Aint Nothing Better Than Chocolate Cake

Hurrah, half-term starts now, good times.
However work tomorrow means no lie-in, bad times.
No worries though, it means i get a chance to bake some yummy cupcakes...



Ingredients:

100g Plain Flour
20g Cocoa Powder
140g Caster Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter @ room temp
120ml milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

How to..

1) Cream together the cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, sugar, flour and butter with an electric mixer or hand-held whisk until its a sandy consistency and well combined.

2) Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla in a jug, then pour about half of the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until it starts to come together, then add the rest of the milk. Be carefull not to overmix or it wont rise as well.

3) Line a cupcake tray with paper cases and spoon the mixture until the cases are sorund two-thirds full and bake for 20-25 mins on gas 3/170 c/ 325 f. Make sure they're bake by doing the skewer test and leave to cool on a wire rack.

4) Once cool, frost and decorate. I used this recipe for a chocolate frosting, but you could use a vanilla or cream cheese one. 300g icing sugar, 100g unsalted butter, 40g cocoa powder & 40ml milk. Beat the butter, sugar and cocoa powder together, slowly add the milk until you get the right consistancy, be generous with the frosting :)



Enjoy, hopefully i'll update a more often now its half-term, desperately seeking some tinned pumpkin puree for a pie, any ideas?
Recipe taken from the bible aka The Hummingbird Bakery.
Cheers xx

Pretty Shiny Goodness

I believe i am Queen of procrastination, today, i should have been doing college work, yah know, essays and research and shizz, buut nooo, instead i got up at 11, shuffled around the house, watched Juno, then spent about two hours "window shopping" online for clothes. It's terrible, it really is...
As part of my procrastinating, i got the camera, and took pictures of mothers jewelry, much to her displeasure. Thing is, whilst she complains on my baking 'ability' i complain about her jewelry making ability. Such is life, enough with the rambling, i show you pictures of pretty stuff she's made, and some cool beads i wanna steal....


This one is all mine, and i love it ^^, the beads were a random find and the chain was hanging around, so, mother put both together and its a favorite.





So, not mine, but it's pretty cool, 5 strands of memory wire all tied together, tis very lovely.



Now, i would just be happy to have a few bead bracelets made outta the smaller beads, but i really want the white one with the flowers on it :P



See, s'not all about me :P, ha, well, back to erm, work then...
Cheers xx