A Weekend of Baking

I love having time in the kitchen to cook for pleasure, without the time stress of mealtimes with children! Even better when I can bake without being left with loads of goodies to tempt me!! Today is my Uncle's birthday, and he is staying with my Mum today-tomorrow, so she asked me to bake her a couple of batches of cupcakes...I did them yesterday afternoon/evening when Liam was around to look after the children. The finished result...

chocolate-raspberry cupcakes (with a few non-raspberry ones for the fussy people *ahem* my sister and Liam!) and lemon drizzle cupcakes.

I made the chocolate-raspberry cupcakes first. First cream 190g (room temperature) butter with 190g sugar...

then add 3 eggs and 3 tbsp milk before blitzing again...

then sift in 150g self-raising flour and 40g cocoa powder...

and fold in by hand...

I'd heard about cupcakes with raspberries inside, so I decided to give it a go to make these a bit more interesting. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cakes - I always find them to be a bit dry, especially compared to other flavours - but Mum wanted one of the batches to be chocolate based...so chocolate raspberry it was! I was a bit worried about the raspberries over-heating/burning from touching the pan, so I put a little cake mix in first, then a raspberry on top...

and then covered with the rest of the cake mix...

into the oven at 190C for about 20 minutes and...

with raspberries on the side of the raspberry ones so Liam and my sister don't get any nasty surprises!!

I covered them with chocolate butter icing, with another raspberry on top of the raspberry ones for decoration/identification purposes!

I made the butter icing was 180g butter, 360g icing sugar, 3 heaped tbsp cocoa powder and 3 tbsp milk. I had a lot left over though so you probably wouldn't need that much! A good snack for after the hard work was done! :)

The leftovers!

I was really pleased with the way these cakes turned out...

and when I ate one at my Uncle's birthday this afternoon, I was quite pleased how the inside looked too :)

not hugely raspberry tasting, and in my mind still a little dry, but good as far as chocolate cake goes and everyone else assured me they were delicious and not dry at all, so maybe I was being overly critical!

Last night, once the children were in bed, I also made lemon drizzle cupcakes. I base it on this lemon drizzle recipe. I keep all the ingredients for the cake the same, and just put into cupcake cases. It made 12 muffin sized cupcakes, plus 3 mini (or what most people call normal!) cupcakes...

into the oven at 180C for about 25 minutes...

I then drizzled with the juice of 1 lemon and about 85g of sugar (although for some reason last night I did it by eye and don't think I put enough sugar in as the crust wasn't as hard as usual)...

and then I piped lemon butter icing on made with 150g butter, 300g icing sugar and the juice of half a lemon. I also added a few drops of lemon extract into the cake mix and the icing for extra flavour...

I had lots of tins worth of cakes to take to my Mum!!

some of the pretty cakes...

As if I hadn't done enough baking yesterday, my daughter and I made another (double) batch of Kalyn's chewy chocolate oat cookies...

So out of all the baking I've done this weekend, this is what our family is left with...

the cupcake stand only holds 23 so we got to keep one big lemon cupcake plus 3 mini ones...shame the chocolate-raspberry mix didn't make any extras!!

My Mum was very pleased with her cakes...

So pretty! :)


In other non-baking food news...my weekend has included yummy breakfasts:

Eggy bread with sliced banana, sunflower seeds & agave nectar

Smoothie in a bowl made with banana, tinned pear, curly kale and frozen blueberries (plus Kara milk, a date for sweetness and Xanthan gum after the photo was taken)...

...topped with Bear tropical granola (this was delicious, although the green flecks were a bit off-putting at first!!)

and some delicious main meals:

"Use up vegetables" stirfry - pak choi, broccoli and green pepper with noodles and satay sauce, topped with cashew nuts...really good! :)

Baked sweet potato with goat's cheese (love this combo, much nicer than always having tuna sweetcorn mayo!)

Sesame & almond smoked tofu, roasted peppers and brown rice

Plus quite a few snacks:

Graze Jaffa Cake mix (dark chocolate buttons, orange infused raisins and roasted hazelnuts)

yummy leftover raspberries

Graze Lemon Meringue Pie mix (lemon infused raisins, yoghurt coated peanuts, mini meringues)

Another picture of the chocolate raspberry cupcake I ate earlier!

Plus many unpictured lattes! I also went to the gym this afternoon, not a hugely long workout again as my sister was looking after the children - just 10 minutes rowing, 20 minutes cross trainer, 6 minutes "arm cycling", plus free weights and leg weight machines...better than nothing though!

I've been relying a bit too heavily on my Graze box punnets for snacks recently. Now that my half price offer has run out I have cancelled these, and with the money saved (and probably a bit extra money on top!) I have re-started our fortnightly veg boxes - I cancelled them over the winter as didn't want a load of white potatoes. I'm looking forward to getting a regular supply of different vegetables again, will hopefully inspire me to get a bit more creative with some new recipes!

It's been a really good weekend, quite relaxed but fun :) I'm looking forward to the rest of half term, so nice to have some time away from the usual routine!

I can't believe how little of my baking I've eaten though - just one chocolate raspberry cupcake! I have plans to eat one of the smaller lemon cupcakes tomorrow, and I think my Mum's also planning to give back any leftover cupcakes after they're done eating tonight, as she's going away for part of half term... but I'm sure Liam and the children will gobble those up! My Auntie also made a birthday cake for my Uncle - chocolate with black cherry jam in the middle. They were eating this after dinner (which we didn't stay for as it was too late for the children) so I'm hoping there's a slice left of that for me to try too, looked good!

We're seeing my Uncle etc again tomorrow as they've invited us out for cooked breakfast before they leave. Not really sure what to do about that. I deliberately haven't eaten any meat/fish since that lamb salad on Thursday. I'm not ready to declare myself vegetarian yet, but equally don't want to eat meat just because of social convention. My Mum will be at the breakfast too and, after me being vegetarian for several years when I was younger, she would not be too impressed if I ordered the vegetarian version of cooked breakfast! I know it sounds wimpy, but until I'm certain of my views, and that I'll be able to stick to a meat-free diet within family life, I want to avoid confrontation as much as possible! I think I might tell a white lie and say I'm not overly hungry, then just order scrambled eggs or mushrooms on toast. We're not meeting until 10.30am and I'll be out all morning queueing for tickets for the ballet show my daughter's going to be in, so if I don't eat breakfast before I go out I'll be starving by the time we get to the cafe...will have to fill myself up on lattes!

I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow!