Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

For some reason lately i've been craving sticky toffee pudding but then I thought, hang on a minute, I am ALL about the cupcakes, why not make sticky toffee cupcakes, so here they are, after umming and ahhing over recipe's I settled on Jamie Oliver, but because this is me and I never take the easy option and make things easy for myself I decided that instead of Jamie's suggested ganache topping I would try a brown sugar frosting. Then I grated some milk chocolate over the top, just because they looked like they were missing something.

I haven't actually tried these yet because after spending so long researching recipe's and making and testing the frosting I actually feel like i've eaten about ten of them already so they're going to have to sit pretty in the kitchen until tonight.

German Chocolate Cake

Now this is a cake i've wanted to try out for a while, but never really had an excuse until now, I say excuse, it's a pretty lame one, my little brother has come home from Uni for Easter, and I thought it would be a nice idea to make a cake for the occasion.

German Chocolate Cake is actually an American cake, possibly originally German's Chocolate Cake, it's four layers of chocolate cake, filled with a pecan/coconut filling and covered and decorated with chocolate cream.

He Put a Quarter in the Wurlitzer, and he Pushed Three Buttons and the Thing Began to Wurr

Get it? They're Whirls! Never mind...

As you can probably tell I have far too much time on my hands thinking up 'clever' titles for blog posts, this one didn't go too well but now I have this song stuck in my head, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it's usually some CBeebies theme tune stuck in my head and Joni Mitchell is infinitely better!

So anyway, i've never actually baked a bread product before so I thought i'd give it a go. There's a lot of waiting around for proving to be done and yes I did knead by hand, no fancy stand mixer for me! What do you think? A spiced, and whirled fruit loaf...

And just in case there are any Joni fans out there, and who did get my vain effort at word play here's the wonderful The Last Time I Saw Richard, from my favourite album, Blue...

Mothers day

As we all know it's mothers day (Well here in the UK at least) I wanted to really spoil my mum this year as until we move (fingers crossed very soon) i'm the only one of us six kids that's able to as the others live hundreds of miles away!

Unfortunately I don't have the money at the minute to spoil her like I want to but I did get her a great book as she loves to read and I do pride myself on my baking and knowing exactly what to bake for certain situations and occasions. As it's mothers day, I decided that the perfect thing to bake for my lovely mum would be this Victoria sponge. (Or sandwich, whichever you prefer) It's filled with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam, what could be more perfect?

Hope you've all spoilt your mums or if you are mums I hope you've been spoilt yourself! Happy Mothers Day!!

Caramel Shortbread

Delicious caramel shortbread made with real vanilla bean shortbread, gooey caramel and creamy milk chocolate!

Everyone Loves a Chocolate Cake

As this is the first post from The Bake Away I thought i'd give you something that everyone likes, and EVERYONE likes chocolate cake right?! But this is not just any chocolate cake, it's the most moist, delicious, chocolatey, fudgey chocolate cake in the world!

It doesn't just look mouth-wateringly good from the outside, but it's pretty spectacular once you take a slice too, showing the dark and white chocolate layers.