Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes

Wait! Don't stop reading just because you read the words 'gluten free.' (unless you're coeliac in which case read on!) I know it's tempting, but I promise these are nothing like the gluten free cakes you buy in shops. They're rich, moist (ew) and really quite delicious - almost more brownies than cupcakes.

I'll admit, the challenge of making a gluten free cake scared me at first. I did a ridiculous amount of googling/recipe book trawling before stumbling across what I thought was the perfect recipe. The pictures looked delicious and the reviews were great. However I then read the ingredients.... 'xanthan gum' 'tapioca flour'... these unfamiliar words did make me question what on earth I was letting myself in for but I decided to just go for it.

This attitude changed considerably after discovering that you could only buy said unfamiliar ingredients in health food shops and I'd left it a little late to be health food shop trawling. So after about an hour of near hysteria in Holland and Barrett I did some emergency googling and found a much easier, flourless chocolate cupcake recipe.

They were really easy to make, deliciously fudgy and very well received by gluten-free people and gluten eaters alike.

One Direction Topped Cupcakes (yes, really)

First of all, HUGE apologies for neither of us posting for over a month, I know our faithful follower (hi Polly) was very disappointed but I think our looming exams are a good enough excuse.

However, I realised that staring out of the window and rearranging my desk doesn't actually count as revision so I decided to do something productive and bake not once but twice (don't worry the second bake will be blogged about soon). Our friend Scarlett has been away living the high, exam free, life of a chalet girl for almost five months and she came home a few weeks ago which was extraordinarily exciting! So to mark the occasion, we threw her a surprise party in my basement which, if I may say so myself, was very well executed and (hopefully, she may be lying...) was a complete surprise. 

And what's a surprise party without cupcakes, especially One Direction ones. 

Before you ask, my mum - being the fangirl that she is - bought me the cake toppers for Christmas and I'd been saving them for the perfect occasion.

Possibly the best carrot cake ever

So about 2 years ago, I had to make a healthy cake for food tech (yes I did food tech gcse and yes it's a real gcse don't be rude) and I just googled carrot cake and found this recipe -I justify my eating extraordinary amounts of it by telling myself it's healthy, it's not THAT healthy but sshh - I changed it slightly to fix my brief and then made it in my lesson. Unfortunately I doubled the mixture and then put it all in one deep cake tin, meaning it didn't cook for like an hour and a half which isn't good when your lessons are fifty five mins...
But anyway when it eventually cooked and iced it turned out to be absolutley delicious and somehow became slightly famous and I ended up baking it all the time and even got paid once which was quite exciting.And then I got more and more work and had less money (walnuts are expensive when your mother refuses to pay for ingredients for your 'bloody baking') so I stopped making it as much but it was my friends birthday and she is a big fan so I thought I'd make her cupcake versions, I used the same recipe but just cooked it for a shorter amount of time and if I may say so they turned out rather well :)

First Day of Spring

 Guys!! It’s officially the first day of Spring and, while we do concede that we might be being slightly overoptimistic, today does have a certain Spring-like air about it. We are thrilled!

The sun is shining, blossom is on the trees, there is a vase of daffodils on my table, I’m imagining rabbits with white tails cheerfully hopping somewhere and I for one am wearing my favourite flowery dress.

(One should always be suitably dressed for the occasion, I feel)

Yes, Spring may, might, possibly finallyyy (and temporarily I’m sure) have sprung. And so on this jolly day we welcome all the great things that come with the entrance of Spring. I’m envisaging lamb for lazy Sunday lunches, hotcross buns with melted butter in the morning sun, wearing my new pastel pink blazer, going for premature picnics and eating Easter eggs. Woo!!

So, to celebrate this long awaited day, I thought I’d make something suitably cheerful; Sweet and Simple Strawberry Cupcakes. These are very quick and easy to make, and bring a little extra bit of (sweet) Spring Cheer to today.

This is the first recipe I’ve tried from my newly bought ‘Saved by Cake’, and am so far loving it

Did you think I'd Crumble?

