First Holy Communion

I'm on a roll. . .two blogs in two days! Ha! This one as the title indicates is about the First Holy Communion cupcakes I made for my partner's cousins. These cupcakes again deviate from my challenge as they are not from the 500 Cupcakes book. I decided against using any from the book as I wanted to use recipes I knew well so that there was less chance for failure, afterall I made them Friday night after work for Saturday morning, which didn't leave much room for error.

It was a long time ago now that I made my First Holy Communion but I do remember that we, the girls obviously ^_^, wore white dresses, shoes, gloves, and so forth. I figured I would try to keep the cupcakes primarily white and aimed for the 'pretty/cute' factor to tie in with my memory of the white dresses. I decided on the following cupcakes:

Victoria Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes by following the same recipe as the one I referred to in my Cake Stall blog. I figured these ones were perfect for the event, they're pretty and girly, and the cream and icing sugar are delightfully white.

Chocolate Surprise 

I made these ones using the chocolate cupcake recipe that I adore from Joy of Baking.com again. I dubbed these ones 'surprise' cupcakes on account of the fact that I put a Cadbury Roses Chocolate in the middle of each of the cupcakes.

I put a strawberry chocolate in the pink-bowed cupcakes and a caramel chocolate in the silver-bowed cupcakes. However, I think this chocolate cupcake recipe makes me even more forgetful than usual because I put my batch of cupcakes into the oven for a couple of minutes before I remembered I'd forgotten to put the 'surprise' inside! Just like the last time I made them! Ha! o_O

As I was working on a kind of 'white' theme I topped these cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting which came from Chockylit's blogsite. I adore her site, she comes up with the most fabulous flavour ideas and combinations and explains everything she does really well too!

Once I finished frosting these cupcakes I topped the strawberry chocolate filled cupcakes with some pink dragees and used yellow and green dragees to top the caramel chocolate filled cupcakes. Dragees can be found in most supermarkets, I just love how pretty and shiny they look! ^o^

Plated up and ready to go, I don't have a nice cupcake display stand, it's something I've yet to, but really want to invest in, so I covered one of my serving trays in cupcake wrapping paper! I thought it looked quite pretty! ^_^

On the topic of cupcake stands, I love the vintage ones, they're super cute! My favourite stands at the moment can be found here. I love that they're all so unique and that they use teacups and glasses, so cool! Unfortunately they're a little too pricey for me! Maybe when I win the lotto! Haha!!! ^_~

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, these cupcakes went down a treat!!! Everyone seemed to really enjoy them and as predicted everyone was 'surprised' by my Chocolate Surprise cupcakes!

My next blog will again veer away from my challenge, as it's more of a flavour experimentation. . .

Happy Baking! ^_^

Dieting

My partner and I decided to go on a diet for a month (this was decided before I began this blog) because we were feeling rather unhealthy, having a few too many take-aways and such. Ironically my partner, who didn't really want to go on the diet, was the one who kept me on it! I was ready to give up within the first few days, ha! Did I mention I have a massive sweet tooth, which is what I missed the most on our diet, all things sweet!

The diet I put us on was more about eating heathily then about losing weight but as most girls will admit losing weight is nice too. Of course being on a diet isn't really conducive with cupcake making, afterall most cupcakes aren't considered healthy. Happily though my book of 500 Cupcakes has a low-fat section, so that is where I have begun! ^_^

Over the past week or so I have tried two different low fat muffins from the book (no that's not a typo, they are both muffin recipes but they are in the cupcake book):

Citrus Yoghurt Muffins

Batter all mixed and ready to go into the cases. These cupcakes used the zest from a lemon, lime and orange. The cupcakes contained 115ml of sunflower oil and an egg so there was some fat content in these.

Cooked and out of the oven! Yummy!!!

 I also made the suggested citrus glaze to top half of them. The glaze contained caster sugar and the juice of each of the citrus fruits that were zested for the muffin batter.

These muffins were divine! They were so, so moist and the citrus taste was delicious and easily identifiable without being tart. If I didn't know better, I'd have never thought that these muffins were low in fat. I'll definitely make these again the next time I want a treat that doesn't make me feel quite so guilty. ^_^

Raspberry and Cottage Cheese Muffins

Batter in the cases ready for the oven (I only made a half batch of these). Also I substituted fresh raspberries for tin raspberries because the tin was only about 50p. 

Baked and ready to eat!

These cupcakes were also quite moist much like the citrus muffins above, however they contain far less fat as there is only 4 tablespoons of sunflower oil and 2 eggs. The recipe also calls for a cup of skim milk and 115g of low-fat cottage cheese.

Unlike the citrus muffins, I found that these ones lacked flavour, which could be because I used tin raspberries. I'll have to try this recipe again but use fresh raspberries instead. The book also suggests using blueberries, cherries or apricots as substitutes for the raspberries so I'll have to try them too. 

There are still quite a few more low-fat cupcake/muffin recipes in the book but my partner and I are now finished our month long 'healthy-eating diet', so I probably wont be trying out any more low-fat recipes just yet. Although, the fact that the Citrus Yoghurt Muffins tasted so good does pique my interest about the other low-fat recipes. . .

My next blog is going to be about the cupcakes I made for my partner's 8 year old cousins' First Holy Communion.

Happy baking. . .