Better late than never

A few weeks ago I made some cupcakes, took photos and then never got around to blogging about them!

I made vanilla cupcakes with chocolate and strawberry frosting, chocolate lime cupcakes and beer cheese cupcakes with bacon and cream cheese frosting.

The vanilla ones were for a friend's birthday, topped off with mini smarties. They went down well with those who tried them but the frosting was too loose so they looked a little sloppy. I just wanted another excuse to swirl different colours of icing on a cupcake :P

The next ones I made were chocolate lime flavoured inspired by the chocolate lime sweets I love. I used the recipe for lemon cupcakes from the primrose bakery book but used lime juice and zest instead of lemon and added a little green food colouring to make them green.

I made a hole and filled them with some chocolate ganache and then topped with some lime buttercream then some dark chocolate shavings sprinkled on top.

Last but not least I made the very disgusting sounding beer cheese cupcakes! I found a recipe for these while I was mooching through the Internet. (recipe : http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2008/01/beer-cheese-cupcakes-with-bacon-cheddar.html)
Knowing that some of the guys at work love to try weird things I decided to give them a try and they went down very well! I made the bacon cheddar cream cheese frosting to go on top and they looked horrible!!

They were actually really nice! They didn't taste too much like beer or cheese but they were delicious! I think the frosting needed more bacon! But then again, I think everything needs more bacon!

Disaster :(

So I had big over ambitious plans yesterday. The plan was to make 3 different flavoured batches of cupcakes but there was a problem with the water in our apartment which meant it wasn't the best place to make cupcakes all afternoon. It was after 8pm before it was fixed so I only had time for one type of cupcake and decided on caramel cupcakes with caramel buttercream. 

Cupcakes were baked with no real problems and then it was time to make the buttercream. Couldn't find any icing sugar anywhere! I stocked up on supplies this week but forgot to buy icing sugar. I had to think fast! The poor sad looking cupcakes needed something so I decided to try to make chocolate ganache. Never made it before but there has to be a first time for everything! I filled the cupcakes with a little extra caramel and covered with the chocolate. They turned out OK and I was quite happy with the results! Topped them off with little chocolate stars, pink sugar and pink and white pearls. 

They came into work with me and I wasn't sure if people would like the ganache - it was 70% cocoa chocolate and very chocolaty but they went down well! My favourite Guinea pig Dave stole a box of 6 and only 3 came back so I guess they must have been good!

Completely forgot to take pictures of them - maybe because they weren't as pretty as I hoped they would be. Managed to remember just before I ate the last one but it's a crappy pic from my crappy iPhone so excuse the bad quality.

I'll get my proper camera out next time - gives me a good reason to practice my photography! 

If I get a chance after work at some point this weekend, I might try to make another batch of cupcakes to make up for the lack of cake today! 

Hello!!

I don't claim to be the best cupcake baker, it's just something that I enjoy. I wanted to have a place where I could document my cupcake adventures!