Valentine's Cupcakes and Meringue Kisses

Many people think that Valentine's day is a product of commercialism, an excuse for restaurants to charge more and for shops to fill the gap between Christmas and Easter. But I love Valentine's day and while we should show our loved one's how special they are everyday, it's nice to make an occasion out of it. Plus there are so many pretty heart inspired products in the shops around this time of year. Food is an important aspect for Valentine's day, as the old saying goes 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach'! With my boyfriend this year we are cooking in rather than going out to a restaurant. In addition, I've baked these cupcakes and some meringue 'kisses', 2 small piped meringues sandwiched together with chocolate.


Cupcakes -
For me, any special occasion wouldn't be complete without cupcakes! I've made these using the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook (see this link to my previous post) using chocolate sponge and vanilla frosting. I added a handful of chocolate chips to the sponge mixture so that they'll be extra chocolatey. I used cases with little hearts on and decorated them with a range of toppings. I used heart shaped jelly beans from M&S, some pink love heart sweets and a mixture of sprinkles.

Meringues -

Meringues are always popular with me as we always have so many eggs to use up (from our lovely chickens) so when I saw a recipe by Lorraine Pascale in the Sainsbury's magazine for chocolate meringue kisses, I thought it would be a great idea for Valentine's day. These meringues are the best I've made yet, the lemon juice and cream of tartar added when whisking really stabilises the mix, making them easier to pipe and their texture at the end is perfect. She uses chocolate buttercream to sandwich hers together but I just dipped them in melted chocolate and she also adds some toasted (175g) pecans to the meringue mix but again, I wanted to keep them simple. The cute meringues would be great for a light pudding at a dinner party or as part of an afternoon tea. To pipe the meringues, I find it easiest to use a sandwich bag and cut the end off and then put the piping nozzle in that. It's then easy to throw away the bag rather than waste hours washing your piping bag.


Ingredients - 
5 large egg whites
a squeeze of lemon juice
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
275g caster sugar
Chocolate or a chocolate butter cream to sandwich them together.


1. Preheat the oven to fan 100c and line 3 baking trays with nonstick baking paper. Using a whisk, whisk the egg whites and lemon juice to stiff peaks.
2. Whisking all the time, add the cream of tartar and sugar, a few tablespoons at a time. Keep on whisking until you have a stiff, shiny meringue. Then spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe 50 x 3-4cm blobs on the baking trays.
3. Bake for an hour and then leave to cool on the trays. I leave them in the oven with the door ajar to reduce cracking.
4. Then once cooled and dry, carefully lift the meringues off of the baking paper and sandwich together then leave in the fridge for a while to set properly. If using buttercream, sandwich a couple of hours before (no earlier). 

Happy Valentine's Day <3 

I'll be posting what we cooked in the next couple of days. 

Cupcakes, Cookbooks and Coca Cola Ham!

I hope everybody had a lovely Christmas and are now planning for the New Year! 


First of all, I must blog Nigella's Coca Cola Ham. Not sure if anybody follows India Knight on twitter but she had a ham and there was a lot of debate about whether to do it in coca cola or not, everybody who has cooked it says do it but if you haven't then it probably sounds very strange. And I remember watching Nigella do it on one of her show's a while ago and thinking how weird it seemed. But true to her word, it does really work and I will definitely be cooking all my ham's like this in the future. We cooked this on Boxing Day ready for some family coming the following day and it went down really well (unfortunately not much was left!) The coke doesn't make it too sweet like I thought it would, it just adds a great depth of flavour and colour. Then you add the glaze which tastes really great.  The photo below doesn't really do it justice. 

Ingredients -
2kg mild cure gammon
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
2 litre bottle of coca cola (plus extra to make sure it's covered if your pan is too big like mine was)
For the glaze -
Handful of cloves (optional, I was a bit cloved out from Christmas so left them out)
1 heaped tablespoon of black treacle
2 tsp english mustard powder
2 tablespoons demerara sugar
One spoonful of the cooking water to loosen it up a little.


1. Nigella doesn't bother to soak the ham but I did just in case it was too salty. So if you feel it will be salty, put it in a pan covered with cold water and bring to the boil then tip into a colander in the sink.
2. Then put the gammon in a pan, skin side down if it fits like that, add the onion and then pour over the Coke.
3.Bring to the boil then reduce to a good simmer. Put the lid on but not too tightly and cook for just under 2 1/2 hours. If your joint is bigger or smaller then work out the timing by about an hour per kilo remembering that it will go into an oven later (but add an extra 15mins if it's been in the fridge right up until the moment you cook it)
4. Preheat the oven to 240c.
5. When the ham's had it's time, take it out of the pan but don't throw away the cooking liquid yet. Let it cool for a little bit to make it easier to handle or let it cool completely and finish cooking later if you need to. Then remove the skin, leaving a thin layer of fat. Score the fat with a sharp knife to make large diamond shapes then if using cloves, stud each diamond with a clove.
6. Mix the sugar and mustard powder into the treacle with a little cooking water and spread onto the ham.
7. Then cook in a foil-lined roasting tin for approx 10 mins or until the glaze is burnished and bubbling. 
Then slice when ready and serve! 
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I got lots of cookbooks for Christmas so I shall be sharing many recipes over the next few months. Here are a photo of some of my favourites. I can't wait to get stuck in to some new recipes, especially from Leon and Green&Blacks. But some others I'd really recommend and not pictured are: Jamie's 30minute meals, Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book, Delia, any by Ottolenghi and Nigella Express. 

