baking

Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream made from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook by Allysa Torey - this is an american recipe where the cake mix is runnier than typical english fairy cake mix, with plenty of milk in the mix its a bit like an overly thick pancake mix so the cupcakes don't rise in their cases in the over but still taste nice, night and moist. Visited the Magnolia Bakery (or may be its rival) last February with Helen in New York as part of the Sex and the City tour on Helen's 30th birthday. In an episode of Sex and the City the girls bought and ate cupcakes like these from a bakery which at the time didn't really exist and as lots of New Yorkers wanted to know where they could get these cupcakes the Magnolia Bakery was creater. A fall out between the partners running the shop resulted in a rival shop opening baking cupcakes using the same recipe. I baked these for Helen's 31st birthday and gave her a copy of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. Made over 2o cupcakes in all from the recipe so some were handed round the neighbours and other friends as I didn't think Helen would be able to eat them all!

Friday I baked a teabread from Mum's recipe she sent me to university with (good for baking on the cheap as no scales are required).

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of sultanas
soaked in 1 cup of tea (2 teabags)
added 2 cups of flour
and 1 egg
baked for 30-40 mins in a tin at 180 degrees C ish

Here's the sugar and sultanas stewing in the tea. Couldn't find my loaf tins, must have been binned during the kitchen re-vamp or left at someones house when baking 'offsite'. Used a round cake tin instead but I think the low shallow tin rather than the loaf tin meant it probably needed slightly less time than I gave it and it wasn't as moist as usual. Did the job though - lunches for both Saturday and Sunday whilst on my Framing Weekend course.