Chocolate Cupcakes

I love cake. I love sweet things. Ok I love food in general but sweet things in particular :) As you can see most of the recipes I post tend to be of the sweet variety! I don't usually bake cakes though, but yesterday I had a day off work and decided to try my hand at some cupcakes as a little afternoon treat :)

They turned out reasonably well, especially the violet buttercream icing! Heres what I did:

Ingredients:

100g Plain flour

20g Cocoa powder

140g caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp baing powder

pinch of salt

40g unsaltd butter

120ml milk

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla paste

Mix together the dry ingredients and butter using a electric hand whisk. In a separate jug, mix the egg milk and vanilla paste. Gently combine with the dry ingredients and beat until well combined.

Spoon into cupcake cases (this makes 12 cakes) and bake on gas mark 3 for 20 minutes or until a cocktail stick comes out clean when inserted into the cake.

Buttercream icing:

75g soft butter

125g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste

optional : food colouring

Beat the icing sugar and soft butter until well combined, You may need a tiny drop of milk to help blend together. Add the vanilla paste and food colouring. I used a ultra violet purple food colouring gel from Tesco. It was quite weak so I needed to use quite a bit even to get a faint purple tone.

Spread over the cakes once they are cooled. I topped mine with fresh blackberries and silver edible balls. :)

Enjoy :)

Key Lime Meringue Pie

I made a lime meringue pie for the first time the other day and I felt such a sense of achievement! Admittedly I didn't make the pastry... but I am truly horrific at pastry so it was for the best.

It was deliciously limey and sweet and I had a lot of fun eating the left over filling....

Anyway heres how I did it :

Ingredients:

Sweet Pastry

Filling:

2 tbsp cornflour

100g sugar

finely grated zest of 3 limes

 juice from the 3 limes

85g butter

4 egg yolks

1 cap food colouring, green (optional)

200ml boiling water

Meringue:

Four egg yolks (room temperature)

200g castor sugar

1 tsp cornflour

Put a baking sheet in the oven and heat oven to Gas Mark 6. Bake the pastry case ‘blind’ (filled with dry beans) for 15 mins, then remove the foil and bake a further 5-8 mins until the pastry is pale golden and cooked. Leave on the side to cool.

Place all your filling ingredients into a saucepan and cook gently until thick. Stirring constantly as you don't want lumps.

Pour your thickened filling into you cooked pastry case and set aside.

Whisk your egg whites for a minute or so, then add the caster sugar and tsp cornflour. Whisk until the mixture is glossy, and the meringue stays in stiff peaks (if you can hold it above your head upside down you know its ready!

Spread over the filling, and using the end of a small teaspoon, make little flicks and peaks on top of the meringue. Bake in the oven on Gas Mark 4 for about 15-20 minutes or until the meringue is lightly coloured on top.

I added a little green colouring to emphasise that it was lime and not lemon :) you could quite easily change this to a lemon meringue pie by using 2 lemons instead of the three limes!

Serve with ice cream or cream, or even enjoy it on its own :)

A delicious chocolate, nuts and seeds flapjack

I think I may have found my new favourite cake. 

This cake is a yummy combination of both naughty and healthy ingredients! It is undoubtedly better for you than a chunk of chocolate cake, but equally as delicious, and even helps you stay fuller for longer (which I need!!) 

Ingredients:

2.5  tablespoons golden syrup

3.5 tablespoons clear honey

200g unsalted butter

370g rolled oats
60g soft brown sugar 

Mix the honey, syrup, butter and sugar in a pan. Careful not to burn the butter! Once everything has melted nicely together, mix in the rolled oats. You want to make sure they have all been coated well in the sticky mixture. Line a baking dish with parchment paper, and spread the mixture over the paper. make sure you flatten it out to the edges.

Bake for 15-20 minutes on gas mark 5 or until the flapjack has lightly browned on top.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool completely.

Topping:

200g Dark chocolate 

1 tsp soft brown sugar

2 tsp butter

1 handful pumpkin and sunflower seeds

1/2 handful dried cranberries

1/2 handful dried currents/ yellow raisins

1/2 handful chopped almonds

Mix the chocolate, sugar and butter together.

Spoon over the cooled flapjack. Then sprinkle over your desired topping! Leave to cool on the side, or pop it in the fridge until the chocolate sets. And thats it! Delicious, healthy, sticky flapjacks :)

Lidl do a really good range of nuts and seeds so you don't have to spend the earth to use nice ingredients!

Here's my special plate again ;)

Abersoch

We love Abersoch.

It's just such a great pace to get away from it all and have some proper holiday time! We stay in Scotts' families caravan, near a little beach called Porth Ceiriad which has a lovely sandy beach thats quieter than the Abersoch beach!

They have these wonderfully coloured beach houses and sheds.

Scotts had to wear his glasses a lot recently as his eyes have been so sore from all the pollen, he gets bad hey fever and it irritates his eyes. 

 I am a terrible hoarder and like to keep and collect EVERYTHING. I found this little fishing weight and fish shaped fishing bait thing (not too sure what they're called?!) on the beach and so now that too has come home with us, much to Scott dismay :)

 The ice tea from Lidl is really good, especially with a few slices of lime.

I love the colour of this little boat on the harbour. And the bright orange painting on the railings in Pwllheli (below).

We had a little go at the self-timer... The lighting was terrible as it was about to rain so it didn't work like i'd hoped, but we'll give it another go soon!

 I love my vintage satchel form Leicesters vintage market!! It has gone everywhere with me recently.

 I like Coffee shops. The problem is, I don't like coffee. Starbucks is by far superior in the drinks department, though costa in my opinion wins based on cakes. Starbucks cakes are horrifically artificial and dry, yet Costa have an interesting selection of giant teacakes, tiffin, linzer biscuits and giant bourbon biscuits. The drinks I find are really sickly and synthetic though, I recently had the strawberry lemonade which was way too sweet, and for me to say that it must be bad! We tried a raspberry and orange ice drink which was better than the lemonade, but still a little too sweet! Starbucks cool lime refresher, frappacinos etc are really tasty and can generally be tailored to your tastes which I like. I do find myself walking into Costa to get a cake, and then back to Starbucks for my drink and to sit down (and awkwardly try to eat my costa cake).

 My favourite cake in Costa is the tiffin! It's a yummy mixture of crushed biscuits, melted milk chocolate and raisins.

 Scott really likes the jammy linzer biscuits! I love how the jam oozes from the biscuits. These are my second favourite ;) so we shared a little of both :)