Recipe Post 2022 - No.1 Happy New Year !!

I am delighted to announce BakingBoutique is back for the New Year, ready to share a fool-proof, quick and easy recipe as part of the celebration of making it to a new year in good health (free of Co-Vid)!!!, Returning back to what feels like my own little corner of the internet, where I can share my creations and inspire others to bake is AMAZING!

One of my New Year Resolutions is re-establishing my hobbies and interests.  I am also striving to take care of myself and not to feel pressured or obliged to upload, especially if I am not in the right place to do so. As a result, I am no longer setting a strict upload deadline. I still aim to upload on weekends, however there will no longer be the pressure of posting weekly or bi-weekly. What matters most on BakingBoutique is being able to concoct new and interesting food combinations which are extraordinary and surprisingly goes well together all while sharing my culinary passion through tips and tricks I have picked up along the way :))

I hope you are all well and healthy in the New Year , and would also like to take up baking as a new hobby, or reinforce baking as part of your pastimes, aside from other things like watching Netflix or sitting around. Let's make 2022 count! 

Without further ado, let's start with this recipe of chocolate cupcakes:

100g of plain flour

20g of good quality cocoa powder

140g of caster sugar

1½ tsp of baking powder

¼ tsp of vanilla extract

120ml of whole milk

40g of unsalted butter (make sure it's at room temperature)

For the chocolate buttercream:

20g of cocoa powder

100g of unsalted butter

400g of icing sugar, sifted

Method:

Firstly, the cupcakes will not cook themselves, without the oven preheated at 180℃/ 160℃/ Gas Mark 4. 

Pour the flour, cocoa powder, butter, caster sugar, baking powder and a pinch of salt with either a free-standing electric mixer or handheld mixer. 

Beat on a slow speed under you get a sandy consistency as shown below:

Next, whisk the milk, egg and vanilla extract together in a jug. Be careful not to overbeat this, as it'll cause the cake to taste eggy.

Pour around half the milk mixture into the flour mix. Beat to combine at a high heat Scrape any mixture from the side of the bowl.

Pour in the remaining liquid and continue to mix for a few more minutes until the mixture is smooth. Once again, be carefully not to overbeat as it may cause all the air to be beaten out of the mix. 

 Distribute the mix into 12 paper cases, around two thirds full.

Bake in a preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

I chose to decorate the cupcakes with piping the buttercream onto the cupcakes. For more information on icing techniques,  I'll leave a link at the end :)

I then embellished the icing with pearls which adds a extra sweet touch. However, I would believe as it is the New Year, adding sparklers to each cupcake certainly would be an option. 

Here are inserts of photos from the method, I have added the photos in chronological order, the first picture being step one and the last picture being the last step. 

   

Buttercream being whipped

  

Cupcakes with a cup of hot chocolate

 
 

My last thoughts...

Were any of you lucky enough to safely use and fire fireworks on New Years?

I did not need to turn on the TV with fireworks as the same display was happening in my back garden😂😂:

Link to icing techniques post: https://bakingboutiquebirds.blogspot.com/2016/03/baking-post-n08-piping-decorations.html

What are your New Years Resolutions? Let me know in the comments below, I would love to hear!!

That's all from me! Hope to see you again soon ,

#sweetreats xxx 

Baking Post 2019 N0.1- HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!🙌🎇🎆🎉🎊

First of, happy 2019 y'all!!!!! I can't believe we've made it through yet another year filled with laughter, happiness, obstacles as well many opportunities, aims, falls and also rises. Nevertheless, here we are for a new year filled with further aspirations, aims and flourishing even more. I hope you are all happy and well and refreshed for the fantastic year ahead of us all!

For BakingBoutique in particular 2018 was a year of falls and rises; falls being my inconsistency and failure to keep up to my promises and also rises such as my big Lemon and Elderflower bake, in admiration of Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding, and my gradual incorporation of healthier baking as well as being more inventive with my bakes. Although 2018 had its perks, there is an assortment of objectives I would like to achieve for this platform in particular, before I feel like enough is enough and my time on BakingBoutique will end. But likewise, I have so many ideas for this blog I simply don't know where to start. Because of this, I'm going to dedicate an entire post where I shall discuss my plans in fuller detail. For now, I bring you BakingBoutique's first recipe of 2019:

In order to assemble these tasty cake sale worthy treats, you'll need:

140g of caster sugar

40g of unsalted butter

1 egg

¼ tsp of vanilla extract

120g of plain flour

1 ½ tsp of baking powder

120ml of milk

1 tbsp of cocoa powder

50g of chocolate chips

For the icing:

250g of icing sugar

100g of unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

red food colouring

Steps to complete:

Firstly, pre-heat the oven to 170℃/150℃ fan/Gas Mark 3. With this, line a cupcake tin with cases before creaming together sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

Next, crack in the egg and the vanilla extract, whisking to combine. Add in about half of the flour, the baking powder, salt and once again whisk to combine. 

Incorporate half of the milk, whisk and repeat this with the remaining flour and milk.

Spoon about half the mix into a separate bowl, and add in the cocoa powder and chocolate chips. Stir well to combine.

