One and only

A break from the dressmaking is in order I think, so instead I'm going to share one of my favourite recipes with you. It's my friend's birthday this weekend, so I've been baking.

This is from the BBC Good Food Website and they've named it 'Romantic Rose Cupcakes'. I go to this every time I need a plain sponge for cupcakes or a round cake. It's so so so so easy, impossible to get wrong and tastes amazing. Until I gave this a go I liked trying varying recipes- but I'm yet to find anything as moist and impressive as this one. Don't be put off by the nuts, you can't taste them, they just keep it nice and soft. It is impossible to make this cake dry, it is just so good! I've made this as a round cake this time because icing so many cupcakes is time consuming, but it looks lovely either way and tastes amazing.

You can access the original recipe here

Ingredients

 150ml natural yogurt (I use Onken's small pot which is 178g or own brand supermarket yogurt. However I never use the excess so I prefer to pay slightly more to buy the smaller pot!)

3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
175g golden caster sugar
140g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
175g unsalted butter (salted is fine too)

                                                                 Method

Turn oven on- fan 170 degrees

1.Add all dry ingredients to a bowl

2. Melt the butter in a pot

3. Mix the vanilla essence, yogurt and eggs in a measuring jug or similar

4. Slowly add the melted butter to the egg mix. This bit is a bit odd, it looks horrible. Don't worry, I've made this many times and the eggs are yet to scramble!

5.Start the mixer, add the buttery eggs over several batches to the mix. 

6. Don't mix it too much, just make sure it isn't lumpy :)

7. Now add this to a 7.5ish inch springform tin or cupcake cases in a muffin tin (you'll get 12 muffin sized or roughly 20 fairy cakes depending on the tin)

8. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 15 - 20 mins. You will know when they're ready- check the colour (golden) and that they're springy to the touch. If you're really worried shove a cocktail stick into one- as long as anything stuck to it is cooked then you're good (the cake mix does tend to stick so it's not the easiest way to tell).

9. Allow to cool

Ice with butter icing made from 140g of both butter and icing sugar and 100g of melted white chocolate. Don't be tempted to miss out the chocolate- I promise they will not be too sweet- the icing compliments the cake batter beautifully. Just make the icing as you would normally then add the melted chocolate at the end. Lovely.

I have a bit of a fondness for subtle shimmer and glitter on my cakes (as you may have guessed). I know there have been a few articles in the news recently about the 'dangers' of what is now called non-toxic glitter. As you can see I have disregarded this and carried on using it. I used a Dr Oetker shimmer spray on both of the pictured cakes, on the label it clearly says it is edible- a Doctor wouldn't lie surely....?! The spray gives icing a really lovely lustre. I opted for the silver spray. At over £3.50 it is a little pricey, but the effect is so pretty that I don't mind :)

I'm also a little too fond of filters over my photos- I take a perfectly good photo and wreck it with some effects...oh well. Pictured is the shimmer spray and the 'non-toxic' glitter I used. I love the white or pale glitters (Disco Orange is a particular favourite) because they don't look totally out of place if they fall unevenly. 

By the by, I also got this awesome 'cake carrier' the other day in the Poundshop of all places. It has a hook on top meaning it makes carrying the cake around a lot easier. I'm well impressed!