Gingerbread cupcakes

Hello, hello!

For some time I was looking for recipe for easy and kinda foolproof gingerbread.

Took me a bit to find something what actually catch my eye. On one of Polish webs/blogs I found recipe for Gingerbread Teddies.

As I don't have Polish gingerbread mix (nearest Polish shop means a shopping trip) I decided to use Mixed Spice, which you can find in any shop. My son is not a fan of jam/preserve in mini-cakes, so...

I decided to make cupcakes with no jam in, and my version contains:

* 120 g unsalted butter
* 240 g honey
* 150 g plain flour
* 150 g wholemeal flour
* 2 eggs
* 1.5 tsp baking soda
* 2.5 tsp mixed spice
* 1 tsp cocoa

Line your muffin/cupcake tin with paper cases.
Put butter and honey in little pan and heat it until melted and combined, cool down sightly.
Preaheat oven to 180C.
Mix both flours, soda, spice and cocoa,then add butter/honey mix and eggs. Whisk until combined. Dough will be sticky.

Divide between cupcake cases 

and bake for about 20 minutes - until wooden skewer coming out clean.

Cool them down on wire rack and decorate as you wish.

Here melted dark chocolate and green sprinkles!

Enjoy!!!

Not only Halloween :)

Hiya!

Oh yes, I know Halloween is gone, but..

Over a week before Halloween Dom decided he wants to have carved pumpkin, sooo... he choose one in the shop and ...

My first carved pumpkin :) Hard job!!! And he wasn't happy cause he wanted bat on it... so I carved bat on back of this pumpkin later :)

On Halloween day I baked pumpkin muffins, I used Mary Berry's recipe for carrot cake which you can find here: Mary Berry's Carrot and Walnut Cake, just changed carrot for pumpkin and didn't add walnuts.

Result: very yummy!!!

Meantime Dom was working on Birthday card for his friend Grace.

He's going for her Birthday party this Saturday.

He's also waiting for his school trip to Druridge Bay next week.

That's all for now :)

What happened... since May

So busy with my cardmaking blog, but...

This cannot be an explanation for total absence in here! I'm making cards - fact, but not only this!

So... what happened since May? Quite a bit I can say :)

We started dealing with our garden:

I found rather big amount of sea glass on our beach, when we decided one day we need some nice walk :)

Won this beauty on Instagram:

We were in Newcastle and found great place called Greek Grill in Heaton :) Very yummy food plus nice chat with cook and owner of the place - we recommend this place to all Greek food lovers!

This little piece I won on Twitter during #CupcakeHour one Thusday :) It is creation of Joanna Pearce.

You can find and buy her pieces here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MaisyPlum.

Below my first ever ATC (Artist Trading Card) card - I love how its turned out :)

Next - my son's card for his friend (next door neighbour's son)

Dom loves cardmaking :)

And last but not least...

Courgettes and limes cupcakes I made using this recipe: http://www.womanandhome.com/recipes/535633/courgette-and-lime-cake.

Yummy!!! My man wants more of them:)

That's all for today peeps!

Will try my hardest to write more here in coming days :)

Chocolate cookies for Dom

Today before I walk my son to school I promised him cookies. Had crazy, bit hectic day, but... my son have his cookies  😊.

After school he checked them and... wanted more then just one allowed before dinner 😊.

Want to make them?

Here recipe (I modified recipe found in 'Cookies!' by Pippa Cuthbert and Lindley Cameron Wilson):

Ingredients: 

250 g dark chocolate (70% min), 60 g cocoa powder, 100 g unsalted butter, 3 eggs, 100 g soft brown sugar, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 75 g plain flour, 1/4 tsp baking powder.

Place chocolate, butter and cocoa powder in metal bowl and place over a pan of simmering water and stir occasionally until melted, set aside to cool. Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla extract until nicely combined, add chocolate mixture, mix, add flour and baking powder and mix until just combined. Cover the dough and chill (2-3 hours). Preheat oven to 200 C. Roll dough quickly into small balls, place on baking sheets and bake about 10 minutes. 

Allow to cool and enjoy 😊.

Till next post!

Midterm break

Last week was a little break from school for Dom. I can say that was very interesting time - first time only me, Dom and Tula (Daddy was working).

