Ice cream cone cupcakes!

I love baking, as you all probably know, but I don't like faffing much! So I like to go for the bung it all in approach where I can! These cakes can be made doing just that! It is just my basic sponge/cupcake recipe and then the difference is what you bake them in and how you decorate them I have shown you some before but that was a few years ago now!

Above are just some cupcakes I made with spare mixture - I have seen quite a lot of ice-cream cupcakes around recently - must be the sun we are having!

The other way of baking these is by putting the mixture straight into a cup cornet. when they are done just make a few holes in the base so the heat can get out - it keeps the cornet crunchy!

Then the fun bit - go wild with the decoration!!

Hope you are all enjoying the sun - we went to the beach yesterday so expect a few pictures soon! 

Cheesecake and battenburg

Over the weekend I tried a few new recipes - the good food battenburg cake and rasberri cupcakes (all1 of her food looks amazing - I spent ages looking at them all, there will be a few more things made soon) choc cherry cheesecake- I added meringue to the top instead of ganache - it was delicious!

Pizza express and a little bit of sewing

Friday night we went to pizza express and shared 2 of there pizzas. They were nice but not quite as good as Manny's - he has promised to make some more on Tuesday :)

Saturday morning I got up and made this little fellow - I'm not 100% happy with his shape but I like him he is hanging up in the lounge quite happily adding a little bit of fun!

We went out for a walk in the afternoon and stopped at a cafe - this is the flower they had on the table - all of them were the same - a little bit dead - I quite liked them though - almost look dried. Forgot to take a picture of the white chocolate caramel shortbread we shared - it was eaten far too quickly!

Croyde Beach

Last weekend e went with our friends to Croyde beach - we stopped on the way to look down on Saunton sands. We were very lucky and had a sunny day. The post is going to be very photo heavy!

Plants were growing everywhere possible! Even a little crevice between some rocks in a wall.

I really wanted to know what was behind the door - where did it lead? 

After a tricky walk over the rock pools with picnic bag we stopped to have our lunch - I had made some multi coloured cupcakes - nothing like a sandy cake on the beach :)

After that we did some exploring of the rock pools and wandered down the beach to dip our feet in the sea.

I love the ripples left in the sand by the tides.

These are a few of my finds! I love the broken shells they hve such interesting shapes!

We then ventured down the coast a little for a hot drink and an ice cream! We sat on top of the cliff looking down whilst we rested!

I would love to live by the beach - I always enjoy going to the seaside and am always happy there! If I could look out on the beach every morning that would be amazing - I would be happy with a little holiday home if I couldn't live there - maybe I will have to have a look at caravans - then it would be easy to pop to the beach for a weekend .....

Pinata cookies

The process started with making ALOT of dough and then colouring it all! I left it to freeze overnight and all was well ......

After the freezing everything went wrong, I couldn't cut the dough it kept falling in half, the few slices I did get were really thick, these then doubled in size when cooking, then every time I cut a shape a limb or tail fell off! In the end I resorted to trying to cut the shape out by hand and it just about worked to give me one pinata cookie!

Thank you so much to puddleduck grange for sending me the cookie cutter I am hoping round 2 will go better!!

I have crushed all the spare biscuits and have frozen some to use as a cheesecake base and the rest I mixed with fondant to make a cookie pop (if you can do it with cake why not biscuits!)

A weekend of cupcakes

Above is a cake from soho coffee - enjoyed last saturday morning- so simply - just a vanilla cupcake with cream piled on top and finish with a strawberry and mint!

Above and below is our homemade tiramisu cupcake - we followed a recipe by Lorraine Pascale

They were delicious - I got a bit carried away with the cutting and filling as you can see below!

I am off to the beach tomorrow - lets hope it stays dry.

Help please!

I really want to make the cookies above, but I can't find a donkey/horse/pony cookie cutter suitable (it needs to be as close to the one below as possible so that there is enough room to hide the sweets.

More pictures and instructions to make this wonderful food are here

Sooo on to the help bit - has anyone seen a cookie cutter like this? If so please let me know where - I have tried ebay, amazon and other internet places but no luck yet!