Whilst some lucky people were down in London at Knit Nation this weekend, I was in the kitchen baking up a little storm.
We had guests over for dinner last night (ate steamboat. yum!), and since I haven’t done any baking for an age I seized the opportunity for a little oven action.
I’ve been wanting a cupcake stand for ages, and ever since my friend gave me her extra stand last weekend I’ve been dying to try it out. So of course I made cupcakes!
Vanilla cupcakes with almond amaretto buttercream icing, topped with crushed amaretti biscuits. These are sooo yummy! You’ve got to love boozy cupcakes.
I need to practice my icing swirls. I really want to make those beautiful big cupcake swirls, but from what I’ve seen you need a pretty large icing tip and all mine are on the small side. I’m going to have to hunt down some bigger ones!
I had quite a bit of cake batter left over and didn’t have any more large cupcake tins, so I made mini cupcakes! They are so cute!
I find the size difference really amusing :) So dinky!
Quick crappy phone pic of my cupcake stand in action. There are significantly fewer cupcakes on that stand now. A few might have been nommed for breakfast this morning…
OK. Enough of the cupcake p0rn.
I also tried to make a Japanese cotton soft cheesecake, which was a bit of a fail (although still seriously delicious). I first made this recipe years and years ago, and it came out perfectly – light, soft, pillowy, it was amazing. I thought it would be a breeze again this time, but sadly not. The bottom of the cake is a little on the dense side and a bit eggy, and the whole thing is a little bit soggy and sticky. I have a sneaking suspicion that my oven wasn’t hot enough, and in my efforts not to overmix and knock too much air out of the egg whites, I didn’t fold them into the rest of the batter well enough. Oh well, at least it still tastes good and that’s what counts.
Still, I hate to be defeated by a recipe (it haunts me) so I think another Japanese cheesecake will be made in the near(ish) future.
I even managed to get some knitting done, although not much.
The mystery socks have progressed a tiny bit,
I finished the toe of one vanilla sock and cast on for the second,
and I even managed my weekend mani! I’m obsessed with glitter tips at the moment. This is Bourjois Rose Lounge with China Glaze Fairy Dust and ELF Twinkle. I did 3 coats of the Bourjois, but wish I’d stopped at 2, I think it’s prettier when it’s a little more sheer. It’s also a hot mess since I did it 20mins before our guests arrived last night – eek! Talk about a rush job. All I can say is, thank God for Seche Vite, I must’ve stank of nail polish fumes, and although they were touch dry I still managed to get a few chopstick dints in a couple of nails over dinner. Thankfully the glitter hides a multitude of sins!
