Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Birthday cakes!

It's my wonderful husbands birthday today, and he has quite the sweet tooth! So me & the girls baked him some goodies last night.



First off, me & Brogan made lemon cupcakes. They were delicious!




We used this recipe ...
  • 150 g butter, softened
  • 150 g sugar
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 150 g self-raising flour, sifted
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp milk
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light, fluffy and pale.

3. Gradually mix in the beaten egg alternating with the flour to stop the mix from curdling. Finally, stir through the vanilla extract and milk.

4. Place 12 paper cupcake cases into a muffin tin and divide the mixture between them.

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and springy to the touch. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. 




After that, me & Bethan made Millies type cookies (Crisp edges & soft middle). We made about 15 small cookies plus one giant one. She decorated it herself!


We used this recipe I found on mumsnet -
Note: 1 cup measures 200ml

2 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
250g/8 oz butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups (yes loads!) choc chips = about 12 oz/375g - we used less than this in our batch.

• Preheat oven to 300 F (150 C) = moderately cool
• Sieve flour, soda and salt together and set aside.
• Using electric mixer, blend sugars and butter to make a grainy paste
• Add eggs and vanilla and mix until blended
• Add flour mixture and choc chips and mix with wooden spoon - do not overmix
• Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie shee, 2 inches apart.
• Bake 15-22 mins or until golden (mine always take a little less)
• Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
If you want lovely chewy cookies, they need to ba a little under-done (soft to touch when hot) rather than well-done as they will then be dry and crispy.


I attempted cake pops - what a disaster! I'm not sure how to get the cake balls to stay at the top of the lollipop stick? Anyway, they were delicious even though they looked a mess!



3 comments:

  1. Hey i have had the same problem with cake pops once before and it could either be that you have mixed slightly to much icing in or made the balls to big. Also did you dip the stick in the melted choc, intert in in thr cake. And pop it back in the freezer fpr a bit? My partners name is also neil and hed love a giant cookie with his name on, i might have to make one

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  2. Hi! I think it was probably a combination of all of the above! Thanks for the tip, Im going to try again this weekend and hopefully it will work this time.

    My 8 year old daughter made & decorated the cookie :)

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  3. i managed to find actual cake pop sticks in the local home bargains and stuck them into a mould with cling film and they stayed on perfectly :) also stick the end in the melted chocolate and they stick into the cake pop, works a treat!!

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