This is what life looks like....in Leighland...

Saturday 27 July 2013

Delightfully light boozy summer cupcakes

Boozy summer cupcakes...??  Nom nom nom yes please!



We're really not very big drinkers here, but there is nothing better than cracking open an ice cold Corona on a hot summers day!

Like most days, I was feeling cupcakey but I wanted something other than my now signature caramel flavour (I can't remember the last time I made a different one!!).  So I went scouring through my cupboards and fridge and spotted a few bottles of Corona and remembered a Cinco de Mayo cupcake recipe I'd pinned a while ago which used Corona as a flavouring!!

As usual, it was nearly midnight by the time I'd decided I was going to start baking so rather than working with a new recipe I decided to adapt my favorite cupcake recipe to incorporate the Corona and combine it with a light lime frosting...this is what I did:

Makes 16 large cupcakes                          
250g flour, sifted
1/2 tbsp baking powder                                
100g room temperature olive spread
1 1/2 tbsp sunflower oil
200g caster sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
240mls chilled Corona
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp lime zest

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
Mix flour, baking powder and lime zest in a bowl and put to one side
Beat olive spread and sugar until light and fluffy
Beat in eggs one at a time
Add 1/3 flour mix then 1/2 chilled Corona, 1/3 flour mix, 1/2 chilled Corona, oil and milk then last 1/3 flour mix and mix until fully combined
Spoon into your cupcake cases and bake in the middle of the oven for aprox 18-20 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean
Cool completely before frosting


Frosting:
70g unsalted butter
190g icing sugar
1 tsp lime zest
2 tsp fresh squeezed lime juice
2-3 drops green food colouring (I only wanted a hint of green)

Dice the butter and soften with a spatula
Add food colouring, lime juice and zest and beat into butter until fully combined
Add icing sugar a bit at a time



When the cakes are ready, I usually turn the oven off and leave the cakes for a further 3 mins or so to make sure they don't drop - especially if it's a particularly wet recipe like this one!

Well goodness me they are simply delish!!  Using olive spread instead of butter and a really good drizzle of oil really seems to give a moister crumb - I used sunflower oil as it's what I had in my cupboard but any oil will do as long as it doesn't have a strong flavour.  As for the lime frosting...OMG it tastes like green Starburst so I've already found inspiration for my next new flavour!!!!!

I hope you guys enjoy making and eating these as much as I did!!



Monday 15 July 2013

Best Teacher gifts the Leighland way

I've been working loads of overtime (still trying to pay my credit card bill off from Egpyt!!) and have had a very poorly lil Monster to take care of so time has been pretty restricted recently to say the least!

There's light at the end of the tunnel though, there's been no more vomiting since 8am this morning (It's now nearly 2am - oh the joys of working a late shift!!) so if she can make it through another 6 hours she'll be allowed back to nursery school!  She's desperate to get back, especially because not only is she leaving nursery to move on to reception class but her nursery teacher is leaving the school so she's desperate to see her teacher before she goes!

With only a matter of days left, it means some serious last minute gift giving...so what do you do when you need to 2 last minute gifts and are already over your monthly budget?!  Well I'm pretty sure I got the idea from this Pintrest pin but couldn't really think of anything to write (and didn't really have time either if I'm honest) so I googled how to make a shape with words and found this amazing website!

All you need to do is fill in 1 of the 6 fields, chose your shape and direction for the words, pick a font and a theme then click submit and et voila!!  You can even edit the font, colours and themes before saving your final image!

Once I had my image, I opened a word document and pasted it in the middle.  I cropped the image to remove the copywrite border then added a couple of text boxes to make the document a bit more personal.  I had chosen the Duality font when creating my shape so for continuity, I downloaded the same font here for free and this is what I ended up with:


I'll nip to Ikea tomorrow and pick up 2 of their Ribba frames and there you go...a cheap personalised gift for both the teacher and her TA (and yes...I remembered to change the name on the TA's picture!