We had little bit of chocolate fudge I made around weekend

As inspiration for this fudge I had recipe found through pinterest: http://theprettybee.com/2015/11/3-ingredient-dairy-free-fudge.html.

My version contained: 550 g dark chocolate, 1 can of coconut milk and around 3 tbsp of icing sugar :)

We had fun making cookies from Dr Oetker book from 1930.

Dom helped me with finishing this nice card - details you can find here: http://tobicards.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/february-challenge-at-conie-fong-art-fb.html

He also had his time with card making - I received my crafting mag with stepper cards kit as free gift and Dom decided he wants to use it :) He made 4 nice stepper cards with minimum of my help.

Beautiful work isn't it?

We also read a lot and Dom painted 3 new 'masterpieces', we bought some new books and colouring books and spent a little bit of time in Whitley Bay where we had a stop for drink and cake :). We had fun watching Tula running wild in the garden, making new chewing toy for her and trying to explain her that Dom's sleepers are not for chewing (no luck).

Overall - very nice time together :)

Pyramid cookies

Today finally I found a time to check one of the recipes I found in book Mum sent me few weeks ago. This little book unfortunately is not complete - few pages missing. It is Dr Oetker's recipe book from 1930.

I decided to bake cookies which I'm calling Pyramid shortbread cookies.

To make them you need:

60 g sugar, 150 g butter, 180 g flour, 50 g ground almonds, pinch of cinnamon and about 1.5 tsp baking powder.

Preheat oven to 200 C. 'Knead' all ingredients together for nice elastic dough, then roll, cut and bake around 10 minutes (until golden).

Ball of dough before rolling

I used star cookie cutter, but you can use any kind you want.

Cooling down :)

Use jam or chocolate cream between cookies, place on each other as shown above and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Enjoy with tea or coffee!

Tula, baking and watercolour pencils

Shame on me!!!

Wasn't writing for so long here. Dealing with 4 yo boy, puppy, house works, crafting etc is not easy - I can tell it for sure :).
Tula is 12.5 weeks old now and had her 2 jabs done. On pic below our little cutie in her new coat ready for her first walk :)

Isn't she look cute in it?

I have some watercolour pencils from my friend plus received bigger box of them from my man for Christmas... I thought why not learn something new... 

Just one think - I am not good with drawing things ( maybe trees :) ). 

Below pic of my first try with these pencils on Digi stamp from Poolkadoodles.

More about my practicing you can read here: http://tobicards.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/watercolour-pencils-in-card-making.html

Last Sunday I decided to try something new - scones :) Savory scones... Actually

Bacon and cheese scones!

Before landing in oven

Cooling down!

To make these scrumptious beauties you need (in my version):

First preheat your oven to 200 C.

Fry 200 g bacon lardons, put them aside to cool down a bit, in bowl mix together 275 g self-raising flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt, then add 100 g butter and rub it until form breadcrumbs. in other bowl mix together 150 ml milk, 50 ml oil and 1 egg. Then add milk mixture to the dry ingredients, add 2-3 nicely chopped spring onions (can be more if you wish) and fried lardons and mix it together. 

Divide dough between 12 muffin cases and bake for about 20 minutes, until golden/brown and then...

depends from you :) wait for little cool down or just eat them hot ;)

To be honest with you I was very surprised to see my 4yo fussy eater munching on it and asking for 'cupcakes' next day!

Enjoy!!!

Bit of baking

Christmas time is definitely time for lots of sweets :) All these biscuits and cakes we love since childhood. Or for trying new recipes :)

Few days before Christmas Day we had some fun with Dom making chocolate biscuits.

Recipe I found on Pinterest, but modified it for our taste :) If you are interested in original recipe, go: http://nurturestore.co.uk/easy-christmas-biscuit-recipe.

For our cookie dough I melted: 85g unsalted butter, 2 tbsp of honey and 60g cane sugar. Then added 200g plain flour, 2tsp cinnamon and 2 tsp cocoa plus 1 tsp baking soda mix with 1 tbsp water. Then rolled it

Dom helped with cutting it and then placed on baking sheets and baked in preheated to 190 C oven for max 10 minutes.

