Easter Weekend

I can't believe I baked over the weekend as I had visitors coming for Sunday lunch and I was that busy I forgot to take photographs! Nooooo and guess what? Yes they've all gone! I baked some gorgeous Caramel Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book, but actually got the recipe from Catherine a colleague, fellow baker, Twitterer and blogger, who found it on the Waterstones website on their members pages.

They turned out really well, but came across what I think is an error with regard to the amount of baking powder. In the recipe it stated 1 tablespoon of baking powder, well no way does that sound right. I contacted my fellow baker Catherine via text, the Pink Whisk, Angel Bakes and Angelcupcakes via Twitter and the general view was that the likelihood was between 1 and 1.5 teaspoons. (Invaluable help from you all - thank you! :-) I actually ended up adding 3 teaspoons and they worked out fine and tasted delicious so they didn't last long. I passed some to my neighbour as samples as she has asked me to do a cupcake display for her and her husband's 30th Wedding Anniversary get together at the end of May. I'm both excited and nervous as I've never done one before although I have baked dozens and dozens of cupcakes my decorating skills need lots of honing. I'm booked on two cupcake decorating courses - one at the beginning of May and one at the end of June, so hopefully the one at the beginning of May will set me on my way!

I also made a traditional Simnel Cake, but instead of putting the 11 marzipan balls on the top, I coloured some paste and made some flower cut outs and leaves to go on the top to try out my new sets of cutters. I was a little disappointed with this cake as it was a little dry, but certainly not inedible - I and my youngest daughter adore fruit cake so that didn't last that long neither. My healthy eating sort of disappeared over the weekend. I'm still to load up the last lot of photos I took of the cake pops I made but will soon!

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Cakes and creativity (or not in my case)!!

I promised photos of my last creations a few weeks ago, but haven't got around to loading them onto the laptop yet. I thought I had but just checked for them to add them to blog, but hadn't done it :( Will load them soon and post on here. I've made some Red Velvet Cupcakes today from the Hummingbird Bakery book. They are not very red they look more like a chocolatey colour to me rather than the red. I followed the recipe to the letter and when I was making them was going to add a little more food colouring but they looked very red, but not red enough when baked so if I made them again I'd add a little more colouring.

They taste very nice and especially as they have my favourite frosting on which is the cream cheese frosting. I've also made a chocolate cake in readiness for trying out some more cake pops tomorrow night. I'm thinking of try to sell some in work, as they went down a treat last time when I took some in as samples. So I've decided today that I'm going to give it a try and I must say I feel a little more positive now I've made the decision.

I've bought some more lovely ribbon etc and I'm going to wrap them up with nice cellophane etc. The most scary thing that happened today is that my neighbour has asked me to do a 21st Birthday cake for her son!!! Luckily his birthday isn't until September so I have plenty of time to practice. It's not the baking I have problems with but the the decorating. As luck happens I have booked myself onto two cake decorating courses in the next few months, so fingers crossed that I can improve my skills. Surprisingly I already have an idea for the cake for my neighbours son, so will talk it through with her in a month or so.

Must go as TOWIE is on soon - will upload photos soon.

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Liverpool ONE flash mob