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And finally, some photos of some food over Christmas including the cupcakes (I just used the Hummingbird vanilla recipe as everyone was a bit too flavoured out) and Turkey!

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Over January, I'll be posting lots of fresh and healthy recipes and lots from the new cookbooks. Happy New Year!

Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes

Well these cupcakes were a bit of a failure... I mean they tasted delicious but didn't turn out as I'd hoped. I was trying to make them all halloweeny look like pumpkins with bright orange icing and then decorate them, but I used soo much food colouring and it just wouldn't go orange enough! So I gave up and left them in this peachy colour. 
But here's the recipe - It's from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook that I got last Christmas but I adore anything made from there! These cupcakes are so good for birthdays or any occasion in fact - I tend to look for any excuse to make these! I'll probably post the chocolate version at some point.
You have to be careful with the quantities though, below is their standard recipe but I always have to make 1 1/2 batches for 12 cupcakes because there is no way enough! I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if they have but I struggle to even half fill each case with the quantities provided.
So try it with the standard recipe but then if you can't fill each case 2/3 full then quickly whip up another 1/2 batch, it doesn't take long.  This makes 12 in standard size cupcake cases (not the small fairy cake cases) and taste just as good a few days later stored in a tin!
Ingredients - 
For the cakes:
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter, at room temp
120ml milk (it says whole but I use skimmed to lower the fat)
1 egg
1/4tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 170c or Gas 3.
Sieve the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter into a free-standing electric mixer with a paddle attachment and beat on a slow speed until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined. Then gradually pour half the milk and beat until the milk is just incorporated.
Then whisk the egg, vanilla extract and remaining milk in a separate bowl and then pour into the flour mix and continue beating until smooth. - Do not overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25mins until the light golden and the sponge bounces back when touched.
The cakes are cooked when a skewer is inserted into the centre and comes out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before cooling completely on a wire rack.
When cold, ice with vanilla frosting -
Ingredients -
250g icing sugar, sifted
80g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml whole milk
A couple of drops of vanilla extract


Beat the icing sugar and butter together on a medium-slow speed until the mixture comes together and is well mixed.
Turn the mixer down to slow speed. Combine the milk and vanilla extract in a separate bowl, then add to the butter mix a couple of tablespoons at a time. Once all the milk has been added turn the mixer to a high speed. Add any food colouring.
Keep beating until light and fluffy (at least 5mins). The longer the frosting is beaten, the lighter and fluffier it becomes.
Same recipe, different decorations:

Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

I <3 cupcakes! 

They're so personal, versatile, delicious, pretty and the perfect size! I love finding excuses to make cupcakes and in August my boyfriend's birthday was the perfect occasion. I usually just do chocolate or vanilla with buttercream but he wanted some toffee/caramel kind of flavour so after lots of recipe searching I opted to go for sticky toffee cupcakes with a dulche de leche buttercream.

It's so hard to find recipes that are suitable for the UK, all the best recipes seem to be American with ingredients like 'butterscotch chips' which you can't really find in Sainsburys or Waitrose. Or the recipes need homemade caramel which I didn't really fancy making with all the hassle of a sugar thermometer and risk of getting scalded etc. So in the end I came up with a recipe that I could find ingredients for, including dulche de leche from waitrose and added it to normal buttercream (although it was a tiny bit too sweet) and made a traditional sticky toffee sponge with dates. As much as I love conventional cupcakes from chocolate or vanilla, these were definitely something special and I'd recommend making them. They also kept really well and were still delicious a good few days later!

The toffee cupcakes are the caramel looking ones. I also made some chocolate ones too.

Recipe - Adapted from Fiona Carins on the Good Food channel.
For the sponge -

180g dates, pitted and chopped

1tsp vanilla extract

180g self-raising flour

1tsp bicarb of soda

80g unsalted butter

150g muscovado sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

For the buttercream-

A good couple of tablespoons of dulche de leche (You can get the post version in the nice glass jar like I did, or just get the carnation tins - they taste almost exactly the same!)

Butter 

Sugar 

- sorry not sure on quantities for these, just use a good buttercream recipe, I think I used the hummingbird bakery but took a good part of the sugar out as the dulche de leche is soo sweet and the icing can be too sickly otherwise!

1. Preheat oven to 180c

2. Place paper cases into 12 hole cupcake tin

3.In a bowl, pour 180ml boiling water over the dates and leave to soak for 20minutes. With a fork, break up the dates and stir in the vanilla.

4. Sift the flour and bicarb of soda into another bowl and set aside.

5. Then cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 5mins). Add the eggs gradually, beating well between each addition and slipping in 1tbsp flour halfway to prevent curdling. 

6. Then fold in the remaining flour and date mixture.

7. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 15-20mins. (Until the tops spring back, you know the drill with cakes)

For the toffee buttercream - 

Make a traditional buttercream (for 12 cakes), but leave out some of the sugar like I said earlier, then beat in a couple of tablespoons of the dulche de leche. Add more to taste if you need to, the colour should be a lovely light brown caramel. 

Pipe/Ice over the cakes and decorate!

Waiting to be displayed and eaten!