Happy Easter

Happy Easter to whom ever is out there reading this blog!
Today has been a busy one so far, but as Meri is away I thought I'd pick up the batton and post for the 2nd time this year about our baking adventures!

A, the girls and I whizzed to Beeston briefly this morning, and whilst dh did things at the Bank, we legged it around Wilkos to get big pots for our seedlings to transfer into (more on that in another post), I then snuck into Cafe Nero for a quick frappe latte, so dh had no choice but to join me :-) mwah haha...then grabbed some cupcake cases from Sainsb's and dropped A back at work in Ripley.

Got home, grew another child from down the road immediately, so I thought right, I know what will keep the kids entertained, a spot of baking! told them, they all ran a mile, seems playing mums with babies is what they'd rather be doing today. So I baked in peace instead!

I've created some lovely chocolate biscuits for them all to decorate later this afternoon, when their friend gets back from swimming, we have lots of sprinkles, eggs, and a variety of coloured icing to knock up, which they can spoon over to their hearts content.

I also knocked up the lovely vanilla cupcakes that you can see in the picture, what do you think of my piping, not bad for my 1st ever attempt eh? dd1 did the box at school, it says to mum on the other side, alas the chocolate goodies that were in it seem to have disappeared before I got a look in?! and the smaller daffodils, now in the cup, were on dd2's easter bonnet (which was minimalist, as I only realised about it all the day before, ahem) I'm sure the friends we have popping by tonight will help us shift this abundance of cakes, failing that I doubt very much that we'll struggle, in fact I may just try one now, with some lovely Mocha coffee that my mum brought me back from the Caribbean, mmmmmm.

Pink Cakes on Wednesday

I've made some lovely Pink Cupcakes this evening.
The whole cake isn't pink obviously, just the icing, but I've tried one and they're yum.
I had a random 5 seconds where I didn't have much to do, so cakes to fill the cupboards it was.

If you want to make them, here's what I did

8oz Self Raising Flour
8oz Butter/Margarine
8oz Caster Sugar
3 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Mix the lot together and spoon into Muffin Cases.
Bake for 20 mins
I did mine at 180 oc in the Fan Oven, so you can guesstimate from there.

Leave to cool, then do an icing of your choice. I did buttercream

3oz Butter/Margarine
6oz Icing Sugar
half tsp Vanilla Essence and half tsp Red Food colouring

Sieve the icing sugar over the Butter and then mix it in, adding the essences. If the butter is a little stiff, you can add half a table spoon of milk, but margarine won't need it. Then pop on top of your cake.

It was nice to eat one of these and relax for a minute once they were cool, as it has been a rather hectic day, with pre-school runs, swimming, proper school settling sessions and ballet all in the mix. I even managed to attend the start of a local stores sale, where the dd's got a new umbrella each, which dd2 promptly put the curved end in her mouth and got it stuck, it retrieved fairly easily, but she got a sore mouth from it and wasn't impressed......trust a two year old to try and eat an umbrella.