Haven't blogged for a few weeks, been really busy planning and stuff. Haven't even done any skywatching for weeks, it's been rather cloudy. That said, my other half thought he was pointing Orion out to me - er nope. Think he just saw a bright star and that was it. He obviously knows even less than me, thank goodness!

Anyway, will be blogging soon with some photos.

Here's some photos of the cupcakes I made the other week, again recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. The Marshmallow cupcakes didn't seem to have enough frosting to coat the marshmallows, so if I made these again, I'd add a little more frosting or use less mini marshmallows. My daughter says these are her very favourite cupcake that I've made so far. The pic is a bit blurred really, but here is a pic of a single cupcake. I also made lots of others, some chocolate, some vanilla and some lemon flavour ones.

I've also been enjoying making some biscuits these particular ones are called 'Melting Moments' and the recipe came from a Mary Berry book. They really do melt in the mouth and once again the team in work seemed to enjoy them and my family definitely do like them, so they will become a regular in my repetoire.

Anyway, still haven't found out what the mega moon is but I'll be back with an update.

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Thought I'd update my blog. Been doing lots of baking and have taken lots of photos, quality not too good (the photos not the cakes)!! I'm still going to put photos on in case anybody is interested in having a quick look.

Cupcakes and cake pops are what I've been baking, also a couple of banana loaves and also a 'Blondie', this is a Brownie but with white chocolate instead of dark/milk chocolate. The cupcakes and banana loaf recipes are from the 'Hummingbird Bakery' cook book and the cake pops I actually Googled to see what they were. I follow Angelcupcakes1 on Twitter and they posted about making Cake Pops. After looking at the photos they had posted, I did a bit more research and came up with lots of videos on You Tube and some other sites, showing exactly what they are and how to make them.

So last week my first crop of Cake Pops was created. First I baked a plain old chocolate victoria sandwich cake, let it cool then broke it up into pieces. Then I added some vanilla flavour frosting mixed it all together then let it cool in the fridge for an hour. After an hour, the mix was then formed into balls and then put in the freezer for a couple of hours. I then added the sticks and decorated with white chocolate and milk chocolate.

I took them into work the next day and I must say they went down a storm. I asked everybody for constructive feedback as I'd never made them before and was pleased with the comments, although one person did comment that dark chocolate would be a nice contrast with the sweetness of the cake inside. Obviously, there are lots of ways to decorate them and lots of different flavour cake you can use, so I'm going to be experimenting a bit more.

On a different note, keep seeing mentions of a 'megamoon', so I'm off to try and find out what it's all about. When I have found out what it is, I'll let you know.

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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.