After little cooling we checked them and Dom approved them :)

Yesterday I decided to try recipe for Sour Cream Coffeecake I have from instagram - made some research before, cause recipe is American and as a European I'm not familiar with measuring system used in it.

Original recipe from mixandmeasure (65 years in family):

cream 1 stick margarine and 1 cup sugar, add 2 eggs, sift 2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda plus 1/2 pint sour cream and  tsp vanilla. Mix well, put in large angel food greased pan. sprinkle top with mix of sugar and cinnamon. Bake 50 minutes in 350 F.

My version: 

cream together 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup sugar (I used only 3/4 cup of sugar), add 2 eggs, 2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 cup sour cream. Mix well. pour half of batter into greased angel pan, then sprinkle with 2/3 of mix of 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup or more chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts) and 1 tsp cinnamon, add rest of cake batter and sprinkle with rest of cinnamon mix. Bake 50 minutes in 180 C. Cool down and decorate with glaze of your choice (mine: icing sugar mixed with lemon juice).

Choose your version, bake it and enjoy!!!

Choco advocaat cupcakes :)

We are fans of little cakes :) All these muffins and cupcakes are very tempting :)

In opinion of my guys - small one and big one - I'm not baking often enough :) The easiest for me is just use recipe for one of the cakes, divide batter between paper cases and bake as muffins :) Bad me :)

Few days ago I decided to make proper cupcakes - so I opened book with cupcakes recipes and with 4yo exploring kitchen I baked chocolate advocaat cupcakes.

Dom couldn't wait and eat one of them without icing when was slightly cooled :)

Cooling :)

Advocaat cream on :)

Chocolate icing :)

Trifle made with leftover advocaat cream and chocolate icing with crashed bourbon biscuits :)

For these yummy cupcakes you need:

25g of cocoa powder

100ml boiling water

50g of butter

100g of light brown sugar

1 egg

75g of plain flour

1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda

pinch of baking powder

For advocaat cream:

220ml cream

45g icing sugar

120ml of advocaat

For chocolate topping:

140ml cream

200g of dark chocolate

Mix cocoa powder with water and set aside, mix together rest of cupcake ingredients and add cocoa water, divide butter between 12 paper cases and bake about 20 minutes in 190 C. Then place on wire rack to cool.

Mix together inggredients for advocaat cream until smooth and thick, put in pipping bag and pipe on top  of the cakes, chill until you make chocolate topping.

For chocolate topping heat cream gently in the pan until boiling point, remove from heat, add chocolate and stir until melts, then allow to cool down and spread carefully over advocaat cream and leave to set.

For sure next time I need to bake more cupcakes, cause have lots of both creams left plus Dom is to small for deserts with alcohol :) so his cupcakes are only with choco cream on top :) But like you could saw I used leftovers, so no waste here :)

Enjoy your cupcakes!!!

Dinosaur cookies :)

Wednesday - cookie day - dinosaur day!!! Dom was happy :)

We had another nice and sunny day, Dom had great day at nursery and after back home I started to make a dough.
Dom came into the kitchen with his chair to watch what I was doing - he likes to watch me preparing food :)
'Chocolate' he said when saw that I added cocoa powder and dough became dark brown :) 'Yes, chocolate' I said back and we both smiled :)

Then I placed new dino cookie cutters in front of him and started to roll the dough - you should see his face :) We had lots of dough rolling and cutting and placing on baking trays :) 3 medium and 1 small tray full of cookies :)

Which dinos? Can you name them?

Dom started their 'mass extinction' when they were still warm :) I had to hide them, cause I knew if he grab more I can forget about him eating his dinner :)

Here - all what's left after initial 'extinction' :)

Recipe for dough I adopted from 'Cookies - a collection of 200 delicious recipes' book. 

If you want to try these cookies (cookie cutters of your choice ), here's all you need:

* 90g softened butter

* 60g caster sugar

* 1 egg

*  tbsp milk

* 280g plain flour (I used bit less then that)

* 2 tbsp of cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F. Line baking trays with greaseproof paper. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add egg and milk and beat together until combined, add cocoa and flour and mix to form soft dough. Roll the dough until about 5 mm thick, cut your cookies and bake 10-12 minutes. Leave to cool on baking tray for few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. You can decorate your cookies with chocolate or icing of your choice or just eat them plain :)