My first ever gingerbread house!

Working in central London sure has its bonus points, being a stone throw's from Fortnum & Mason is an example. I simply love their Christmas decorations this year, they've gone all Moulin Rouge with their corsets and costumes and irresistable chocolate thrown in around the scene.. So I went and had a proper look at all the food and gift sets you can buy. Bearing in mind, this is way out of my league budget wise, I still like a nosey around.

..and they had gingerbread houses, but small ones (!) - so I decided I was gonna do one better than them, lol. We shall see..

I wanted to make this with my nieces but it ended up being myself and my big sister on Christmas eve ... and we had so much fun with this, with a glass of wine or two I might add.

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!

Chilli chocolate cupcakes

A red plate for red hot chilli peppers - nah not really..

I've wanted to make these cupcakes for a while now as I am quite fond of chilli; obviously in small doses. I'm not one for the extreme fiery heat of the chilli where you can't feel your tongue afterwards, but just that gentle warmth and aftertaste, where you know you've actually eaten chilli. Combine this with chocolate and you get a sweet cocoa flavour with a slight kick, not overpowering at all.  And being autumn / winter and all, chilli will help to keep the flu bugs away (hopefully).

I had so much fun making these little cupcakes. I bought some fondant icing - yeah, no way am I making that stuff up from scratch - The great thing was there were 5 colours in a box, all ready for me to play with. Seriously, it's just like playdough and you can create whatever takes your fancy, depends on how creative you want to be. I think I'm going to have a little play around and see what else I can make..

Chocolate Orange Whoopie Pies

It's not Terry's, it's mine!

The whoopie pie - is it a biscuit or a cake? When I took these into work, the first question everyone asked was, 'What's a Whoopie Pie'? Hmm, its pretty much inbetween a cookie and a cake.... a slightly hard exterior and soft cake-like interior. The best thing is that they're quite small, so you don't feel you are indulging too much. They're typically American, but becoming more common in the UK as with macarons but I don't think they're going to replace the faithful cupcake just yet...

Ingredients for the whoopie pies:-

250g plain flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1/2 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter
200g sugar
1 large egg
175ml buttermilk
5tblsp cocoa powder
juice and rind of half an orange

Method:-

Preheat oven to 180°C or gas mark 4.

Line two trays with baking or greaseproof paper.
In a separate bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda. Stir in salt. Set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Add the grated rind of one orange, being careful not to add the white pithy bits, this doesn't taste pleasant.
Measure the orange juice and buttermilk into a jug and then add half of it to the butter mixture. Slowly add dry ingredients, mixing until just incorporated. Add the remaining buttermilk. Cover and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Note: if you don't have buttermilk, you can make it yourself, one tsp lemon juice for every 100ml milk. Leave to sit for about 5-10 mins et voila!

Use a teaspoon or if you have a 4cm ice cream scoop with a trigger (for large whoopies) or a mini scoop or melon-baller (for small whoopies), well, aren't you lucky. One teaspoon full is enough for the smaller pies, thats what I used. Portion out the batter about 5cm apart onto the prepared baking trays.

No rude remarks please!

Bake for on the top shelf for 10–12 minutes. You can tell they are ready when the touch of a finger leaves a slight depression in the cake.

Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.

For the buttercream filling:-

75g butter
150g icing sugar
juice and rind of half an orange

Trying to do the presentation thingy #winning?

Decorate with dusted icing sugar.

Enjoy these very more-ish little treats!Beat together the icing sugar and butter and add slowly the juice of one orange and add the rind. Spread a generous scoop of buttercream filling on the flat surface of a cooled whoopie. Top with another whoopie. You could also add the icing on the top of the whoopie pie, but I think that's a bit overkill.