Cupcake Delight!

Hello Everybody!

I thought I would share with you some cupcakes that I made for my friends Baby Shower. I wanted to do this post because the recipe was a bit different to the norm, and I was a bit apprehensive about doing it untested!

Normally in cupcake recipes I've seen, you tend to have equal measures of flour, sugar and butter (as in my Good Housekeeping and Lorraine Pascale baking books) . 

This one however was from The Hummingbird Bakery and the measures of flour/sugar/water were all different, with quite a small amount of butter, and in addition had quite a lot of milk. 

I was a bit paranoid about messing up the treats I had planned for the Shower so I went and bought myself an oven thermometer so I could be sure the oven was okay (as baking is so scientific!) and what do you know, the oven was running 20 degrees to cold. That could've been a disaster. My boyfriend also went and got me some mini-torches to keep an eye on my baked goods, as my oven also has no light! 

And the result was - amazing!

They are The Hummingbird Bakery 'Vanilla Cupcakes' with vanilla frosting. I piped it on initially with my biggest nozzle (which turms out wasn't that big), and didn't really like how it turned out. I had some marshmallow fluff frosting left over from my other treats, so scraped all the blue frosting off again, and added the leftover marshmallow fluff frosting in and piped it with no nozzle on the bag. I tried a technique that I saw on one of those reality cake shows (I think it may have been D.C cupcakes) and it really worked. 

Although perhaps my many years pulling '99 ice-cream cones helped!

This guy is my favourite!

The oddest part of the cupcake were how they rose. If you look carefully you can see that they rose up really square with the cupcake cases. I was a bit concerned to begin with, as most cupcakes or fairy cakes end up quite rounded. They had really flat tops too!

See how square they are??

That didn't affect the taste though! They were amazing! So so so moist, I've never tasted anything like it. 

Even after 3 days (there were one or two left!) they tasted so good. And I'm ridiculously fussy about any cake I eat being 'on the day' fresh. My boyfriend is a '5 days later' kind of person. Ulgh.

So I would therefore really recommend this recipe as a 'day before' one that you can whip up to save time!

I really wish I had known that beforehand as I was baking from 9am to 2pm!

I also did these adorable Whoopie Pies! They had a Marshmallow fluff/Buttercream frosting to sandwich them. They were also The Hummingbird Bakery. 

They were also really good!

This is book I was working from, I highly recommend it. There are some interesting taste ideas and flavour combinations in there too.

Anyone got a sweet tooth?

Love, Emmie xx

Post Concert Fatigue

Just wanted to let you all know that the Royal Albert Hall was beautiful last night! 

I'm not often in a place of such opulence and grandeur..

.

Our tickets ended up being for the gallery, of course I had no idea what that meant, but I found out that it was floor 5 (!) in the elevator. Unfortunately I actually found that out on our way back down, as we decided to climb the stairs when we got in. Bad idea!

Although we were up in the heavens, the view was still lovely, and there were not that many people up there so there was quite a mellow atmosphere. Everyone stood in the arches against the ornate gates and there was only a single line of people at each arch. If it had been a concert you wanted to dance to, you had miles of space! But if you moved from the gate you didn't have a view!

The concert was really good, the support (Beth Orton) came on really early, we arrived at about 7.45pm and she was already a decent way through her set. I think Ryan Adams himself played for about 2 hours!

He had to do a fake encore as he didn't want to waste time, think they were giving him indications to wind it up!

The music was lovely, he had a band that I think was put together haphazardly, as he said they had not really played the music before, but it sounded perfect! The only sad thing was he didn't play any of my favourite songs, but thats always a risk! I would've loved if he had played New York, Where the Stars go Blue or his cover of Wonderwall (esp as Noel Gallagher was there! I thought they might have done it together, that would've been unbelievable)

However, maybe he will next time, as he favourited a tweet of mine saying so!

If you ever go in the future, keep in mind that it can get pretty toasty in there! I was wearing thick tights and I was baking the whole way through.. 

Love Emmie x

Concert 2 of 5 (in March/April!)

Am on the train to London at the moment with the Boyf, to see our second concert of the next few weeks! We booked a lot for this year, as Xmas/Birthday presents, and also before the 25% off tickets bonus was removed from our bank account.

Tonight is Ryan Adams in the Royal Albert Hall for The Teenage Cancer Trust. An excited as have always wanted to go the the Royal Albert Hall!! Unfortunately I think we have standing tickets but I'll get through it (am quite small, so have view issues and I get a sore back if I stand in the one place too long). Beth Orton is supporting. I think I have an album of hers somewhere!

I'm not a die hard Ryan Adams fan, but I know a good few songs, so as long as he plays a decent back catalogue I'm sorted, if not then I hope his new stuff is decent!

Love Emma x

p.s did my hair to look good for London!

Me 1 : Hair 0

Just a quick blog to show you how I did my hair and make up last night. I was pushed for time, but managed my hair in about 15mins which i think is a record, and it was freshly washed too!

I was invited to go to a Lindy Hop Spring Fling dance, it was sold out but my friend was playing in the band (a 35 piece band no less! I've never seen so many saxophones!). I had been to one of their Lindy Hop dance classes, but due to other commitments, hadn't had a chance to return. I regretted that a bit when I saw everyone up dancing, they looked great! The hours flew by, and we had free Tea/Coffee and yummy cake. All proceed went to a myeloma charity.

There was even some vintage bits and pieces for sale in the back, a few clothes rails, hats, bags, shoes and accessories. I tried to stay away as I had only brought out £2 and my bank card, but my friend lent me some money and I picked up this cute handbag! I realised that I have no vintage handbags at all. How did that happen?

Anywho, I'll let you go! Hope you like the hair :) my first faux bang with a hair rat inside!

Love Emma x

Enough Patterns For Life

Ok, after a short break I'm back!

Have been a very busy girl, between concerts and visiting friends, and my boyfriend stole my camera away for a while, so I want to do a short showreel of all of the sewing patterns that I acquired over the last few weeks!

So remember when I mentioned how I had a self control problem?

Well I've come to realise that I can be obsessive compulsive when it comes to acquiring things. I've begun to call it Obsessive Compulsive Gathering. I like to gather collections of things, such as vintage clothes (and vintage china!) and also for things I need to do, like crafting, so that would mean sewing equipment, etc. I feel like I need to have anything that I may require along the way. And it makes me happy when I gather the things I need/want.

So, following on from that, when I found that Vogue had a sale on patterns after Christmas, it got switched on. All patterns were $3.99, and they usually sold for about $15.99 (and about £15 on eBay) so I got a bit overexcited. I added all the ones that I loved, and seen as you could only ship 10 per order in sale time I chose my favourite 20. Yes 20. But them I realised that it was going to cost me just under $80 (~£53) for the 20 patterns, which was amazing, but that it was going to cost $110 to ship them, which was outrageous!

It would cost $40 to ship them in America, so I called on a wonderful uncle of mine :) And a few months later I finally got my hands on them! (Along with another 3 I bought for $1.88 in the Butterick sale, but I got those shipped to me).

So here they all are, there are some modern with a vintage styling, and a lot of vintage reproductions, which I have no hope of being good enough to make for a very long time yet! I also love how some of them make slightly different variations of the same item. I did have to buy the suit in both size options, as my top half and bottom half require different patterns sizes, but no matter!

Sorry the pictures are all higgldy piggldy, this thing is a pain!

Hope you like them! Which is your favourite??

Lots of Love,

Emma xx