Baking Mad Delivery

I came home from school to find a fantastic suprise waiting for me on Wednesday

My delivery off Baking Mad had arrived !!

Part of my prize when I won the 'Baking Mads Little Baker Of The Year' was a years supply of baking ingredients so this is my next batch of goodies.

This should keep me busy for a while :)

Thanks Baking Mad xx

Yummy Cupcakes

Just before I went back to school, me, my mum and my little sister Lily decided to bake some cupcakes.

I love making cupcakes and trying out lots of different toppings

These are the cupcakes we made ... yum

Ingredients for cupcake

6 oz margarine
6 oz caster sugar
6 oz Allinson self raising flour
3 eggs

Ingredients for your toppings

Silver Spoon Orange Flavour Buttons
Silver Spoon duo chocolate hearts
Silver Spoon Sprinkle Decorations
6 oz Silver Spoon Icing Sugar
3 oz Butter
3 drops of lilac silver spoon colour creator
1 pack Silver Spoon Pink shimmer balls
1 pack Silver Spoon Blue shimmer balls


Method
Preheat your oven to 190c and fill your cupcake trays with cases

Mix together your caster sugar and margarine until white and fluffy ( I use an electric whisk )

Slowly mix in your eggs and sifted flour, stirring all the time

When it looks a nice light mix, divide your mix into the cupcake cases

Put in the oven for and bake for about 15-20 mins
Get a grown up to check your cakes are ready by touching the top with their finger...if they spring back, they are done !

Take out of the oven and pop them onto a wire rack to cool down.

Once the cakes are fully cooled, you can begin the fun part....DECORATING !!

You can decorate your cakes in any way you want but this is how I made my toppings.

Melt about 20 orange flavour buttons in a microwave ( get a grown up to do this as they get very hot )

Once they have completely melted, pour them over the tops of your cakes...the orange chocolate tastes really yummy !

Then before the chocolate sets, sprinkle on chocolate hearts or coloured sprinkles

To make the purple topping, you need to put the butter into a bowl and add in the icing sugar. Try and do this slowly otherwise you may end up covered in it !

Once this starts to go a nice consistency ( you can add a bit of milk or warm water if you need it ), then put in a couple of drops of lilac colour creater.

Now you need to put it into your piping bag....I had a great kit for christmas off my nanny and grandad that I am using at the moment. It is called Wilton 12 piece cupcake decorating set and it has everything you need to help you with your decorating.

Anyway, once you've put the buttercream into the piping bag , you are all set to start swirling....I start at the outside of the cake and go round and round until I get to the middle.

I also did a couple of my cakes with stars on...these are really easy. I used the star tip out of my kit and just pressed it onto the cake and pushed the mix out.

I decorated the buttercream with pink and blue shimmer balls, and coloured sprinkles.

They were very very tasty ( and didn't last the day ) hehehe

Valentines Biscuits

I no it's a bit late but I made some delicious heart shaped biscuits for Valentines Day.

I followed a recipe off baking mad

The recipe was called traditional lancashire courting

I found the ingredients far too much as I wanted to make small heart shaped biscuits so I cut the ingredients right down.

These are the amounts I used

Ingredients

170 g Caster Sugar
125 g butter
1 egg
2 tsp baking powder
325g plain flour

Method

Preheat your oven to 190c

Cream your sugar and butter together until light and fluffy ( like you were making a sponge cake )

Then pour in your egg and fold into the mixture

Sieve the baking powder and flour into the mix and start to fold all the ingredients together.

This is the fun and messy part as I got my hands into the mix to give it a good mix

Flour your work surface and plop your mix onto it ( it should be quite dry now, not too gooey )

Then start rolling your mix out and use heart cutters to make your shapes ( I got my cutters from Poundland and had 5 different sizes )

Lay your heart shapes onto a baking tray and get a grown up to pop them in the oven for you

You need to bake them for about 15-20 minutes....try not to over bake them, if they are a bit soft when they come out they should harden up so don't worry !

When they are still hot, sprinkle over the caster sugar

The recipe I followed said to sandwich your hears together with strawberry jam but I decided to keep them plain and just make seperate biscuits

Happy Valentines Day ( even if I am a bit late !! haha )

Flapjacks

I love spending time with my dad when he gets home from work, and a few days ago he asked if I would like to make some flapjacks with him. Of course, I said YES ! Me nor dad had never made them before so we followed this recipe off  bakingmad.com

http://bakingmad.com/recipes/traybakes/flapjack 

It is very easy to make flapjacks and they are super tasty aswell.

