Shonky phone photo I’m afraid. Here are the cupcakes we made for Jude’s birthday. (Plus some supermarket interlopers. Hmph.)

Ours are the yellow ones with a mini-egg (lemon), the ones with white icing and dark chocolate gratings, and the ones with pink icing with white chocolate gratings (these latter two are all chocolate/”red velvet”).

For the lemon ones, I risked another Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook recipe. I feel pretty certain the quantity of baking powder in the Black bottom cupcakes is wrong now. Most of the Hummingbird cupcake recipes have similar quantities of butter, sugar, flour (40g, 140g, 120g ish), and all have 1 and half teaspoons of baking powder – except the black bottom, which has half a teaspoon. Duh.

Anyway, the lemon ones – the method is of course a shambles for the home kitchen, but the results are good with some tweaking.

Soften 40g unsalted butter, then blend it into 140g of caster sugar. You won’t be able to cream it per se, as there’s not enough fat in proportion to sugar. Add 1 egg and 120ml of whole milk and beat – you can do this with a handheld electric mixer. Sift in 150g of flour and 1 and half teaspoons of baking powder, and beat slowly by hand to stop the powdery ingredients spraying all over the shop. Once it’s all combined and moist, hit it with the mixer again to blend nicely.

Another flaw with the Hummingbird recipes is they all say “spoon the mixture into paper cases until two-thirds full”, then claim they’ll make 12. Well, if you use standard muffin cases, and fill them 2/3rds, they actually make 8. Bake for 20 mins in oven pre-heated to 170C.

For the “red velvet” ones we used a recipe Fran found online a while back, and previously posted here. Here’s a tweaked version of the recipe, to make 12:
Soften 60g of unsalted butter then mix with 140g caster sugar; again, you can’t quite cream it, but blend. Then beat in 1 egg, using handheld mixer.
In a separate bowl, sift together:
145g plain flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
Pinch salt
1/2 T cocoa powder
Then in another bowl, or jug, mix:
120ml buttermilk
1 1/2 T red food colouring (natural, naturally)
1/2 t vanilla essence
1/2 t distilled white vinegar

Add quarter of the dry ingredients to the beaten butter/sugar/egg mix, and beat; then add a third of the wet ingredients and beat. Keep adding alternatively, ending with the dry mix. Beat until well combined.

Half fix 12 muffin cases, then bake for 20 mins at 170C, or until the cakes are springy.

We iced all the cakes with variations of cream-cheese icing, using 300g of icing sugar, sifted; 50g of unsalted butter, softened; 125g of cream cheese.
Add around 100g of the sugar to the butter, and slowly beat in by hand, until well combined, then add more sugar a little at a time; add the cheese, and blend by hand until the powder is no longer powdery. Then beat with electric mix until well combined. For lemon, we added some zest and yellow colouring.

(Another, slightly sharper, pic here.)

It seems a tradition now to make Lawrence’s birthday cake of the lemon variety, he claims, or did so once, that it’s his cake of choice. I reckon any cake his now his cake of choice, he’s given up trying to convince himself that he doesn’t really have a sweet tooth! Perhaps it’s living with me that did it?

I had a look on the internet this time, uninspired by lemon cakes in my cook books and found this one on the Good Food website.

It looked so tempting, I didn’t have enough almonds so made up the amount with poppy seeds. This may be why it sank! Or I opened the oven too quickly at once stage. It’s funny, we were only just talking about cake disasters the other day and how cross Dan gets when things go wrong (obviously I do too, but I think he’s more of a passionate baker than me!) I thought we should publish the mistakes and catastrophes – makes it a bit more of an honest blog. I’m sure I’ve published some near disasters on here.

Anyway, taking a leaf out of Mary Berry’s book (not literally) I decided to make the sunken middle a feature and filled it with Chocolate hearts and balls (not sure about the balls). To add to the mishaps, I was working against the clock and decided to cheat and melt the chocolate in the microwave – never being lazy and doing that again! I started again in the smoke-filled kitchen, the conventional way, a bowl over simmering water. Not the best quality chocolate – it was an emergency operation) so it’s a bit patchy.

It’s a lovely moist cake that goes well with crème fraîche or a bit of cream perhaps. I baked in a smaller tin than they suggest which may also be the reason it sank – the volume of ingredients is rather large and needs a wider tin. Yummy though!

So in the last few weeks leading up to the ‘due date’ I need to be eating lots of energy food – perfect excuse to make a load of flapjacks! These are banana, with honey rather than golden syrup – so kind of healthy. Flapjacks so often have hydrogenated fat in them if you buy the shop kind – yuk.

The lemon and poppy seed muffins are delicious – not sure they’ll last long with Lawrence around – lemon is his thing.

We had our first pregnant lady meeting outside of NCT class yesterday, which I hosted, hence the totally valid reason to make lots of treats and get Grandma’s Conran tea set out. Everyone probably thought they’d stepped back in time to the 1950s, if only i could fit into my 50s dress at the moment, it would have finished off the look perfectly.

Flapjacks are easy but here’s the recipe for the muffins:

Makes 12
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
225g caster sugar
300g self-raising flour
2 tbs poppy seeds
1 egg, lightly beaten
225ml milk
60g butter melted

For the lemon syrup:
100g icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Oven at 200, grease 12 cup non-stick muffin tin (not paper cases – they will absorb the lemon syrup at the end)
Mix 2 tsp of the lemon zest and 2 tbsp of the sugar in small bowl and set aside
Mix the flour, poppy seeds and remaining sugar in large bowl. In a separate bowl mix remaining lemon zest, lemon juice, egg, milk and melted butter. Add this to dry mixture until combined.
Spoon batter into tins then sprinkle tops with reserved sugar and lemon zest.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden and well risen.
Meanwhile mix the icing sugar and lemon juice. Spoon this over the hot baked muffins and leave to cool in the tin. (I pricked the tops to make sure it soaked in)

Yum!