I know I haven't posted in a while but I've been busy with exams since December, though I am now finished for a while! So I'm going to put up several posts with photos of things I have made over the past few months!

Firstly; Oreo cupcakes! These were really yummy, I ground up Oreo pieces to put into the cake batter and icing. Definite chocolate heaven in a cupcake:

Chocolate orange cupcakes

My housemate had asked me to make her some cakes for an event she was going to and decided upon chocolate orange cupcakes. I am a big fan of chocolate orange, whenever somebody in my office has an orange I crave some! These cupcakes were topped in a cream cheese based frosting which I had to adapt slightly to be able to pipe as cream cheese frosting is notorious for going too sloppy and being hard to work with. Anyway they looked and tasted great so here are some pictures:

Baby shower cupcakes

So, a girl I went to uni with asked me to make her some cupcakes for her friends baby shower. The friend in question is having a little girl so of course the colour of choice was pink! I made plain vanilla cupcakes and iced them in baby pink butter-cream, to finish the cakes off I made little booties and dusted them with coloured lustre. This was the end result:

Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

Sticky toffee pudding is one of my all time favourite desserts so when I came across the recipe for sticky toffee cupcakes in the Hummingbird Bakery's 'Cake Days' book I had to make them and what better occasion than for bonfire night? These cupcakes are simply delicious and are exactly like a mini sticky toffee pudding topped in an ultra-light frosting:

Mad about cupcakes

Cupcakes are a firm favourite of mine, I like eating them but I love decorating them. I especially like how you can choose to stop at one or eat as many as you like. Most of what I do is self taught from piping to now making more and more intricate cupcake toppers. It's so easy to whip up a batch and spend a good few hours messing round with the decorations and trying new things out. This post is a dedication to the versatile, underestimated favourite of mine:


Made for my friend's 23rd birthday this year. Plain vanilla with butter cream icing and hand made butterflies:



White chocolate chip and raspberry cupcakes:




Plain vanilla with rainbow icing:




Plain cupcakes covered in fondant icing and decorated with hand made flowers:




More plain ones, just practicing my icing:




Halloween cupcakes made for a friends birthday. Finished off with hand made toppers which I painted:

Cinnamon & blackberry cake

Continuing on the blackberry theme (I still have two bags left in my freezer to use up) this week I chose to make a cinnamon & blackberry cake from Sainsbury's magazine. Cinnamon is such a lovely spice and reminds of dark nights and Christmas time. This recipe used wholemeal flour, which is not something I have come across before but it goes very well with the cinnamon and lovely filling of; cream, blackberries and blackberry jam. My cakes rose massively and I almost wish I had made 3 layers instead of two, it certainly would have looked more impressive!

Somebody at work declared it was of the best cakes I had made yet, it was gone in around half an hour but then again cake always makes Monday just that little bit better.

Anyway here's the pictures:

Blackberry & apple crumble cake

So a few weeks ago me and a few others at work picked blackberries in the lane near our office, I therefore ended up with 800g of frozen blackberries so started looking for recipes to use them in! I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of warm fruit or indeed fruit in cakes but this recipe sounded nice and I thought I'd just make it for the people in my office. I found it on the BBC Good Good website and although the reviews are mixed I didn't find it too difficult to make after a bit of logical re-arranging to the recipe! Anyway, here's the finished product: