Followers of this blog will know that I used to bake - a lot - and I chronicled my baking adventures in a series of posts called "It's Cake Time!" (see my proudest accomplishment here). It was kind of like therapy but with the added plus of weight gain, since John would demand request I make things like, oh, an entire carrot cake and subsequently eat, oh, one slice, leaving me with carrot cake for the rest of the week to either consume myself or fob off to anyone who'd take it.
My excuse was that we had an excellent oven in our Maida Vale flat - one that made cakes rise perfectly. I also had at my disposal several amazing pieces of Circulon bakeware that John bought me for my birthday last year, so, left to my own devices with a few sticks of butter, caster sugar and self-raising flour, I made many variations of cakes in sandwich, loaf, and cupcake form for us to enjoy.
Since we moved to Angel, however, I hadn't baked until this weekend. I could tell the oven was sub-par to the one we had before and I didn't want any baking disasters - because if there were ANY baking disasters, I'd swear off baking forever. I have low confidence in my cooking and baking abilities.
But when we were invited over to Tom and Dani's for a picnic on Sunday and instructed to "bring dessert", I thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to make some cupcakes ... complete with Barbie sprinkles, of course:
And chocolate icing for the boys, for fear they'd be turned off by the Barbie sprinkles (I'm not kidding - the sprinkles were branded):
I didn't go too crazy with my first batch of cakes in the new flat, so I used a simple sponge cake recipe ... but having had an overall success with these, I'll be venturing into carrot and chocolate cake territory soon.
*Pink Peep courtesy of A Wife Called Chuck
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