So, I would like to say, before I continue, that I am a sociable and fun loving girl. I really am. Just to prove this to you I’ve drawn up a list of some of my Favourite Activities which include, but are not limited to, drinking cocktails with ‘the gals’, eating sushi with said quotation- ringed gals (in fact, add ‘with the gals’ to the end of most of these),  being the first one to start dancing at a party and the last one to stop, singing very loudly to One Direction while driving with all the windows down, spending unnecessary amounts of time drawing up a list of top five men we’d marry (and ditto for women we’d turn for), trying on sunglasses, pretending to be in ‘Sex and The City’, drinking cider at concerts, going out for breakfast, attending absurdly themed fancy dress parties, having baking days with my best friend when it rains, going mental in the perfume section of Duty Free, riding my brilliant blue bike and painting my nails in the bath before a party.

SEE?!

I’m good fun and I generally go about my business thinking that life should be enjoyed.

But sometimes things can get a bit crap, and when they do, all this pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw can be a bit of an effort, or even, just veryyy occasionally, make things worse.

It was because of this that, a couple of week ends ago, drowning in coursework, suffering a rejection and unable to drink owing to a course of antibiotics for an infected wisdom tooth (don’t even ask. Seriously. My actual life) I spent Saturday night watching the best of 1970s disco on BBC 4 with my mother. It was literally one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a Friday night!! Seriously, no word of a lie, I LOVED IT. (And this is why you needed to be reminded that I am normally a little bit cool and sociable and vaguely 18 year old-ish). We got so into the whole 70s disco thing. So clearly, just that first twang of Gloria Gaynor had us singing along. (Maybe shrieking/howling/caterwauling if you’re asking the neighbour. Whichever.) By the time we’d reached the chorus fists were in the air.

It was all most enjoyable, and a reminder that shit happens; you will occasionally feel utterly depressed; you will, from time to time, get the impression that some higher being is conspiring against you to make it all as difficult as possible; you will every so often feel completely powerless and you will sometimes feel like giving up and going to hide under your duvet with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s and the Downton Abbey boxset as your only companion. But – without wishing to sound overly Disney – life goes on. Gloria was on the money; yeah, you will survive. Totally. Girl Power!! Woo. Ahem. Anyway.

We went to bed wholly empowered.

Life was still looking a little bit grey when I woke up the next morning. It was raining and spring still had not bloody sprung.

Meh.

Even Muffin (my old and normally very much cheerful Border Terrier) looked miserable.

So I decided that what the Williams household needed was something yummy and homely, which fills the soul with a little spoonful of warmth and that reminds me of childhood and baking with my mum in the holidays.

There was clearly nothing more fitting/worthy for this role than the humble Apple and Blackberry Crumble.

This lovely little pud is simple and cheerful and rather like a cup of tea in the way that it never fails to make me feel that little bit more human.

(Especially with custard. Yum.)

I used Sophie Dahl’s Voluptuous Delight (which, is AMAZE. I love her. I want to BE her. Total girl crush. It might be getting out of hand. She’s so great and jolly) but I took out the oats from the topping. Does a Classic Crumble have oats in the topping? Errm, no, I think not. (No offence Soph. I love you in every other respect. Sorry).

Not very adventurous but still delicious chocolate chip biscuits

Typically I suppose these would be called cookies, but I try very hard to say biscuits most of the time because I'm English and that's what they're called. The Social Services Team at my school sent out a pleading email for biscuits for their fundraising event and, as I reaaaaally want to be on the team next year and I love baking, I thought I'd make some for them. 

I had all sorts of plans but homework and life got in the way so I decided on these simple but delicious biscuits that I seem to make far more often than necessary. I also made them on Pancake Day, and then gave chocolate up for lent so it meant I couldn't actually eat any other than the one slightly misshapen one that I decided to eat as soon as it came out of the oven and promptly burnt my tongue, not a good plan. 

They're really easy and quick to make, and you can just chuck any sort of chocolate in there. I used Cadburys Large Buttons for these.

Chocolate Diet Coke Cake

I have a friend who's obsessed (aka addicted) to Diet Coke. I can't remember the last time I saw her without a bottle and so I thought it would be perfect to make her a Diet Coke themed (it's not actually Diet Coke flavoured, I looked into that and it all seemed a bit bleurghh) birthday cake. Although locating a cake tin that wasn't round in my overflowing baking cupboard was slightly harder than expected, I thought the cake turned out rather well :)