2 Peas In A Pod Blog: cooking

21 December 2015

Christmas Cupcakes

Hello It's 2 Peas In A Pod Blog Here,

Hi everyone, it's Jade and today's blog post will be another recipe. We love baking and at Christmas time I guess you tend to bake a bit more. So I thought it would be a great idea to show you this simple recipe. This is just a normal cupcake recipe but I think the decorations make it more festive. So carry on reading to find out how to make the perfect cupcakes.

Ingredients

110g- Butter
110g- Caster Sugar
2- eggs (lightly beaten)
1 tsp- Vanilla extract
110g- self raising flour
1-2 tbsp- Milk

For the buttercream icing

140g- Butter
280g- Icing Sugar
1-2 tbsp- Milk

How to make them:

Firstly you want to preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases you can go to town on the cases I think the more the festive the better. I've opted for a gold foil case as I'm trying to stay classic.

Then get a bowl and get your kitchen aid, whisker or wooden spoon and cream the butter and sugar together until it turns more paler than usual.

Then beat in the eggs add them little at a time and stir in the vanilla extract. You can add more vanilla if you feel it's not very strong... I always end up doing that.

After that you want to fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, adding a little milk until the mixture is of a dropping consistency. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until they are half full the key trick is to make sure all the liquid inside the cases are equal then your cupcakes will look better when they are equal.

Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into one of the cakes comes out clean. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.

For the buttercream icing, beat the butter in a large bowl until soft and pale in colour. Add half the icing sugar and beat until smooth.

Then add the remaining icing sugar with one tablespoon of the milk, adding more milk if necessary, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Then spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe the icing using a spiralling motion onto the cup cakes in a large swirl.

Then the best part is to get your decorations you can get any type of decorations but I've opted for sprinkles and I got these from various baking shops. Then go to town with the, sprinkle them everywhere !!

I hope you have enjoyed this blogpost and you have been inspired to do some festive baking! Be sure you let your family eat them and let them tell you feedback!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

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Thank you !!

Jade Xx

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9 December 2015

Gingerbread Men Recipe

2 peas in a pod blog • cooking • Gingerbread • men • recipes

Hello It's 2 Peas In A Pod Blog Here,

Welcome to today's blog post. As you would have already guessed by the title that this blog post is a recipe. It's coming up to Christmas and it's that time of year where people like to do festive baking. What's more festive than gingerbread men? So keep on reading to see how to create the perfect gingerbread cookies.

Ingredients:

350g plain flour
2 tsp ginger, ground
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g butter
175g soft light brown sugar
1 egg
4 tbsp golden syrup

Firstly you will need to preheat the oven to 190 degrees or gas Mark 5. Then after that you will want to sift your flour into a bowl alongside the bicarbonate of soda, ginger and the butter. Using your fingertips rub in the butter.

After that add the sugar and stir the syrup into to bowl. Crack the egg open and pop it into the bowl and continue to mix all the ingredients together. When it leaves the side of the browl you want to collect the dough into a ball and wrap it in cling film and pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes to chill so it's nice and firm to roll out.

Once it's been chilled roll it out on a clean surface in a 5cm thick spread and use your gingerbread cutters and cut out some shapes.

Once you have your shapes you will need a baking tray lined with baking paper so the biscuits don't stick to the tray also make sure they are evenly spaced out so when they are cooked they don't stick together. Cook them for 10-15 minutes. However we found out that the full 15 minutes made them go very brown so we cooked them for 10 minutes and they looked great.

When they come out of the oven, put them on a wired rack to let them cool naturally. After they have cooled you can ice them !! We used shop bought ones and they still looked great.

These are what our ginger bread men looked liked after they had been iced to perfection.

We hope you have enjoyed this blog post. Also we hope you can follow this recipe easily and you make great tasting gingerbread men. It also makes the baking experience so much better when you jamming to Christmas music. Have a lovely week!

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