Well, look at me - I made cupcakes!

There were two occasions I was supposed to be at this weekend, one was a picnic and the other was an afternoon tea, and so on Friday I made cupcakes.  However, still incubating my own little cupcake and having some dodgy blood pressure readings resulted in Friday night in hospital and a promise that I would rest on the Saturday, so I did make it to the afternoon tea (on the basis it was at our friends house in our street), but not to the picnic (which was a shame).
However, I frosted the cupcakes for the occasion and took them along.
I made cookies and cream cupcakes - these were somewhat shamelessly 'inspired' by the cookies and cream cupcakes we had from the Pet Lamb Patisserie girls the previous week, and I also made black bottomed cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook that I received as part of my leaving present from work.
Here they are:

Whoopie Pies

This was a new cakey experiment... apparently the latest thing from the US in the cake baking world - although based on an old tradition.  I have to say that I didn't feel the love in their creation as much as with cupcakes, but that I did think they looked cute when finished, and they certainly went down well at work! I found it faffy piping the cake components, and then faffy making the marshmallow based filling, but other than that it was fine...  I don't think I'll be making them again in a hurry though!

Cupcakes!

It's been a while since I have baked, but it's been ages since I have made cupcakes... Mainly as now having a toddler and a new one on the way means that my time is more limited.  However, events conspired to inspire me to bake cupcakes this weekend and these are the result.  I made some cupcakes for friends and their family, I made some as a gift for our friends who are new parents, and some as a gift for a variety of people having a joint birthday party.  I enjoyed making them and the recipients seemed to enjoy being given them, so a good time had by all.

The mother of all French Fancies...

This cake started life as a rashly made promise at a meeting - the conversation had somehow drifted onto the fact that Mr K apparently makes pink fondant fancy available in a large size at a big named supermarket near you.  I then said 'it's my birthday soon - I'll make one', while thinking how hard can it be!  The picture doesn't do the size of the cake justice - it was HUGE - I had to take it to work in a plastic crate thing as I didn't have a cake box large enough, still, it amused my bus driver and the lady sitting opposite me.  The cake itself is 2 layers of the ultra reliable BERO rich chocolate cake mixture which I sandwiched together AND iced with (shock) ready made chocolate fudge icing - as I just couldn't cope with the thought of making such a large batch of butter cream! The 'bump' was another layer of cake that I made by baking it in a bowl to get the right shape, which was then stuck on with the icing...  I then added the finishing black decoration with a writing icing pen.
The cake went down very well and very quickly with colleagues - I would say it was and ex**dingly good cake, but that would probably infringe some copyright somewhere and I don't want to be sued...

Staycation Mini-Cupcakes

It's 11am, it's coffee time at work - an social tradition of which the days are now numbered in its present daily form. However, one thing is guaranteed, that the number in attendance will increase exponentially when the work 'cake' is included in the invite. The unwritten rule, is that people are welcome to contribute offerings to share to celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, holidays, retirement, moving on, moving up, pregnancy (announcement and return), and the welcome of new colleagues, or visitors, plus any other excuses that can be thought of to share biscuits, cakes and dodgy produce from foreign climes.

However, these mini-cupcakes were my contribution from our August staycation. The choices were vanilla cupcakes iced with pink icing and appropriate decorative accessories, chocolate cupckes with chocolate icing, and iced fancies which I made on a whim from the surplus of chocolate cake mixture.