Wednesday 4 January 2012

Tea and Cupcakes




There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea ~ Bernard-Paul Heroux.


This is a busy week for me with some serious life shaping stuff happening. Major changes mixed in with birthdays, anniversaries and baby showers: in other words cakes, cakes and more cakes! Yes, life changing stuff must be marked with cake.




Cake and Tea. 


Generally we use cake as a mark of celebration and tea for everything and anything! For me, baking has become a solace and a place to channel my love and creative energies. The thing is, you can't be angry or bitter and bake something tasty. Food that is cooked with love just tastes different, you can't put your finger on it or explain it, it just does. I bake to stay sane and to keep my heart soft and filled with love. I drink tea because it's tasty and warm and strangely comforting.




Today, in amongst the many cakes I have this week, I decided to use some of the leftover cake mixture to try out these cute silicon tea cup cupcake moulds. I bought mine online from Amazon and they are just as cute as they look in the pictures! The two cupcake flavours are vanilla and chocolate and both are topped with a cream cheese based frosting. For the vanilla cakes, I coloured the frosting pink and the chocolate cakes have had a touch of Nutella added to the frosting. I just couldn't resist after the fun I had last time.


If you want to make Cream Cheese Frosting use this recipe below adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Book;


Cream Cheese Frosting
Makes enough to cover 12 cupcakes.
300g icing sugar, sifted at least TWICE

50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g cream cheese, cold

Beat all of the ingredients together in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) on slow speed until the mixture comes together and is smooth and well mixed. Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny. If it does get a bit runny then leave in the fridge to firm back up again before you use it.
The actual recipe advises you to mix the butter and sugar first before adding the cream cheese but I always had lumpy or runny icing with that approach. You may have better luck than me though! 

So find yourself a cup of tea, a cake and tell me, what or where is your happy place? 


Peace & Love


xx
Pin It

11 comments:

  1. I love cooking...food, cakes and more food. I know what you mean about channelling creative energies! I like creating from leftovers, following a recipe, fiddling a recipe and making it up as a go along. It's a labour of love...to myself usually. The kids and hubbie would be happy with fishfingers!

    PS. Really love the cupcake holders! Very cute.
    PPS. Coffee is better than tea, though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Totally agree about cooking with love, making tasty food. I'm a fan of tea though. But you can't beat a 'good' cup of coffee. (I can bear half decent tea but not half decent coffee).

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've got to confess, aside from just loving every picture you take of your gorgeous food, I keep asking myself 'where does she have all the wonderful tea cups, plates etc stacked away?' You own the most beautiful selection of kitchenware I have ever seen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I remember when I was a little girl, when all tea cup sets are all make believe...Now that I am (not really much!) older, I get to have the real thing...and tey come with little cupcakes and yummy frosting on top. Is n't this lovely? I am gonna start searching for this cupcake moulds. Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Truly beautiful
    Mary x

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ok I'm literally in Love!! And Starving. Those are SO beautiful. Pinned 'em too xx

    ReplyDelete
  7. very nice and colorful :P

    ReplyDelete
  8. Your icing looks nice and firm! I've seen so many sloppy cream cheese icings about, it's not a very good look. Love your photography, too - gorgeous post-processing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thank you everyone :). I totally love these moulds, they are so cute x

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hello! I love your blog & have added you to my beautiful blog roll & used one of your photos from this post. Here's a link to it my blog roll. I hope you don't mind being added in! http://anyonitanibbles.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page.html
    Anyonita

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...