Skip to main content

When I'm supposed to be studying...

I choose to blog instead. Ai. Two weeks to go. Then it's ALL OVER. For a year at least before I chose to inflict myself with this again. Enough of the life story, may as well get with the good stuff.


Over the year I've picked up several new cookbooks - not least because my brother has a book club deal with work and therefore gets cheap cookbooks. Hence I got Delia's "How to Cheat" in my cookbook collection (and inexplicably the ready made mash in the freezer which I didn't buy!) I'm not for slating her, she made money out of it and she CAN cook. Plus one of my favourites as previously mentioned, Silvano Franco is the queen of quickie food.

More interesting books however are the now very popular cupcake ones. I bought two. Not on purpose mind! I actually bought one, lost it, so bought another one (because I can, can, can...)

The first is "The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake book". Personally I found the mixture too sweet and they made too many. Normal people have one tray for twelve muffins to use for cupcakes. One does not need to make 24. However, there's a variety of cakes at the back which I fully intend to make. Even funnier was my "future sister in law" has a mate who had a tea party - and I could see the cakes from the pictures, were very faithful representations!! The gauntlet, has been thrown shall we say?

Cupcake book 2 is more frequently used. It is originally called "Cupcakes!" by Elinor Klivans. The recipe calls for sour cream, which is slightly annoying because I don't think it's an exact pot. However, it's not too sweet and tastes quite nice. (Never in my youth did I think I'd try different recipes for what is just fairy cake mixture or victoria sponge in cups!!) I've made several recipes from this book, some more popular than others, but definite experiments going on here. One fantastic one is the vanilla cheesecake cupcake which is deliciously cheesecakey, top to bottom crumb cupcake gives a nice texture of, er, crumb, and top-hats were a different foray into American baking since we don't have them over here.

Thus far I've made the vanilla cheesecake ones several times and they've been scarfed quite promptly by the people at work (old work place!). I like victims for my experiments and I'm not shy.
They've eaten a dubious banoffee pie and my sister's workplace have been fed some overdry brownies from Nigella's "How to be a domestic Goddess". Lord knows why I keep trying from that book.

For me, the only recipe that has worked fantastically has been the philadelphia cheese brownies which are a miracle of lusciousness. FYI, just before you commit to reading my blog you might want to know that I tend to bake with margerine. Butter takes too long to soften (I use the microwave occasionally) and for some reason feels more fattening (when you melt butter over the hob it FEELS like it's just stuck to your face and bathed you in fat). That's not to say I always avoid butter, but if I'm lazy I won't make the effort to slice and dice the hard stuff to soften. The exception to this rule is when you melt it with chocolate or are making scrambled eggs. Then there is no substitute...

Have a look at the cupcakes and let me know what to make next. These days we have a pool going where someone shouts a number and I make the nearest cupcake to that page.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...
4 comments
Read more

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

What with my new cupcake books arriving from Amazon, one look at the Raspberry Cream Cheese buns on someone elses's site (made with blackcurrant there) and I had to make them. Knowing full well my family wouldn't touch them. Four of these babies were therefore made with big dollops of lemon curd instead, which made delightfully caramelly messes of the tin, but also on the buns, not that I get to touch those - I have eight buns to eat! The original recipe is from Buttercup Bakery book (New York) and one of these days I'll try the dried cherry one from Magnolias (since I own the book...) What you need to know about these is that the recipe is easy - as easy as muffins are, but they sink like heck given the amount of preserves you're putting in them. What they give back though, is something so moist and rich you just want to sink yourself into them. And since I've eaten two of them, I'm doing quite well! As you can see, massive craters. If you don't want that...
1 comment
Read more

Low carb diet plan

It's January. I've allowed my weight to grow UP with the Covid curve and somehow it still has not come down. Thanks to a large part to me using up a number of hot chocolate bomb "fails" just before Christmas I think. Wall of text alert - I don't plan on ever writing about this ever again. To be clear, I've never been a fan of carb-cutting. Cutting an entire food group seems wrong. Carbs, as we were taught at school, are cornerstones for growth. I felt like decking a "doctor" at an annual work health check when he told me to cut carbs as a way to get my weight down. The fact he then pushed a blog which was at its infancy at the time felt like a distinct conflict of interest. Anyway, I do absolutely agree I need to cut sugar, and I will never disagree that whole grains are better for you. It is also very, very effective dieting wise on me. We don't know why, I do know I have a lot of water weight which fluctuates a lot in the month and also it does...
Post a Comment
Read more