BAKE

I hope everyone had a lovely long Easter weekend!

I took the opportunity to indulge in a little technical zone-out. Whilst I don’t worry about the amount of time I spend online, as I think my social network usage is average, I find the pressure of comparing myself to other people can be quite stressful. So I took myself out of the equation for four glorious days.

Though I wasn’t completely off the radar – I responded to a few urgent emails, slipped up and checked facebook more times than I meant to and exchanged a few texts with friends I was meeting up with – it was nice to have a holiday from having an online presence.

It’s amazing how much you can get done with a few less distractions, and now I have taken time out to do the tasks that were preying on the corners of my mind I feel more refreshed and focused. It has also given me time to think about what I want to do to improve this blog:

1. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I want to get into the habit of posting on a regular schedule.

2. I want to branch out and use more lenses.

3. Finish painting my backgrounds so I can experiment with more colours.

4. Experiment with more recipes rather than just falling back on variations of my old favourites.

5. Practise piping icing

These cupcakes were meant to be made with mini eggs, as a ‘what to do with any leftover easter eggs post’ but I couldn’t find any for love nor money, so I used smarties instead.

Mini Cupcakes with Rich Chocolate Frosting
makes 12 mini cupcakes

Sponge:

1 egg
60g butter
60g self raising flour
60g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla
1tbsp sour cream
a handful of crushed smarties

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a mini cupcake tin

Mix all the ingredients (reserving the smarties) until they form a smooth batter, then mix in the smarties.

Distribute between the cupcake cases and bake for 9-12 minutes or until cooked – keep an eye on them as they’re easy to overcook.

Leave to cool.

Icing:

70g dark chocolate melted and cooled
5tbsp icing sugar
1tbsp sour cream
1tbsp double cream

Mix the chocolate and 2tbsp of icing sugar together.

Add the cream and sour cream and mix thoroughly, this should create a quite liquidy paste.

Add the rest of the icing sugar in tbsp increments until the icing is smooth and holds its shape – I just lifted my beaters out and when it held the whisk marks I stopped adding icing sugar.

Ice cupcakes right away as they icing hardens.