Tag Archives: cupcake

Easter Egg Cakes cooked in Egg Shells!

Posted on by Abi

I absolutely adored the edible ‘turtle’ eggs I saw at the Tate & Lyle Tasting house earlier in the week, I also fell head over heels in love with the gingerbread creations. The only logical thing to do…. combine the two ideas with an Easter twist!

I used the new Tate & Lyle Taste Experience Dark Muscovado sugar in my gingerbread. It added a very moreish quality and gave the gingerbread a deep rich flavour, I would definitely recommend trying it out!

To make the Easter Eggs

Start by carefully making a small hole in the end of an egg, I used a sterilised needle.

Then carefully make the hole ever so slightly larger using the needle, or your fingers if you can pinch tiny bits.

Next I used a cocktail stick to break up the egg inside it’s shell. Drain out over a bowl, I washed out the eggs at this stage.

Decorating your Easter Eggs

Decorating eggs couldn’t be a simpler, all you need is approx 1/2 cup of room temperature water, add in about 1 Tbsp vinegar and then food colouring.

Dip your eggs in the colouring and keep turning until you have reached the desired shade. I used my handy egg dipper to pick them up. Place them on kitchen paper to dry.

Gingerbread Recipe

Of course you can fill the eggs with whatever cake takes your fancy, but if you like yummy squidgy gingerbread then this recipe is great.

100g/ 4oz Butter
100g/ 4oz Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup
100g/ 4oz Tate & Lyle Treacle
100g/ 4oz Tate & Lyle Taste Experience Dark Muscovado Sugar
275g/ 10oz Self Raising Flour
2 Tsp Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
2 Beaten Eggs
225ml/ 7 to 8 floz Milk

Melt the butter, syrup, treacle and sugar gently in a pan. Leave to cool slightly.

Sieve together the flour, ginger and cinnamon.

Add the melted sugar mixture to the flour and beat.

Beat in the egg and milk.

Filling the Egg Shells

Preheat the oven to 160C/ 325F/ Gas Mark 3

Take each on your dyed eggs and wrap the base in a square of foil with the hole facing upwards. Place them gently into a muffin tin.

Fill a piping bag with your cake mixture and carefully pipe the cake batter into the hole in your egg.

Try to fill the eggs about 3/4 of the way up.

Bake them for about 20 minutes. If some of the cake oozes out of the top (as it did on a few of mine) then just nip those pieces off with your fingers.

Leave to cool and then present in an egg box :)

 

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Cupcake & Treasure Pocket Comp Winner!!

Posted on by Abi

Our biggest ever giveaway ended on Saturday evening and what a fun competition it has been. You all left such wonderful comments and it was very uplifting to know you all wanted to win so much and liked the items. I’ve only just got round to picking two names out of the hat (I’m not normally so late, but I was shattered after attending a weekend long Indian wedding). Anyway without further ado and with many drumrolls sounding, I printed off the entries and threw them into not a hat but the onion bag from a past post……

….and the Grand Prize Winner is Vicky (Victoria Dixon) who wins one of our cupcake pendants and a cupcake Treasure Pocket. I hope you’ll love these items as much as we do :)

The runner up prize of a £10 voucher for the Angel Eden store was won by Utterly Scrummy, I hope you enjoy spending it!

Thanks once again to everyone for entering, I hope to do more giveaways in the future so keep your eyes peeled :)

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CSN Store Cupcake Review

Posted on by Abi

You may remember me mentioning a couple of weeks ago that CSN stores had contacted me to ask if I would like to review some items from one of their stores. I was really excited about this, I didn’t get paid to write the review but I did get to choose a few goodies to have a play with and I can now share the results!

What I Chose

I chose three items from the www.cookwarebycsn.co.uk store. There was a lot to choose from, but I finally settled on:

The Chicago Metallic 12 Cup Dainty Daisy Cupcake Tray

The KitchenCraft Ciroa Miniamo Cupcake Wire Tree

and The Rushbrookes Piping (Set of Ten)

Delivery

Each item came seperately and delivered by UPS. Delivery was also free at the time I ordered. I liked the fact they used UPS, I’ve always found them to be a careful delivery service and if you’re out they’ll try and leave it with a neighbour so you don’t have to wait for redelivery or go and pick up your parcel from a depot.

Using The Items

This is what I received. The real review is about using them and not just admiring their pretty packagaing, although the wire cake tree box does look beautiful :)

First I decided to put the wire cupcake tree together. I’ve seen similar items before in places like Lakeland (quite a bit more expensive there though I think) but always wondered if they were either hard to put together or really wobbly. When I opened the box I was pleased to see only three pieces to make the tiers and a long metal rod with a screw either end and two metal tubes.

Basically you attach the rod with a screw into the base piece, slide a tube over, put on the second tier, slide the other tube over and screw on the top piece. No screwdrivers or much arm muscle required (which is a bonus as I have none!) I am happy to report that the assembled tree was very sturdy, I honestly thought it might be wobbly but no, it’s really quite solid!

Next I decided to tackle the Daisy Cupcakes. I was a little apprehensive when I saw the moulds as the top of the cupcake is wider than the bottom. Techincally the tray is non stick, but as I’ve never had much luck with non stick I crumbled and brushed each cupcake mould lightly with melted butter, then spinkled over a tiny bit of plain flour (shaking off the excess). I filled them quite full to make sure they spread right to the top to make the petals.

They came out beautifully, petals and all! At this point I had to hold the children off from eating them all before decoration.

When they’d cooled I set about icing them. I’m not usually an icing bag fan, I prefer the syringe style icer so this was quite new to me. The set is quite small, with fairly large attachments, so not for fine icing work, but perfect for chunky cupcakes. You do have to fill the bag quite full, but then it’s easy enough to move about. I did get the kitchen side in a glorious mess while I filled it up though :D The bag is also plastic lined so easy to clean.

Finally I thought I’d show you the finished effect. I should apologise here for the lack of Daisy Cupcakes, only the top tier survived, little hands couldn’t resist and all the cute daisies were snaffled before I could take a pic. So they now take pride of place at the top with smaller cakes at the bottom.

I will definitely be using all these items again. If I had to pick a favourite though it would be the cupcake stand, it’s so cute and can hold 23 cakes, perfect for a party! So www.cookwarebycsn.co.uk definitely get a thumbs up from me :)

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