Sinfully Sweet Honey Cupcakes

So sweet and sticky! These cupcakes are quite rich, but taste so good! They're easy to through together and take no time to bake. The taste is so unique; the honey flavour is clearly there, but isn't too strong. These little sugar-packed delights are perfect for those with a sweet tooth!

Ingredients

• 125g clear honey
• 125g unsalted butter
• 75g light soft brown sugar
• 175g self raising flour
• 2 eggs, beaten

 Method
1) Preheat the oven to 180°C and prepare a cupcake tray with cupcakes cases.
2) In a small pan, weigh out the sugar, honey and butter. Place this on a low heat and stir until melted. Make sure to stir often, otherwise the mixture will stick to the bottom of the pan. When melted, take off the heat and leave to cool.

3) Next you can either pour the mixture into a medium bowl or leave in the pan. Add the remaining ingredients and beat until combined.

4) Pour the batter into the cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 7-9 minutes. You can prepare the icing/decoration in this time. Remember to stick a skewer in the center to check if they are done; if it comes out clean, they are baked.  The cakes should be golden brown.

5) Take them out of the oven and leave in the tray for several minutes. Then place them onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
6) When cool, you can ice or decorate them as you please! I iced mine with buttercream- my favourite- and drizzled honey on top. However I would advise you to not put the honey on, it made them quite rich!

A little too sweet for me, but my friends loved them! Sinfully sweet and rather rich, sweet tooths will love these! 4/5

Happy baking!

Classic Victoria Sponge

 I wanted to make something to celebrate the end of the Olympics and team GB, so I made a classic Victoria Sponge. I know this is a day late, but I fell out with the icing yesterday. Firstly, I attempted to make a cream cheese icing but it completely flopped, who knew that simply butter, cream cheese and icing sugar would form a consistency of water? So today, I tried a sweetened cream. I was planning to colour it with food colouring and ice the Union Jack (for team GB) onto the cake, but apparently if you add food colouring to sweetened cream it separates and turns to curds and whey. Oh well! Learn from your mistakes.

 Victoria Sponge is not my favourite cake, as I don't particularly like jam. However this recipe has made me change my mind! Light, sweet, soft, fantastic. So easy to make and a great treat if you're feeling a bit peckish!

Ingredients

• 4 free-range eggs
• 225g/8oz caster sugar, plus a little extra for dusting the finished cake
• 225g/8oz self-raising flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 225g/8oz softened margarine or butter, plus a little extra to grease the tins
• Cream and jam for filling and/or icing

Method

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2) Grease and line two cake tins, making sure you get up all the sides so that when the cake is baked it will be easy to take out.

3) For this recipe, use the all-in-one method. This is simply putting every single ingredient into the bowl and mixing them together, in the order listed above. When everything is combined, the finished mixture should fall off a spoon easily.

4) Next, pour the mixture into the two cake tins. Try to get the same amount in each tin, but it doesn't matter if the amounts are slightly different.

5) Bake for 20-25 minutes. To test if they are baked, stick a skewer down inside the center of the cake and if it comes out clean the are ready.  I found that the cakes felt too soft and under-baked, however this is how Victoria Sponge is meant to be; it is a very delicate cake. The cakes also have to look golden-brown when they are done. Put the tins on the side and after several minutes move the cakes onto a cooling rack.

6) When cool, cover one half with the jam (you can also cover cream on top too or you can use it for icing at the end). Sandwich the other half upside-down on top of the covered half, so that the top of the cake is flat. You can use ay icing you want- a dusting of icing sugar, butter-cream, royal icing. I sweetened the cream (using this recipe) and used it as icing instead of a filling.

This cake has converted me to loving jam on my cake! I now also have a special love for delicate cakes like Victoria Sponge, opposed to dense chocolate fudge cakes.  4/5

Happy baking!

Credit: www.bbc.co.uk/food/

Simply Sweet Buttercream!

Shown above on our Rainbow Cupcakes. Click here to see the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 250g icing sugar, sifted
• 80g unsalted butter, softened
• 25ml whole milk
• a couple of drops of vanilla extract (optional)

Simply mix together the icing sugar and softened butter until combined. Next, add the milk in small measures until you reach your desired texture and a smooth consistency. Finally, add the reccomended amount of vanilla extract (optional). In the picture we have used, we coloured the icing with a small amount of blue food colouring.

Easy-Peasy Vanilla Ice Cream

Vanilla Ice Cream

If I'm honest, I wasn't sure that this would work.  The recipe didn't involve any techniques that I thought people did to make ice cream, it was essentially mixing egg whites with a cream mixture and freezing it.  However, it turned out perfect! The texture and taste were exactly the same as ice cream should be.  It was a great, refreshing treat to cool us down in this weather!

Ingredients

• 600ml double cream
• 250g caster sugar
• 6 eggs, seperated
• 1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 large bowls

Method

1)  In the first bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff.

2)  In the second bowl, whip the cream with the vanilla until stiff.

3)  In the third bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar until creamy.

4)  Add egg yolks mixture to cream mixture and beat again.

5)  Fold (carefully and slowly passing a spatula down through the mixture, across the bottom, and up over the top. the egg whites into this mixture.  Folding reduces the amount of air lost, opposed to simply mixing.

6)  Pour into a container and freeze for a day.

This recipe is very quick to mix up and simple to do, certainly something I will be doing again! 5/5

Happy baking!