Baking Bonanza

Last week I went to a friend’s house for the afternoon. We have a mutual love of baking, and after her living abroad for a year, it was about time we got the ingredients out and got cracking.

A quick flick through my Hummingbird book (again!) and we had decided – we would bake two different types of cupcake – Eton Mess, and Cookies & Cream (the smaller versions of this)

The Eton Mess cupcakes are, as you’d probably expect, a simple vanilla sponge. The mixture seemed very runny compared to most recipes, so if you go on to make these, be aware that (somehow) that is absolutely fine – the cakes still tasted great.

Once baked and cooled, you cut a small hole out of the sponge and fill with chopped up strawberries, then place the sponge back onto the top ready to top.

They are topped with a custard type icing and strawberries. The recipe also suggests adding crumbled up meringue, too. We tried to make one of those… but unfortunately it didn’t really work!

Still, the cakes tasted lovely and went down well with our families!

I have to admit though, the Cookies & Cream cupcakes definitely won hands down.

They have a chocolate sponge, and we put small pieces of Maryland chocolate chip cookies into the mixture.

Once cooked, we put a buttercream style icing on top (which we added vanilla extract to) and decorated with crumbled up Oreos.

Heaven.

The icing on both was, again, pretty runny, so in the future I’d probably add more icing sugar, but with a fork (or some sticky fingers) both cakes were very very yummy.

We were pleased with ourselves.

And my Mum even said the Cookies & Cream cupcakes were “possibly the best things she’d ever tasted”.

High praise indeed!