When I was a teenager living at home with my Mum I used to bake cakes all the time, I mean ALL THE TIME! Once I had learnt how to bake a cake I just couldn’t stop I loved doing it. Until one day when my Mum came home from work and said that as much as she loved my baking, her clothes didn’t so could I perhaps slow down on them for a while. Just like that I stopped – not because I was being tutty, I just kind of stopped and then forgot all about baking until a few days before I went into labour with Little Bean. Then for some reason I decided I just had to bake a cake (and ate most of it too!).
Since then my baking expeditions have been sporadic, the odd cake fair here, a birthday cake there and all recipes have been very hit and miss. Some have been successful, some, well not quite so successful but one thing that hasn’t changed is how much I enjoy it and now I’m starting to pass that onto Little Bean. We have been doing quite a lot of baking recently, though we are very careful to spread the cakes around so that Mummy and Daddy don’t starting spreading too.
Last week I was sent a gorgeous baking book by Ann Nicol called For the Love of Cupcakes, the book starts with the basics, what equipment you will need, the basic ingredients and cake/icing recipes as well as hints and tips on how to decorate them. The pictures in the book are mouthwatering, I just wanted to drive right in and bake them all on the first day but bearing in mind the time of year what better recipe to start on than Halloween Cobweb Cupcakes ready for our Halloween Party.
We had a visit from one of Little Bean’s Godmothers on Saturday so after a trip out to a local soft play centre we returned home to get started on our cakes. It was a team effort and the results were delicious, unfortunately the decorating didn’t turn out quite as pretty as in the book but we guessed with Halloween they didn’t have to be perfect. This book is definitely not going to be sitting on the book shelf for long in our house as Little Bean and I are planning on baking our way through every recipe in the book.
For the Love of Cupcakes is an illustrated eBook from Flame Tree who are producing 22 recipe eBooks ranging from desserts, to vegetarian to Asian dishes. All recipes are very easy to follow and each eBook has 20 recipes to choose from. This eBook is available in the UK, the US and Canada from iBookstore and is iPad, iPod and iPhone friendly, hard copies are also available.