Dragon Cake

This is an idea that spawned a while back, and has taken me around 3 months to develop and perfect the whole thing.
Then I just needed the perfect excuse to make it, and lo and behold a good friend of a slightly Gothic inclination happened to have a birthday, how convenient!

So please give a warm welcome to the Dragon Cake, my most ambitious, and prized, creation to date!

"Artic Brownies" aka Ultimate Chocolate Brownies

Take a look at these little beasties! Are they not a thing of beauty?
There's 5 different chocolates lurking in there you know. Yes, you heard right... FIVE different chocolates! *drifts off into chocolate heaven* oh, sorry! Got distracted there.

Where was I? Oh yes.
This recipe came up when tasked by work to create a suitably themed bake for our quarterly newsletter. Given that my line of work is waste water treatment, brownies were considered to be, er, fitting. The "artic" part represents the large number of articulated lorries we receive on a daily basis, so I picked a recipe with a white topping like snow, as a play on words with "arctic". Geddit??

Anyway, enough ado... to the brownies!

Teeny Tiny Gingerbread Men

I was shopping last weekend and popped into TK Maxx. I don't normally go in there, but when I do I often find something worth buying and this time was no exception - one set of gingerbread biscuit cutters, in the shape of little inch-high men in various poses! How cute!!

Obviously, I bought them. ;)
So the next problem was to find the perfect gingerbread recipe. Well, I think I found it.

Mocha Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Frosting

Chocolate? Yup.
Coffee? Yup.
Cupcake? Yup.
Frosting? Yup.

Well, they just had to be tried really, didn't they?!

Traditional Victoria Sandwich (sponge) Cake

I haven't made on of these for years, and I have no idea why as they're super easy and very, very good!!
The Victoria Sandwich was apparently named after our dear old Queen Victoria, who is said to have enjoyed a slice of the cake with her afternoon tea. I'm guessing this helped attribute to her rather *ahem* hefty girth, as it's not exactly calorie-light! But if you can bear to sin, it's definitely worth it.

Mmmm, just looking at that photo is making me drool!

A simple sponge cake was the first cake I ever made; my grandma taught me how to make them using her old Kenwood food mixer, and baking them in the Aga. The smell still brings back happy memories for me, and a slice of sponge with a cup of tea is one of life's great pleasures. Traditionally the sponge doesn't contain cream - just jam - but hey, if you're going to do it, you might as well go all the way right?

So, how do you create one of these confections of perfection? Well, I'll show you!

Low Carb Muffins

I'd like to begin this post with an apology for my absence - things have been a little crazy here, as we're in the midst of moving house. Needless to say, baking has been somewhat difficult!


I do have a couple of little treats to post though, rest assured I haven't abandoned my life completely.

I begin with this lovely little gem I stumbled across for low-carb muffins. Being a diabetic, ideally the fewer carbs I consume the better (yes, I'm very good at that... honest!), so I decided to investigate low carb baking. This recipe is absolutely brilliant - so easy to make, and the end product is really, really good! Moist, not too sweet, and delightfully almondy.

 

So, lovely muffins that are healthy...? Nope, I see no reason not to indulge either!
 

Pink Lady Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

The second part of my weekend baking marathon involved attempting a recipe that I spotted on Smitten Kitchen (if you've never been there, do take a look!) for something called a Pink Lady Cake.

"A what?" thinks me. Well, it turns out that said cake is a gorgeously pink towering confection, covered in nothing less than my favourite cream cheese frosting! And to make it even better, the aforementioned gorgeous pink colour is reached by the addition of strawberry puree.

So, it's pink... it tastes of strawberries... it's covered in cream cheese frosting... exactly where does this cake fail? Ah, I see, it's an entire cake!
So of course, I simply had to see if it would turn into cupcakes!