Disney Princess Cupcakes

*Blowing off the cobwebs* 

Hi all! Whether anyone still reads this or not I have no idea but I am back and am going to share some Disney Princess cupcake designs with you all. 

Long story short...I used to work for Pandora ( the charms and bracelet jewelers) and we were each given a Disney Princess name for our weekly incentives. I left Pandora and my manager then departed shortly after to a new store and decided she wanted to give the girls some Disney related cupcakes. 

I had seen these all over Pinterest, the little sugar paper Princess toppers with a quick buttercream swirl that would be used to represent the dress. I took my time experimenting and finally came up with this design that uses a tiny replica of the Wilton 1M to create miniature roses that in my opinion give extra life to the dress. 

These are a quick snippet of my favourites :) Hope you like them as much as I liked making them. x

Lots of love, Kathryn xox 

Pretty and Pink Birthday Cupcakes

Good evening lovelies. 

I've been perfecting my design's lately so that I have boxes suitable for different events with key icing skills and toppers handcrafted! 

These are what I like to call my Girly Birthday Batch, consisting of 12 Vanilla Cupcakes with pretty pink swirls and complementary yellow roses. 

What do you think? :)

Spring Cupcake Designs & Mother's Day

Happy Good Friday to you all!

After looking through my Instagram photos I remembered I forgot to upload some photos of the Mother's Day orders I created. It was my first time doing a bouquet style order and although I enjoyed it, it certainly isn't as easy as it looks. Thank you so much to Laura who ordered the beautiful cupcakes for her Mother, I hope she enjoyed them as much as I loved decorating them.

You can now also PIN my images to Pinterest if you feel inspired by some of my designs :)!

Have a lovely Easter weekend!

American Cupcakes

Good evening lovely lot! 

I had an order for some cupcakes this weekend with an American theme as a leaving gift. After googling and googling for ideas I was very uninspired and very stuck on what I could do, I'm not a fan of over 2 different icing colours so that main idea was out. In the end I chose a three coloured sponge consisting of red, white and blue with vanilla buttercream and decorated with some red and white sprinkles, I think it did the job well! 

 Signed, Kathryn x 

Kathryns Bakes: Peanut Butter & Jam Cookie Sandwiches

Today I share with you the recipe for Dairy Free Peanut Butter and Jam Cookie Sandwiches (or just peanut butter cookies if you prefer). I used a recipe for once from The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town by Ms Cupcakes which was the simplest recipe I have ever used then used my own peanut butter butter cream recipe :) 

For the cookies you will need:

• 275 g smooth peanut butter
• 125 g pure/dairy free margarine 
• 140 g maple syrup
• 85 g caster sugar 
• 70 g brown sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 240 g plain flour 

Pre-heat the oven at 160 degrees C and line 2 baking trays with baking paper 

In a bowl mix together all the ingredients except the flour, then once fully mixed slowly add and stir in the flour. Leaving a couple of inches in between, use a spoonful for each cookie and place on the baking tray ( I had 4 balls on each baking tray). Flatten down and use a fork to criss-cross the dough.

Bake for 15 minutes. Leave to cool in the tray for a few minutes after taken out of the oven then use a spatula to remove and leave to cool completely.  

You will need: Organic Smooth Peanut Butter with No Added SugarStork Butter BlockIcing Sugar

Using 1/2 of the blocked butter, cream until smooth then add a couple of tablespoons of Peanut Butter (or to taste). Once creamed together add the icing sugar and carefully mix together. I have never measured icing sugar before as it just goes everywhere so add quite a bit and mix until you get a nice texture that isn't too soft or too lumpy. 

Peanut Butter and Jam Cookie Sandwich

Pipe a layer of the Butter Cream onto the flat side of 1 cookie. Spread a thinner layer of butter cream on the second cookie and layer with strawberry jam. Sandwich together lightly and voila!

Dairy Free Blackberry and Lemon Cupcakes

I have been so busy lately but seem to have nothing to show for it. My mother went out the other day to pick some blackberries whilst hinting that my dad had nothing sweet to take into work. So there I was yesterday trying to think of what to bake and was oblivious to this huge tub of blackberries in the corner of the kitchen just staring at me. I am not a strong fan of blackberries and the thought of blackberry butter cream makes me feel sick slightly. Despite this I decide to use them and mix it with some lemon to add some more tang. Surprisingly they taste so good but I just wish I note down how much I add of each ingredient. This can be by goal this summer! 

