Chilli Chocolate Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing

I am so frightfully late at this post. I know, I know I say that almost every post but does the pun make it better?!

I did make some Halloween bakes this year so I'm going to post them and hope you don't mind.

These were the first, some Chilli Chocolate Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing. I thought the cinnamon may be a bit too much but actually I loved it. These were some of the best cupcakes I've had! The chilli gives such a nice warm bite and cream cheese icing is juts always delicious.

The recipe can be found here: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/25881/chilli-chocolate-cupcakes.aspx
I substituted the flour for ground almonds just because I didn't realise I was out of flour but this made the sponge so moist and the faint almond was a great contrast.

I used a different Cream Cheese Icing recipe than the one above, I did originally try this one but it was far too runny. I found a good recipe on Pink Whisk and  added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and some green food colouring. http://www.thepinkwhisk.co.uk/2012/05/perfect-cream-cheese-frosting.html

I made little witches hats to top them inspired by Cakeyboi! These were made with a giant button (Chilli choc from Hotel Chocolate) and Hershey Kisses (ordered online). I made these the day before with a little dab of choc icing to glue them together and finished with a piped red bow.

I sent some with the boy to his work colleagues for a Halloween treat. Here they are all packaged up to go. I couldn't get the lid to shut with the hats on so we took them off, wrapped them up and I asked the boy to put them back on when he got in!

Olympic Days and Cakes

I haven't posted for ages! I wanted to do lots of Olympic baking and post it along the way but, too be honest, I got so excited about the Olympics I didn't really do anything else!

This post is a little taster of all the Olympic-cy things I did over the two weeks. 

The first exciting thing that happened was that I was suprised with some standing tickets for the Olympic Opening Ceremony at 4pm on the day! Cue an absolutely huge rush to get there in time. We pretty much ran from 4pm until 7pm and then stood up until 3am! I had a huge blister on the ball of my foot but it was worth it! 

The whole evening was so fantastic, the atmosphere was great. I just love the Olympics so I was so glad to be there and be a part of it.

If the photo was clearer you could see me at the front on the edge of the hill just in the bottom right hand side of this picture in the standing pit.

I made a Team GB cake for the day of the opening ceremony. It was a lemon cake filled with lemon curd with a lemon buttercream. I decorated it with blueberries and red and white icing to make a Union Jack.

I also coloured each layer red and blue so that when you cut it to it you would get a red, blue, and white pattern. Alas it was not to be, just after I took this picture I dropped it face down on the floor! I think I tweeted that I hope it wasn't a sign of how Team GB would perform but luckily it wasn't!

This is a slice in my hand post smashing, just to show you the colours!

I am entering this cake into Lottie's Bake Off Challenge over at Lottie's World of Cakes and Bakes after she kindly agreed even thought I dropped in on the floor!

I was a little bit heart broken, I won't lie, but I had had a couple of glasses of Champagne and it was Friday the next day so I took it better than expected. The boy spent all evening staring at me expecting me to have a melt down!

I went to see the swimming at the Aquatics Centre on the first morning and I screamed my little head off for Rebecca Addlington. The noise of everybody was incredible! All the spectators were cheering for every country and whooping for all the athletes. It was just lovely.

I bought these patriotic shoes at the request of my 5 year old nephew and I wore them to support Team GB!

I wore my fancy new shoes with a Union Jack T shirt to the Athletics. I waved my flag and whooped for Mo Farah in the qualifier for the men’s 5000m.

I watched him win the 5000m at a screen near Tower Bridge. How beautiful is this?

I then made these cupcakes for the Closing Ceremony and a friend’s birthday.

They are a Spiced Raspberry Low Carb Cupcake!

Too be honest I hate making diet cakes and I only made them because she is a special friend, but they actually turned out pretty well considering they had no flour and no sugar! I just feel if you're going to eat a cake then do it properly - full fat all the way baby!

I made the toppers with fondant icing cut out with a circular cutter. I sprayed the medals with a gold spray and used the squeezey writing tubes to pipe the 1 and rings. This is the first time I've made any toppers like this. They were really fun to make and look effective I think.

We watched the closing ceremony in one of the host boroughs, Waltham Forest, on their big screen. We had a delicious picnic and got the most excited when the spice girls came on. I haven't sung any of their songs for years and was surprised that I knew every word to the rap!

What a great two weeks, London did us proud I think. I think I welled up pretty much all week but especially about the volunteers. How fab was it that theygave up their time just to make it a success!

I hope you all had a lovely Olympic experience. Did you manage to see any of the events? Were you a sports hater who was turned in all the excitement?

Bring on the Paralympics!

Photo issue :(

As you can see I am having photo issues!

I recently got a new android phone and it linked to my blogger/gmail account. All of my blog photos appeared in my photo folder on my phone and, as there were 271 of them, I thought I would delete them off the phone to save space.

Turns out they weren't really on the phone and I deleted all the pics from my blogger account.

I have tried un-deleting all photos from my phone and googled to see if anyone has the same prob but no joy.

It's going to take me while to put each one back on so you'll have to bear with the ugly black warning signs. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

On the plus side, I bought a new camera so the quality of the new photos should hopefully be better!

Cake fairy

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