Christmas CupCaking!

A couple of days ago I received from my parents a * very broad hint * in the guise of CUPCAKE MAGIC, little cakes with attitude, a book by Kate Shirazi.

This book is full of inspirational photos and great for beginner cake bakers and the more experienced alike.

I’m especially interested in making the glitter roses – - – and have a couple of ideas of my own for other Christmas themes. I’ll be adding photos of my own cupcakes here soon…..

Father’s Day Cake

The luscious coconut and cherry cake with lemon mascorpone filling I made for my Dad for Father’s Day!

This is his fave cake that I bake.

Marzipan Flower Cake

Coconut & Cherry Cup Cakes

Made these little beauties this morning :p

Raspberry, lemon and almond cake

Felt like baking a biggin today!

For the sponge
8 oz each of the following: Stork margarine; golden sugar; self raising flour; 4 free range eggs; 4 tablespoons semi-skimmed milk; 4 teasspoons lemon extract; 4 oz chopped almonds; icing sugar to dust sponge with!

For the filling
Raspberry jam; (“butter” cream) 2 oz Stork marg; 4 oz icing sugar

First, preheat the oven at gas mark 5 so it’s hot enough when the mixture is ready to bake! 
Using a flat knife, I mixed together the Stork marg and golden sugar, then gradually added the beaten eggs, whisking them one by one.
Lemon extract and the chopped almonds were added and stirred into the mixture.
Then I added the sifted SR flour, and the milk to make the mixture more “fluid”.
I poured the mixture into a marg greased deep round baking tin – which has a bottom that pushes out.
The cake baked at gas mark 5 for one hour and five minutes.
For the filling I made a Stork margarine version of butter cream: mixing together the icing sugar with the marg and added a couple of teaspoons of water to make the cream more pliable.
When the cake was baked it was cooled on a wire baking rack and then carefully separated into 2 parts using a large toothy type knife.
Raspberry jam was spooned and smoothed on first, followed by the butter cream. The top of the cake was then replaced, gently pushed down…letting jam and cream to ooze out! Ready and awaiting!