Some of the extra ingredients:

• 1 Lemon for lemon juice in the cake batter and frosting
• and lemon zest inside the cake 
• Spoonful of lemon curd
• A couple of handfuls of blackberries

The center of the cupcakes are filled with mushed up blackberries mixed with lemon curd! Sounds odd but it just works, trust me! 

Here it goes..

What you'll need

3 eggs (measure.. mine were approx 207g.)

207 grams of: 

Self Raising Flour

Caster Sugar

Pure Sunflower Margarine

---

1 Lemon (maybe 2)

Tbsp Lemon Curd 

Couple of handfuls of Blackberries

Stork Butter Block

Icing Sugar

Pre heat fan oven to 180 C and line 12 muffin cases. 

Cupcakes

1. Mix the butter and sugar together until smooth and pale
2. Beat in one egg at a time 
3. Cut half the lemon and squeeze the juice to the mix (to taste)
4. Slowly sift in the flour, using a wooden spoon mix with a figure of 8
5. Add the zest of 1 lemon

Fill muffin cases and bake for approx 20-25 minutes until spongy on top and a toothpick comes out clean!

Filling

1. Mush a couple of handful of blackberries using a fork
2. Add a tbsp of lemon curd and mix

Once the cupcakes are cooled scoop out the centers and fill. Replace the cake back on top

Lemon Butter Cream

1. Whisk the block of Stork butter
2. Slowly add icing sugar using a wooden spoon. You'll probably use half of a small box
3. Squeeze some lemon juice until to taste
4. Add a tiny amount of yellow food gel

Use your favourite piping nozzle to pipe and decorate using the extra compote or with a blackberry! 

:) Nom nom! Summer sorted! 

xxx 

Kathryn Bakes: Coffee & Lotus Biscuit Spread Cupcakes!

Ahww man, I have the worse cold at the moment so have been stuck in bed for a few days, a travel jab certainly hasn't helped either! 

One thing that will always (maybe not always) will get me up is baking and here I present my Coffee (with a hint of chocolate) and Lotus Biscuit Spread cupcakes! And yes these are dairy free!! :) I used this recipe  as inspiration but  without all the fiddly things such as baking powder/salt/oil/milk etc and used my standard recipe with some cocoa powder to thicken up the mixture when I added around 6 tsp of coffee! Also used Stork Block Butter :) and Pure Margarine! 

My taste buds aren't working at the moment so I have no idea how strong/nice/not nice these cakes are haha. Fingers cross someone will like them :) 

As for the Lotus Spread, everyone must try it. My friend recently bought some back from France until we later realised you can buy it in the super market ha. It tastes exactly like the coffee biscuits and they even do a crunchy version. Try not to get too addicted though as I can imagine it isn't the healthiest of spreads. 

Kathryn x

Mocha Cupcakes

Okay, I think this will be my last baking session for at least a week now. I feel like all I'm doing is taking photos of cakes and then writing about them, but as soon as they run out I bake a new batch for my dad to take to work, for family friends or for an occasion like yesterday so they are not going to waste or being made for no reason ;) ! 

Today I was supposed to focus on my dissertation *sigh*, although I have printed some journals so once I have completed this I will actually do some work for once, but baking is just that little bit more fun. 

The idea for today was to bake Coffee and Walnut cupcakes as they are my dads favourite but seeing as I'm aching from my little 5K run yesterday I couldn't be bothered to move and buy some walnuts, thus I just used cocoa powder with coffee to form Mocha Cupcakes!

The recipe is pretty simple and I never change the formula, just add and subtract flavours. So... I added Camp Coffee extract in with a dash of vanilla essence for the coffee flavouring to my basic cupcake recipe, subtracted around 40 grams of self raising flour and replaced with cocoa powder and voila! You have a chocolate and coffee cupcake. 

Now for the icing, I was going to do the two tone with a chocolate buttercream and a coffee buttercream but the colours just merged together so was pretty pointless. Therefore it is just a plain coffee buttercream (Butter, icing sugar & Coffee essence) with pipped melted dark chocolate. 

For all you coffee lovers out there and dairy eating people, I would replace the extract with some instant espresso coffee as it'll probably give you a much stronger flavour and drizzle milk chocolate over the top, but whatever floats your boat will do!

Lotsa love, Kathryn xx