Happy Halloween!

Mini-pumpkin cakes with pumpkin spice cream cheese frosting.

Peanut Brittle

A few years ago, a friend gave me an old-fashioned confectionery cook book for my birthday - Hope & Greenwood Life is Sweet. I remember flicking through the pages and salivating at all the yummy treats. In all honesty, I was a little afraid of trying these recipes…fear of failure! Sugar has never really been my friend, at first it seems to take forever to change colour then the next thing you know it’s turned from a nice golden colour straight to burnt and useless. A friend’s birthday was coming up and I thought it was about time to take up the challenge. I went and bought myself a sugar thermometer as recommended by Miss Hope and decided to make some “proper peanut brittle” it seemed easy enough. So there I was with my sugar thermometer waiting ever so patiently for the sugar to get to 149 degrees Celsius. Miss Hope said it would take 30 minutes probably more and not to turn up the heat as it would burn. Anyway, an hour later with the help of Mr Mi and a blister from sugar exploding on my finger we finally got to 149 degrees Celsius! The peanut brittle turned out pretty well for a first attempt and I do hope that my friend liked his edible present. Mi xo

Green Tea and White Chocolate Cookies

You may recall from a previous post that my Mum doesn't really have a sweet tooth and loves green tea hence the green tea cupcakes for her birthday. I've had recent success with making earl grey tea cookies and since my mum was visiting on the weekend I thought to myself why not try making green tea cookies. I used the same recipe for the earl grey tea cookies, using matcha instead of earl grey and a handful of white chocolate chips (about 50 g). I rolled the cookies dough into a log, wrapped in baking paper, placed in the fridge for about an hour, sliced and baked. Easy. If you enjoy green tea and want to try something a bit different this is the cookie for you. Enjoy! Mi xo

Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

These little cakes came into being thanks to a mildy humorous story. I was walking back to work, munching on a sandwich and enjoying the sun rays, when I heard the raucous laughter of university students. They walked past and through the relaxing sounds of Neil Young coming out of my headphones, I overheard one of them say very proudly "I havn't had a peanut butter and jam sandwich in such a long time and now I have two!". There he was, marching proudly with not one but two of almost everyone's childhood favourite.

I'm not quite sure why I found this amusing but it made me smile so I thought I'd use it as inspiration for a cupcake recipe. To be honest, I'm always trying to turn almost every idea into a cupcake recipe. This one turned out pretty well I think. The recipe is as follows: