frosted not stirred // new baking blog! Posted by Helena

It's been forEVER! The last few months have been taken up by an overseas holiday, a slight role change at work, and a new blog! Introducing Frosted Not Stirred. Friends have told me for years to start a food blog and I finally worked out what to blog about... Cocktails in cupcakes! I made some mojito cupcakes for a work friend's birthday and they were such a hit, I thought I'd keep rolling with it. One of my friends used to be a fancy cocktail bartender so I've been hitting him up for cocktail recipes and fun facts about the cocktails to go with my posts. Check it out at Frosted Not Stirred.

bake off 2012 // letizia cup Posted by Helena

My competition cake - the Battenburg.

Ahh, that time of the year where everyone bakes three cakes in a day to bring to someone's house so everyone there can judge them on their cakes. Sounds awful right? Nahhh, the bake off is always fun, but I feel a little baked out now! I also came crashing down after the world's biggest sugar high. Eating that much sugar is just like having a hangover, except you skip the fun-woozy-drunk bit and just go straight to the feeling-awful-and-needing-lots-of-water bit.

I came second after Craig who must have won some serious points for the "originality" category (one that I failed to remember because I would've come up with something a little more inventive than a lemon and lime tart) with his apple pie baked into a cake.


Seth's Battenburg


Craig's Battenburg

CITRUS

Seth's 3 layer lemon cake


Craig's orange white chocolate pecan cheesecake


My lemon and lime tart (that did win overall in the "taste" category)

FREESTYLE

Seth's chocolate sheet cake


Craig's apple surprise cake (aka has a baked apple pie inside)


My s'mores cupcakes - biscuit base, chocolate cake with a peanut butter filling and marshmallow/meringue icing

ice cream // peanut butter & malteaser Posted by Helena

I went to friends' for dinner and Craig made his own honeycomb ice cream that was just so darned amazing, I tried it out myself the very next night, but I threw in a jar of crunchy peanut butter. This time I made it with peanut butter and Malteasers. YUM. We've been eating it all week! It's only got double cream, single cream and condensed milk in it. Getting my daily dose of dairy... right?

camden market // cake pops part 2 Posted by Helena

These were just taken out of silliness because Laura was wearing a lot of yellow, teehee! Anyway, on Saturday we walked to Camden Market from home since it was such a lovely sunny day. By the time we got to Camden after a 40 minute walk we were almost sweating and had shed our cardigans. This is very exciting for London weather and bodes well for the upcoming summer!

Cake pop about to be eaten...

We didn't put enough candy melts on the lollipop stick before we stuck it in this pop. Whoops.

Booty wine!

Laura popped into a touristy store to buy a present.

We couldn't resist... more yellow!!

baking // top of the cake pops Posted by Helena

I hope you're ready for a post that's a little on the heavy side. Image wise that is! Laura is going to make some special disco cake pops for her boyfriend Pete's new London club night Dance London Dance, and we decided on a trial run since we'd never made them before. With the help of April Carter's trusty book, Top of the Cake Pops, we managed to successfully make our very first batch of cake pops! We made the classic red velvet pops and they are delicious. It took a little while, but we did stretch it out over three days. We made the cake on Thursday night, the icing and rolling the dough into balls on Friday night, and turned them into cake pops and decorated them on Saturday morning!

And now comes my (sometimes unnecessary) captions for every photo...



Here's our red velvet cake crumbled.



Mixing the icing.



Here's the icing dolloped into the cake crumbs.





Our "dough"!





Then you cover and refrigerate.





Here's our melted candy melts and our cake pops after the lollipop sticks were inserted.



Random photo of my new nails...





Decorating station.







Our other housemate Laura K (it can get confusing) is in Tigercats and their album launch is this Friday and it's sold out. Go LK! Just before we started decorating, Laura had the genius idea of making some pops for the album launch! So here's what we came up with...