Dinosaur Sprinkles!

I've been dying to use these sprinkles ever since I bought them and today was the day! Whipped up some plain cupcakes and frosted them with the vanilla frosting recipe from Hummingbird - fast becoming a firm favourite!

Action icing shots!




Some plain vanilla frosted cakes!


After adding some sprinkles!


The finished product!

Pecan Pie!

Ever since I returned home my mum's been eyeing up the Pecan pie recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook so a couple of days ago I finally got round to making it. Once again, a cheat I'm afraid! My mum had already bought a ready made sweet pie base so I just stuck with that. I swear the next pie is going to be completely hand-made. So, hold me to it.

The recipe in Hummingbird calls for Dark Corn syrup but they suggest if you can't find it to substitute with Golden Syrup and that's what I did. Combine golden syrup, sugar and a little salt in a saucepan and combine over a medium heat until it reaches boiling point.






Once the mixture has reached boiling point, I set it aside to cool and chopped up the Pecans nice and fine.


I then spread them about the bottom of the pie base.


Next came the tricky bit, combining three eggs with the still warm mixture without it scrambling. Fortunately, it combined nicely. Then I poured the mixture into the pie base.


I put the pie in the oven for roughly 50 minutes. Here it is just out the oven.


I served it with ice-cream. It was delicious!


Next cooking venture? I think I'll be unleashing the dinosaur sprinkles...

Easy Chocolate Truffles

My flatmate makes these whenever there's a bakesale and they're really tasty and easy to do. I didn't have the recipe to hand, so a quick google led me to 16 digestive biscuits, a can of condensed milk and 6 heaped tablespoons of drinking chocolate. Very easy!


First of all, smash the digestives into crumbs. I put mine in a large bowl and bashed them with the end of a rolling pin.


After the digestives have been crushed, add six heaped tablespoons of drinking chocolate and mix together.


Then, add the whole can of condensed milk and mix thoroughly until you have a sticky mixture. Refridgerate for 10-20 minutes until the mixture keeps it shape when you mould them.



Pour some drinking chocolate in a bowl. Roll the mixture in between your hands until you have a ball shape and then roll in the drinking chocolate powder. Repeat!

My first time icing cupcakes.

So, my icing nozzles arrived today so I thought I'd give them a whirl! I have iced once using an icing bag on a gingerbread house for Christmas last year, but it came out more of a bold line of icing along the edges than anything else.

First of all I whipped up some cake batter.




Here they are just out of the oven.



After waiting for them to cool, I used the frosting recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook which I received for Christmas. I've done quite a few recipes out of there including the Apple Pie and Mississippi Mud Pie which were lovely. I decided on some vanilla frosting - 80g of unsalted butter at room temp, mixed with 250g of icing sugar with some vanilla extract and between 10ml-25ml of milk. I had to add a little extra icing sugar to get mine to the right consistancy so be careful when adding the milk.

After filling my icing bag, I went for it. I started anticlockwise and let the icing flow round. Here's my first attempt!


I went a little bit wobbly on the inside ring but not bad, I think!

My second time was a little steadier and I forgot to take a photo before I put sprinkles on.



I tried a couple of the other nozzles I had received, but mostly stuck to the the first one as I think I liked it the best. I made a simple butterfly cake as well, just to see what the nozzle would produce like and it was a little neater than 'dump a spoonful on' method. I also added some Green and Blacks cocoa to the frosting mixture to make some chocolate icing.








The vanilla one was used what was described as a "leaf" nozzle, I liked the effect. The chocolate one completely failed so I just smoothed it over with a knife and topped with some sprinkles.



I think it went okay for my first attempt and I intend to try again some time next week!

Purchases.

After browsing the internet the other day I found a couple of cute things I had to purchase. First of all I ordered a starter icing set with 6 various nozzles and a couple of icing bags. My next project is going to be learning how to ice cakes. Until now my method has been to dump a spoonful of buttercream on the cake and pronounce them finished, so it might be a bit of a challenge!

The second purchase is more of a silly one. We're awfully fond of dinosaurs and when I saw these sprinkles I just had to get them.
[Image from www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk]

So, fingers crossed, soon my lovely iced cakes will be littered with dinosaurs!