Using a teaspoon, divide the chocolate mix between 12 cases, using a wooden skewer to spread the mixture evenly to the edges.

Rinse and dry the teaspoon, then repeat with the vanilla layer,take care not to disturb the chocolate layer below.

Bake this for 25 minutes and allow to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the pretty icing to top the cupcakes, sift the icing sugar, then combine with the butter. 

Carefully add 1-2 drops of the food colouring, combining to make  a pale pink icing. When you cut the cake in half, the coloured layers should be revealed.

And volia!

*overall review of the cake* there were a few blips in the recipe, in terms in what the mixture's generally supposed to look like and then what it turns out as,for example, I've creamed butter and sugar together for many years and not once has it looked like the image below😖

Aside from that, the recipe was decent.😊











Snapshots:

 



Before you go...

What are your New Year Resolutions for 2019? I wanna know so be sure to drop a comment on what your goals are below↓↓

  

Quote of the month(one I think really relates to my state of mind and how I'm coming into 2019)

YouTuber of the month:

AJ Jacobs(when you can't think of what else to watch😆

Book of the month: Lady of Midnight by Cassandra Clare

Inspiration of the month *new* : Michelle Obama

With her brand new memoir "Becoming" released on November the 13th, it has sold more than 2 million copies, breaking the record of selling the most copies in 2018 in only 15 days. Her book strives to educate people about her roots and how she found the voice she has today. She's someone I look up to and hope to be as success as in the future.😊💕

Don't forget to add me on Snapchat and view my story(its open to the public) ++↓↓

I'm going to cut this ending short but once again happy 2019 and I wish you all the best!!!

Until next time,

#sweetreats xx 😘

Vanilla Cupcakes and a EXPLANATION

Hey.

As I always say, it feels like forever since I've properly connected with this blog. And when I say this, I truly mean it. 

Today's introduction to my recipe is different to my normal opening as I believe I owe all of you an explanation for my lack of consistency, effort and most importantly...my lack of baking!!!


Over the last few months, life has been extremely tough, tremendous, hectic and so much more. Unfortunately, a close family friend of mine had passed away from brain cancer, I've fallen behind in pretty much every subject at school and my mentality WAS rapidly dropping into a fairly relentless and morose state of mind. Being in a rough patch, mentally, certainly isn't the easiest thing to conquer, and is much harder when you have an weekly audience to please, and work to complete, and exams to participate in and family dramas occurring. So as you imagine, a couple months ago, there was near enough no way I was even feeling motivated to upload entertaining and satisfying content, and even bake. Although I was extremely unmotivated to blog, I thought if I don't, I'll be letting you all down. But what I didn't realise was how much I was letting myself down. 

I was posting incomplete, half-done content, in the expectation I'll find time in the week to log back online and complete my post. Only I didn't. And so this pattern of uploading insufficient content would continue at first for two weeks and then slowly progress to a month and before I knew it, my blog anniversary had arrived and I still hadn't had one complete blog post since August.  At that point of reaching my third blogging anniversary, I felt too embarrassed and shamed to even come back on here and put things right, and so more time passed and nothing was posted on here. 

However...
I'm happy to say that despite finding life hard before, it's better now. I think it's safe to say I've overcome my dark patch in my head, I'm gradually climbing back to where I need to be academically and lastly...I'm baking again! This leads me to say, here's my recipe on how to make very simple, beginner vanilla cupcakes with buttercream.

For the cupcakes, you'll require:

110g of butter or margarine, softened and at room temperature

110g of caster sugar

2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten(however I only used one extra-large egg)

1 tsp of vanilla extract

110g of self-raising flour

1-2 tbsp of milk

As for the buttercream, you'll need:

140g of softened butter

280g of icing sugar

1-2 tbsp of milk

a few drops of vanilla extract

How-to-bake:

Firstly, pre-heat the oven to 180℃/160℃ fan/350⚬F/Gas Mark 4. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases(I used orange ones).

Next, cream together the butter and sugar together into a bowl until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time before eventually stirring in the vanilla extract.

After that, fold in the flour,using a large metal spoon adding a small quantity of milk up until the mixture is of dropping consistency. 

Spoon the cupcake mix into the paper cases until they're half full.

Bake these in the oven for 10-15 minutes(it took me 18 minutes, to ensure the cupcakes were of a perfect golden colour but still stick to the guidelines of the recommended baking time). 

Set the cupcakes aside to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin, to a wire rack.

In the meantime, for the buttercream, beat the butter in a large bowl until really pale and soft. Add in around half of the icing sugar, beating this until smooth.

Then add in the remaining icing sugar, along with one tablespoon of milk, until the mix is smooth and creamy.

Finally, MY FAVOURITE PART, spoon the icing into a piping bag with a star or round nozzle and pipe the icing using a spiraling motion in a large swirl. 

Here are the photos of all the steps, for those who are stuck:

  

Although I usually do a "before-you-go" at the end, I'm going to leave this post at this or else this will be take too long to read over
 Goodbye for now and hopefully I'll post again next Saturday.

#sweetreats xx