089. Try 20 new recipes - Malteser Cupcakes

While James is away some of the girls at work wanted to make sure I wasn't lonely and suggested having a baking day/night round at one of our houses. Charlotte and Rachel came round to my house on Saturday afternoon (Aug 6).

I suggested doing Maltesers Cupcakes. We all went shopping on Friday evening to get snacks and ingredients.

This is hour they came out after we'd baked and frosted.

They came out great but I think I only really appreciated them the day after, we'd eaten so much raw cake mix and so much excess frosting, especially after a takeaway of fish and chips, that we all felt a bit bloated and sick!

I'm taking the results of the baking into the office tomorrow, I couldn't possibly eat all those cakes to myself, could I?

089. Try 20 new recipes - Cookies & Cupcakes

I quite fancy myself to be quite the baker nowadays, I've been trying out different things for a few weeks now.

Firstly, I adapted a chocolate chip cookie recipe to be a bit more fun! I added lemon flavouring, white chocolate chips and some citrus sugar strands into the cookie mixture. There was a lot of cookie dough, when baking the cookies merged together to form, more-or-less, one giant cookie on the sheet! Amazing.

It was then my birthday, so James bought me the latest Hummingbird Bakery baking book - Cake Days. The first recipes I wanted to try was for the soda cupcakes in orange and cola. I bought the syrups from Soda Stream and all the equipment needed and set about the mixing! I finished the orangeade and cola cupcakes in time to take to work and spoil everyone for my birthday (surely that's not right?).

I think the orange ones came out great, especially when frosted and decorated with jelly beans!

The cola ones also looked good and were the ones that made my work colleagues most curious.

Next up will be Red Velvet Cupcakes - always wanted to try making those! I also have a lime ready to zest and the lime Soda Stream syrup - limeade cupcakes, anyone?

089. Try 20 new recipes - Plain Scones

I've made cookies, cupcakes and brownies but never made scones and never done anything where I had to make dough and roll it out. Today was fun, I made plain scones. Plain because I forgot to put the fruit in! Nevermind, there's always next time.

Check out my before and after baking photos below!