my friends Steve and Jo invited us to their house warming party. They had just moved into a brand new home and hosted a lovely dinner for a bunch of friends. We do feel kind of sad they sort of left us as they used to live just down the road. Now it's a 20 minute drive away...

So I wanted to make them a small home made present to congratulate them with their new house. And which sweet tooth out there doesn't like a nice cupcake?

I went with Peggy Porschen's Strawberry cupcakes as I'm very fond of her books. Actually, Peggy's Strawberry cupcakes are made with strawberry jam. When I found a jar of Fortnum and Mason's strawberry Champagne jam in my kitchen cupboard I knew exactely what I was going to make...

The cupcakes are very easy to make and you can find hundreds of recipes out there on the internet. The buttercream is what make these cupcakes so special.

You'll need: 250g of butter
                    250g of icing sugar
                    2 tablespoons of jam
                    foodcoloring (optional)


Mix the whole lot in a bowl on low speed until you get a smooth paste. Then continue to mix on high speed for a further 2 minutes.
As there are no eggs in the cream you can easily keep it in the fridge for about 2 weeks.

The finishing touch of my homemade gift must definitely be the box... I found these adorable cupcake boxes a while ago back home and I think they're actually as yummy as the cakes themselves!

The cupcakes, and especially the box were a instant success and we had a splendid time...

Gingerbread house cake

Today I made made a gingerbread house cake... Very  easy to make and oh so easy!

Ingredients:
    6 eggs
    200 g  light brown sugar
    100 g  superfine caster sugar
    300 g  self rising flower
    210 g butter
    1 packet of vanilla sugar
    3 tb spoons of speculaas spice
    2 sliced apples

The speculaas spice can be replaced by:
    2 tsp ground ginger
    1 tsp cinnamon
    1/4 tsp ground cloves
    1/4 tsp nutmeg

Preheat your oven on 170 degrees centigrade. Mix the butter, egg yolks and sugar. Lightly beat the sieved flower and the beaten egg whites through the mixture. Add the spices and apples to the dough.
Butter and flower a Christmas mould and pour the mixture inside. Bake for 1h15-1h30.

  







 
                              Yummie!

Yummy yummy birthday cake

This one is actually by courtesy of my mum and sister. It looked absolutely delicious and the tasted  even better! The recipe of the cake came from Peggy Porschen’s fantastic Cake Chic book and I’m sure it took them a lot of blood, sweat and tears... The result was mouthwatering!

Thank you mum and Fie!

Happy Easter!

Unfortunately not everyone has the luxury to celebrate Easter on the actual day... I, for example was working like a horse. It doesn’t stop me though from celebrate on any other given day!

I’ve always loved Easter, if only for the overload of chocolate on offer...
Even though I didn’t have a lot of time this year I did manage to make some cookies and decorate a couple of eggs.

 

It's a fashion affair cookies

When my sister gave me Peggy Porschen’s Cake Chic book for Christmas I could not wait to get started. For someone with a sweet tooth like me these cookies are the ultimate culinary delight...
So with my mum and sister on holidays in Dubai I finally found the time to get busy in the kitchen.
The cookies are so easy to make and after all it’s a nice change from my love for sewing. We decided on making the ballerina shoes and our own spring/summer collection of dresses...
The cookie dough was easy enough and well explained in the book (I’m not one for complicated things in the kitchen, boiled eggs are difficult enough for me...).

 As we didn’t have any suitable cookie cutters we drew the shapes on wax paper and cut them out of the dough. After 10 minutes in the oven the sugar biscuits were ready.

 Now... Even tough there’s nothing nicer than a nice afternoon tea with delicious cookies, the highlight of the experience is undoubtably decorating them.
We choose to go for a light blue background of icing and decorate the details in red, blue and white. I never knew how easy it was to make your own icing. With just icing sugar, lemon and egg white you just can’t go wrong.
Soon the cookies started looking better than I ever would have thought... On top of that I never knew my sister would be a such a great designer!

And I think I’m not too bad myself... Check out the Marc Jacob’s inspired mouse flats!


Ingredients:

               Cookies:  400g plain flour
                                200g caster sugar
                                200g soft unsalted butter
                                1 egg, beaten



               Icing:  1kg icing sugar
                          4 medium egg whites
                          a squeeze of lemon
                          food colouring as desired



For more details check out Peggy Porschen’s Cake Chic.

You might also like: Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits by Harriet Hastings & Sarah Moore