It's been a busy few days. I've been mostly baking and general boring household stuff, although enjoy the baking. It really takes me away from everything and I focus completely on what I am doing and nothing else. I'm still honing my skills and I've a bit of a plan on the go which I hope will soon come together, but at the moment it's not looking too hopeful, but - fingers crossed. I really need to practice decorating skills, but I'm a bit impatient and don't really like fiddly things, but if I want to continue it is something I'm going to have to learn.

I baked two lots of cookies and three different types of cupcakes on Friday and then today I baked cookies and marshmallow cupcakes. Luckily, I don't happen to like marshmallows so I can keep away from them very easily. The cookies are going to work with me tomorrow, hopefully to get eaten. I've kept some aside for other half and daughter to eat otherwise I'd never hear the end of it. I've taken some photos of everything I baked, but I'm not happy with the quality of the photos so I'm still deciding whether or not to upload them.

I feel like I'm cooking and baking the same things all the time, I seem to stick to my tried and tested recipes that have been successful, but I have loads of cookery books and baking books by lots of different people I start and be more adventurous and try new things. I wish I had more time to do the things I really like!


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Healthy Eating

Bit of a contrast to my last couple of posts, but I do eat very healthily most of the time, having been following Slimming World plan for over a year now.

I love this site Slimming Eats, the young woman who publishes it is excellent and syns everything that she puts on the site. Plenty of ideas for healthy, different and exciting recipes (and photos). So if you're bored with your usual food and even if you're not following any particular healthy eating plan it's definitely worth a look.

Rather bizarrely (well I think so), there is a bloke who makes videos of himself making Slimming World recipes and publishes them on You Tube. Just type in Slimming World in the seach on You Tube and loads of videos come up for you to look at. One of the recipes I saw was for chicken cooked with Diet Coke, again sounds a bit odd, but I'm going to give it a try at the weekend, think it might be like a barbecue flavour or is that a bit optimistic?

Error

Hi again, bit overkill today, but just realised there's an error in the first sentence of my last blog (Catherine thought I'd put this on before you notice it)!! Ha, ha.... x

Cupcakes

So here we have the the Red Velvet Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I'd like to say that I baked these, but can't be that dishonest. My daughter made them and again very nice they were too. The inside spongey bit was more chocolatey colour than red, so would use a little more food colouring next time.

They are covered with my favourite topping, that is the lovely cream cheese frosting. So moreish, think I could just eat a whole bowl of the stuff. Then I would obviously feel very sick, but frankly I wouldn't care.

Whilst talking cakes, the other photo is my latest creation baked only earlier this week, it is a Walnut layer cake, covered in lovely fondant icing. Not sure the fondant icing was a great success as I was a bit impatient waiting for it to thicken so it was slightly sloppy but still tasted great. It must have tasted okay as it's all gone. I do keep saying I'm going to bake some cakes and take them into work, but they just don't seem to last that long. Back soon with more blurb.

Yay, it worked... well here we go then, this is a very belated photo of the Christmas cake I baked and decorated Christmas 2010 (oh and I'm ashamed to say I ate most of it as well)!! Decided to go for the 'less is more' with the decorating as my imagination didn't stretch much beyond this. Not perfect by any means, but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt. What do you think? Oh sorry you can't taste it, there's none left - ;) Perhaps I may make two this year and let you all have a taste.

Cakes and other stuff

Haven't written anything for a while, I'm not having much luck with the website links and the uploading of photos of cakes I've baked. I'm going to have another try in a minute to see if I have better luck tonight. I wouldn't mind, I've done it before without any problems, so not sure what I'm doing wrong haven't figured it out yet. Be back soon with links and photos.... fingers crossed :)