Saying it with cupcakes

As a thank you to our Homing Heros, I baked a batch of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, as a sneaky chance to practice the swirly icing, and a new recipe, chocolate marmalade.   The chocolate marmalade features orange zest in the cake and a hefty dose of zingy marmalade in the chocolate buttercream icing.

The Entrepeneur's cupcakes

Sister in law came down last weekend with the Entrepeneur for his birthday.  We headed to North Devon's loveliest beach for the boys to jump in the waves and have a surfing lesson.  Darling boy and Little brother and I joined them for a picnic on the beach.  We were lucky with the sun and spent a lovely morning lying on the beach staring at the sky, whilst Darling happily soaked his entire outfit from the socks up playing in the rock pools.

Later that afternoon, we headed back to the farm with the Entrepeneurs birthday present, 2 dozen cupcakes; 12 gingerbread cupcakes, and 12 a new flavour, mint choc chip cupcakes.  They went down a storm and were eagerly guzzled up by the menfolk, hungry after a day of surfing the waves.

Cupcakes for the boys

I took a bespoke order this week for a previous customer (in fact she was my very first bespoke order customer when I started out).  She had seen the giant cupcakes on my blog and wanted one for her son's 30th birthday.  She plumped for chocolate cake, with a vanilla butter cream icing. For the decoration, she wanted it sparkly and fabulous, but not too girly....Happy to oblige I came up with a design of two shades of blue stars, with matching blue glitter.

When I finished the cake last night, it looked so lovely I was tempted to call my client to let her know it looked fab- but it was knocking on 11pm, and so much too late for cupcake conversations.  Though I did get Handsome husband to come into the kitchen to give me his opinion as a man- he said whilst he wasn't sure if a cupcake was essentially a 'girl thing', he thought it looked tasty and could he have some?

Fairy correspondence

We had our Dear friends to stay for the last time before we moved and had a wonderful time.  They are such good friends and their girls are such sweethearts, Cute as a Button and the Tiny Cowgirl have grown up so much since we last saw them, they are quite the sophisti-cats these days.  Tiny Cowgirl is totally fearless and has an amazing sense of balance for a 2 year old- fancy balancing on a rugby ball!

Cute as a button wanted to write to the fairies at the bottom of our garden to tell them bye-bye as we were moving, and so she drew her picture and left it out for the fairies.  And what would you know, in the morning the fairies had sent a reply. Softie? moi?

The fizz at the bottom of the garden

Handsome husband and I have come to the end of our Elderflower champagne.  It was, quite frankly, delicious! Crisp and very bubbly.  We weren't sure of the alcoholic content, prefering to do the falling over test, rather than faff about with the little spinning test tube thingy.  Our conclusions were, the younger the bottle, the less boozy- by the time we were drinking the last of the bottles, they certainly has more of a kick- but still just as delicious.

Elderflower champagne couldn't be easier to make, plus it's free (well, as long as you don't count the sugar, yeast, lemons, bottles etc)  And you get a very Tom and Barbara feeling when you crack open a fine house vintage, and who could ask for more?

The Mid Devon Show

Its always a winner; craft, animals, tractors and food- our idea of a perfect day out.  We ate, played on tractors and admired the weird and wonderful ways that Devon folk, ie us, entertain ourselves.  Im hoping to have a stall there next year, as Little brother is still too little for me to leave him for a whole day.  So if you come to the show, come along and visit me there.

The best of both worlds

Welcome to my new cupcake, the chocolate and vanilla cupcake with swirly whirly buttercream icing.  Feeling chocolately, but wanting the simple tastes of vanilla?  Perfect, step right this way.

I made this up as a batch to take to a friends house for toddler playtime- Darling boy and his chums ran rampage and us slummy mummies tried to eat our cupcakes in secret (they were too good for toddlers), accompanied by hot coffee and hot gossip.