Easter Biscuits

This weekend was a very rare one in that I did no work at all! This is almost unheard of, as I'm always usually working on something or other, but I had no urgent orders to make, and anyway, I had plans...

Spent a lovely surprise day in Bath on Saturday with mum and sister Harriet who were in Wiltshire visiting friends, then yesterday, I decided to bake! Those who have been reading my blog for the last few months will know that I recently discovered the art of biscuit icing, haha! This is my third go... you can see my previous efforts here and here!

I bought the duck and chick shape cookie cutters in Bath, but for the others, including the cute little lamb (my favourite!) I made cardboard templates and cut around them with a knife.

By popular request, I made the Super Chocolatey biscuit mix again, though it was quite hard work - the dough did NOT want to stick together but I got there in the end, and cut out all my little shapes. Then I made my  icing and split it up into various piping bags and bottles for all my separate colours. This took ages - way longer than I planned, but as I've learned before, it is all in the preparation!

Then came the fun part! I find controlling the icing quite similar to the control I have to have when embroidering my tiny badges which I think is why I like it so much, and I now find it relatively easy to maintain a smooth-ish piped line! (Dots on the other hand still get the better of me, but hoping this will come with practise, haha!)

I have to confess I haven't actually eaten any of them yet, mainly because I wanted to photograph them this morning but also because they just look so pretty I can't bear to! (I have mind you had quite a few of the un-iced 'spare' ones I made - very yummy they were too!)

Already I'm thinking of my next biscuit baking session, though it probably won't be for a few months yet... maybe I'll do beach huts and seagulls, just in time for Summer! Any other ideas?

Anyway, thanks for popping by and I hope you all have a super lovely week, Jenny xx

p.s forgot to mention that I'll be doing another giveaway when I reach 200 followers - not many to go now! x

A day of cupcakes...

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I'm now back from my week away visiting my family up in Shropshire and both my shops are now open again. Had a lovely chilled out week catching up, which was really nice as I don't get the chance to see them very often. Me and my sister Harriet baked some yummy cupcakes together when she came home at the weekend... the icing and decorating part was the most fun - as you can see we were going for the 'anything goes' style of decoration, but I think it works!



The recipe we used for our cakes was taken from a lovely book called 'Bake Me I'm Yours: Cupcakes' by Joan and Graham Belgrove, but I thought I would write it out here in case anyone had the urge to go do some baking!

Chocolate Sponge Recipe (makes 24 medium sized cupcakes)

Ingredients

♥ 3 medium eggs

♥ 175g (6oz) caster sugar

♥ 115g (4oz) self raising flower
♥ 30ml (6tsp) cocoa powder
♥ 1.5tsp baking powder
♥ 1tsp vanilla extract
♥ 175g (6oz) slightly salted butter

Instructions

♥ Pre heat your oven to 170 degrees, and place cases in bun trays
♥ Put sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla extract into food processor and blitz together for 2-3 minutes. Alternatively, mix it all together using a hand held whisk
♥ Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa together into a separate bowl and then add to the mix gradually, folding with a spatula
♥ Spoon the mixture carefully into the baking cases (be careful not to overfill, they only need one good dollop of mixture each as they do rise a lot in the oven)
♥ Place tray in centre of oven and bake for approximately 16-18 minutes, or until the tops of the cakes spring back when lightly touched
♥ Turn out and allow to cool before the decorating fun begins!



We couldn't decide on which icing to make, so we halved the recipes below and did half pink, half chocolate!

Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients
♥ 225g unsalted butter

♥ 5ml vanilla extract

♥ 450g sifted icing sugar
♥ 40ml cold water
♥ Few drops of food colouring if you want coloured icing

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

♥ 115g soft unsalted butter

♥ 50g cocoa, Dutch processed if possible

♥ 175g sifted icing sugar
♥ 45ml cold water

Instructions

♥ Beat the butter to a cream in a food processor or alternatively use a hand held whisk
♥ For the chocolate recipe, sift the cocoa and icing sugar together and gradually beat into the butter with the water. For normal buttercream, just add the icing sugar and water to the butter, beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, then add the vanilla extract
♥ Add a few drops of colouring to the buttercream mixture if you want coloured icing
♥ Spoon the mixture carefully into an icing gadget with a star nozzle to make lovely swirly patterns
♥ Decorate you cakes with sprinkles, chocolate shavings, silver balls, edible glitter...etc
♥ Sit back and enjoy all your hard work with a well earned cup of tea and a cake!



To be honest, we weren't the most careful or professional cake makers in the world, but we had a fun afternoon all the same!