Boozy Sunday Tea Party

So for my friend's birthday, she decided she wanted a boozy tea party - ooh yeah, I like it already. So I wanted to make it something more than the usual tea party.. a concoction of gin and tonic and sambuca cupcakes, something you can eat EVEN with a hangover, which we did!!

I think these are actually best eaten the day after they have been made as the alcohol has really settled into the cake and you get the full flavour, but still tasty on the day they're made!

Perfect hangover cure

Ingredients for gin and tonic cupcakes:-

115g butter
130g castor sugar
3 eggs
195g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
40ml Gordons gin

20ml tonic water

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 180C or gas mark 4.
Line a muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners.

Using an electric beater or whisk, beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy and the sugar and butter lighten in colour. Add the eggs, one at a time beating quite thoroughly after each addition.

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, baking powder and salt and add half of this to the egg mixture. Beat until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and pour in half the tonic water. Beat again until combined and repeat the flour and use the gin until finished, alternating between the two.

Immediately, fill the cupcake liners and bake for about 20 mins. Don't forget to rotate the tray about half way through if you have a gas oven, to ensure evenly cooked.

You should have enough mixture to make 24 small-ish cupcakes or 20 decent sized cupcakes.

Remove from oven and leave in tray for a few minutes. Remove and then place cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. Don’t forget to remove from the muffin tray!

1st birthday duck and flower chocolate cupcakes

Ok, so its not every day your boss - a senior partner in a firm asks you to make cupcakes for his daughter's first birthday, so naturally I was over the moon excited as they chose my cupcakes over a well known bakery in London! The brief was ducks and flowers, which personally I thought is just too cute!

Bubble bath duckies

The cupcakes are chocolate but with vanilla icing in a variety of colours. For the fondant icing, you can purchase a box of multicolour fondant icing which makes life so much easier, or you can use white and use food colouring to create your own variety, for this I used purple!

Coffee macarons with salted caramel

The first time I tried to make macarons, I had a bit of a disappointing effort, but they sure did taste lovely though, they just didnt resemble proper macarons. But one of my favourite blogs Baking=Love had this recipe, so I just had to try it!

So now, when I made these and the little feet formed - I did a little ceremonial dance around the kitchen, jumping for joy. On my second attempt I have proper macarons, go me!

I've heard so much about salted caramel recently and I wanted to try it myself at home and I'm glad I did, because it is extremely moreish. I was quite upset that there was none left over after sandwiching the macarons together :-(

Halloween cookies and cupcakes

So I couldn't decide whether to make cupcakes or cookies for halloween, then I thought I'd meet halfway, somewhere between a cookie and a cake!

I must admit this idea of mine (although great) did actually take ages to make partly because of the stencils I used - next time I might just get the right cookie cutters. Also, I was trying to aim for black cupcakes, but came out grey, but I have to admit the grey works so much better. It looks wrong to eat something so grey, but it tastes just as yummy!

I've not really done much for Halloween in the past few years, so I wanted to do something this year; like carve a pumpkin! Alas, I just didn't find the time, but I salute all those who did make pumpkins...

'Wear It Pink' ribbon cookies and cupcakes in aid of breast cancer campaign

I don't really care for pink, I'm more into darker colours like black and purple - but this was for a good cause, so i thought, heck why not. So instead of wearing a pink cardigan or shirt like everyone else, I wore pink floral tights and black shirt and skirt, ha!

I thought I'd get involved this year - I did the 'Race for Life' like erm.. a few good years ago, so this is my contribution to fighting cancer - with cupcakes and cookies!

I don't have a proper ribbon cookie cutter, but its quite easy to make a stencil and just use that to cut around the cookie dough. But it does take aaages! That's dedication or so I've been told...

I could have used the standard sugar cookie recipe, but I wanted these to be crisp and crunchy and also because the royal icing on these cookies can make the sugar cookies a bit soft, which you don't really want. I had lots of fun with these as you can see...