We didn't have a tray so we had to use cake tins but they came out fine. We also decided to make two trays, one plain and one with Silverspoon milk chocolate covering...yum !

Mummys Birthday

Hello,

Sorry I've not been around much last week, but it was half term and I was very busy baking lots of treats.

It was my mums birthday so I made her a victoria sponge and decorated it

Ingredients
6 oz margarine
6 oz caster sugar
6 oz Allinson self raising flour
3 eggs
Bernies Damson Jelly Jam for filling ( or any tasty jam will do )

For The Topping

1 packet Silver Spoon Lemon flavour icing sugar
Silver spoon orange chocolate flavoured buttons
Silver Spoon pink chocolate flavoured buttons
1 packet Silver Spoon Chocolate Letters & Numbers
Silver Spoon Chocolate Flavour Strands
Silver Spoon White Chocolate Stars
Silver Spoon Blue Designer Icing
Silver Spoon Yellow Designer Icing

Method

Preheat your oven to 190c and grease 2 round cake tins

Mix together your caster sugar and margarine until white and fluffy ( I use an electric whisk )

Slowly mix in your eggs and sifted flour, stirring all the time

When it looks a nice light mix, divide it into your two cake tins and pop it in the oven for approx 15-20 mins

Get a grown up to check your cakes are ready by touching the top with their finger...if it springs back, it is done !

Take out of the oven and turn out onto a wire rack to cool down.

Once the cakes are fully cooled, you can begin the fun part....DECORATING !!

To sandwich my cake together, I used my favourite jam again.. you guessed it ...Bernies Damson Jelly Jam.  If you don't have any jelly jam, then any ordinary jam will be fine aswell. Just spread on a nice thick layer of jam to stick the top and bottom of the cake together.

Follow the instructions on the packet to make the lemon icing...it is really easy to follow and the lemon tastes delicious aswell

Once that has started to dry, I put on the letters and chocolate buttons...my mum likes flowers and butterflys ( I made the butterfly by using Silverspoon letters and using designed icing for the body. )

To finish it off, I sprinkled on chocolate strands and whitel chocolate stars and put a nice big blob of designer icing on the top of each of the chocolate buttons.

It really tasted yummy and mum had 2 big slices !!

Baking Mad

Since winning the title of Baking Mads Little Baker Of The Year 2012, I have been very busy baking recipes and blogging about them for the Baking Mad website.

Take a look at my latest blog post on their site, which is all about my banana cake recipe

http://www.bakingmad.com/blog/2012/02/abbies-baking-adventures/

Baking Mad is a great site for getting lots of tips and recipe ideas ( and I even have my own page !! ) so make sure you head over and take a look !!

Thanks x

Welsh Cakes

This weekend I made my hardest recipe so far. I decided to try and make some welsh cakes. They took a while to make but it was worth it as they were delicious !

Ingredients

400 g Allinson self raising flour
100 g Allinson plain flour
250 g butter
180 g caster sugar
250 g currants
2 eggs
pinch of salt

Method

Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and add in your butter

Rub into the flour ( it starts to go into lots of crumbs )

Add in the currants, sugar and eggs and bind all the mixture together

This was my favourite part as I got really messy and the mixture was very gooey at first

Carry on binding it together until it starts to look and feel like soft pastry

Sprinkle flour over your worktop to stop your mix from sticking and start rolling out the dough

The dough needs to be about 2cms thick or a bit less otherwise it will take longer to cook

Use a cookie cutter to make round cakes ( I didn't have a cookie cutter so I used the top of a glass to make my round cakes )

Warm up a large frying pan ( get a grown up to take over for this part as you may get burnt )

You need to put your cakes in the frying pan and cook them until they are brown on both sides...don't have your heat too high or they will burn on the outside and not cook fully on the inside

My mum cooked about 5 cakes at a time and then put them on a cooling tray where I sprinkled them with caster sugar, before starting the next 5.

This recipe makes quite alot of cakes so you can use less ingredients to make a smaller batch of cakes if you want to.

These were really tasty and my little sister Lily loved them !

Happy baking x