Happy Pancake Day!

For those of you who don't reside in the UK or who have no idea what 'pancake day' is, I shall explain. Pancake Day or 'Shrove Tuesday' is the last day before lent begins. In Christian tradition, during lent you must give up rich/fattening foods, specifically 'eggs, butter, milk'. Therefore, on this most blessed day the best excuse ever arose - use up all your fatty foods (or go buy lots of fatty foods to use up ;) by making pancakes. I am a huge pancake fan and always make a big stack of them. And Im not talking about those piddly American pancakes, oh no, these are plate sized crepe pancakes and you can fill them with a range of deliciousness - bananas & chocolate spread, fruit, ice cream, maple syrup, golden syrup, syrup syrup and of course the classic, lemon & sugar.

Now the 'what' is out of the way, now for the 'how' - this is my go to pancake recipe which I have been using since I was a (slightly) smaller girl. And you can tell I've been using it since I was a short stack *pancake reference* as it's straight out of one of my favourite recipe books from my childhood, 'The Usborne First Cookbook.'

Ingredients

250g Plain Flour
a pinch of salt
570ml milk & water mixed (I usually just use milk)
2 eggs
1 tbsp melted butter

1. Sift the flour and salt into a big mixing bowl.
2. Make a hollow in the flour and break in the eggs. Whisk them, drawing in some flour from the sides.

3. Add the milk & water a bit at a time. Keep whisking until everything is mixed together. Add the melted butter and beat until mixture is smooth.

4. If you have time, leave mixture for an hour or so.

5. Melt a little butter in a frying pan and pour a ladleful of batter into the pan, swirl it around so it covers the pan evenly.

6. Cook the pancake until bubbles appear and the edges turn brown.

7. FLIP!!

8. Cook the otherside then turn onto a warm plate and serve with lemon & sugar, chocolate, bananas, maple syrup, golden syrup, fruit and ice cream. (Ok that last bit is mine...)

Ta - da!

Now THAT is a pancake stack!

Enjoy your pancakes everyone :) I'm off to start on mine.

Lucy xx

Lemon Drizzle Guglhupf

I can't believe how long it's been since I updated my blog. It's awful! I am so busy, which is great, but means I don't have much time to blog. However I tried out a non-cupcake related recipe/project yesterday so thought it was a good excuse to blog :)

My family from Austria arrived on Thursday and bought with them some mini guglhupf tins or as you may know them, bundt tins. So I took this opportunity to try out the lemon drizzle cake recipe from 'The Great British Book of Baking' which accompanies the tv series The Great British Bake Off. Now, the actual cake recipe turned out great, it was lovely and moist and had a nice zingy flavour. However, the cake was too moist for this type of mould. Next time I will try a denser cake.

Here's the recipe:

For the cake:
200g Unsalted Butter
250g Caster Sugar
3 Medium Eggs
finely grated zest of 2 lemons
250g Self-Raising Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
100ml milk

For the topping:
100g Caster Sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
Zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/350 fahrenheit. Put the butter, sugar, eggs and lemon zest into a large mixing bowl. Sift the flour and baking powder into bowl then pour in the milk. Beat with a wooden spoon, or an electric whisk on medium speed until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Transfer the mixture into the tin(s) and spread evenly. Bake in the oven until cake is a good golden brown and firm and a cocktail stick comes out clean - 50 to 60 minutes (I cooked these for 25 minutes).

 Meanwhile, make the topping. Mix the sugar with the lemon juice and zest to make a runny glaze. As soon as the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven and stand the tin on a wire cooling rack. Prick the top of the cake all over with a cocktail stick, then quickly spoon the lemon topping over so that it trickles down into the holes. Leave to cool completely before removing the cake from the tin(s).

It looked great in the tins....

However they didn't want to come out!

This one came out the best:

BUT, it tasted great so I will definitely be making it again. Just not in guglhupf tins!

If you want to buy the book (which I would definitely recommend if you love baking, it has some great traditional recipes), it is available on amazon:

 Great British Book of Baking

First Post of 2011

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely break over the Christmas holidays. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who has supported me over the last 6 months. 2010 was a tough year personally but it was also a very good year because I think I found my calling - baking and making beautiful little pieces of edible art. It is amazing how quickly my little one woman company has grown and I am very excited about what is to come in 2011 because I know it's going to be fab!

And for my first order of 2011 I got a very fun brief, it was for a 30th birthday and featured the birthday boy's favourite things: James Bond, Port & Stilton, Tennis and Guiness! All are hand made and hand painted.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy 2011; may it be filled with joy and cupcakes, lots of cupcakes!

Happy Christmas

I've been terrible at updating my blog recently, things have got very busy over the last month and a half for me - not that I'm complaining. Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and in case I don't get to update before hand... a very Happy and healthy 2011. Long may the cupcake craze continue!

Here are a selection of my Christmas cupcakes:

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Light Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Mini Apple Strudel Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Christmas Rainbow Cupcakes

Vanilla Cupcakes

Giant Christmas Madeira Cupcake

Happy Christmas!

Review: Cake Stand from CSN Stores

A few weeks a go I received an email from the people of CSN Stores asking if I would review one of their products.Well,I couldn't choose just one because they have so many fab things to buy. But my favourite was this beautiful Victoria & Albert Museum cake stand. It's very classy and perfect for afternoon tea. They have a range of different cake stands from the V&A and let's just say this isn't the last one I will be ordering :)

Here's a picture of it on its own.

And with some yummy cocktail cupcakes on! Check out their website for more great products: http://www.csnstores.co.uk/

Cake International: Birmingham NEC

I went to Cake International held at the Birmingham NEC yesterday. I was really excited about all the free cake, all the discounts and all the cool new stuff I was going to get to try out. Unfortunately I didn't get any of these things. I didn't even get to BUY any cake! There were lots of great stalls but you literally could not get to them because of all the people pushing and barging. One thing that really annoys me as a short arse is the fact that I repeatedly get knocked into at busy events. I get used to this, I put up with it now. But one thing I do not like is getting leaned over or moved out of the way purposefully. It's just rude. The stalls I did just about get to were selling lots of goodies but for the same prices (and sometimes even higher) as they are sold on their websites. There was only one company who were selling special wrappers who I had not heard of and bought something from.

However, it wasn't a complete disappointment; I did get to see some mind blowing cake creations. I loved looking at all the competition entries. The only thing I feel could've been added to the competition would be a little description stating what the cake was made of/how they got the idea. I think that would've been really beneficial and interesting for the attendees.

Here are a few of my favourite cakes:

From the International Category

 From the Novelty Cakes category

 From the 'I can't remember the name' Category. But how amazing is this?! Can't believe it's cake!

And finally, from the Halloween cake category

Book Launch Cupcakes

As promised, here are a selection of photos from last Friday's book launch. The cupcakes went down brilliantly and it was a very successful evening. I can't wait for my next challenge!

Until next time, Happy Cupcaking :D