Recipe: Homemade Caramel Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream Icing

This simple recipe consists of three parts. Firstly, we have to tackle making a rich caramel. Secondly,  this caramel is used to make the perfect little caramel cupcakes and finally, used to make the creamy salted caramel buttercream. Put together, you have one delicious teatime treat!

The Caramel 

You will need:
50g caster sugar
a splash of water

1. Start by coating the bottom of a large pan with an even layer of your sugar. I've found it's easier if you use a light coloured pan as you can monitor the colour of the sugar more easily.

2. Trickle some water over your sugar so that it is all wet, but not drowning in water.

3. Slowly and carefully begin to heat your pan, until it reaches a medium heat. Keep stirring the sugar and watch carefully for colour change. It should start to turn a light brown and then continue to darken. Beware! The colour can change quickly so don't abandon your pan throughout this process. You want to remove the sugar from the heat when it reaches a rich brown. However, remember that sugar retains heat and so will continue to cook when you remove it from the stove. Therefore be careful to remove it long before it burns! It is much better to be over cautious and remove the sugar a little early and have to reheat than end up with a burnt pan!

4. You will now have a pan of runny caramel which can be spooned into the cake and buttercream. If it sets a little, you can add a dash of water and gently reheat it to re-melt the caramel.

The Cupcakes

You will need:
100g brown sugar
100g self raising flour
100g butter
2 eggs
1tsp baking powder
3tsp caramel
optional scoop of caramel chunks

Note: I used my cupcake maker to cook my cupcakes to ensure they were uniform. However, if you don't have one of these, simply preheat your oven to 180C and cook your cupcakes in paper cases for 10-15mins or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. 
  
1. Simply bung all your ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix until thoroughly incorporated. We've used brown sugar instead of the usual caster in order to give the cupcakes a richer flavour, and I like adding the extra caramel chunks for a little gooey surprise. These are widely available in supermarkets.

2. Cook!

3. Leave to cool in preparation for icing.

The Salted Caramel Buttercream

(Here comes the best bit!)

You will need:
200g icing sugar
100g butter
4tsp caramel
a generous pinch of salt flakes (I used shavings from a rather special rose pink block of salt, found in Fortnum & Mason).

1. Simply cream all your ingredients together! Your buttercream should be reasonably stiff so if you're finding it a bit runny, it could be because it needs a dash more icing sugar or it's a bit warm (which can be countered by letting it set for a little in the fridge).

2. Pipe onto your cold cupcakes.

3. Enjoy!

I have to say I am a massive fan of these homemade cupcakes- they're perfect with a pot of tea (chai is my favourite!) and a gossip!

Tell me what you think and also, what are your favourite flavour cupcakes?

Leicester: Jones' Café

Today, I'm going to share with you a badly kept secret... Jones'. Over the last few years, this café has been a firm favourite of my university friends and I, my record being five visits in one week! It's an addiction and now having left uni, I'm not sure how I'm going to cope without!

Unfortunately for us, it's also a lot of other people's fix as well- I've spent more than a few drizzly afternoons queuing out the door, hoping someone will leave before they stop serving food! However, when you get inside, you remember that it's all very much worth it.

To drink, I normally almost always order the home-made strawberry lemonade which arrives in a jam jar with fresh strawbs, slices of lime and lemon on the side. However, I have been known to stray away from this summery concoction to thick milkshakes, cream-topped hot chocolates or even the odd cocktail....

My favourite dish is the 'veggie bagel burger'. This is a delicious stack of roasted red pepper, mushroom, goats cheese and, if you're like me and ask for a few, fried onions, all incased in a bagel with chilli fries on the side. I love opening up my bagel and filling it with the home-made garlic mayo and ketchup, before squeezing it all together and digging in! It really is truly delicious.

However, I've recently discovered the thai mussels which are also amazing- a huge bowl of them comes floating in a tangy thai sauce. I've only ever had the starter size and have always had more than enough to share!

They also do breakfast foods such as eggs Benedict, full English and...pancakes and waffles! Yum!

The bar is always packed with batches of home-baked goodies, from festive cupcakes to slices of millionaires shortbread.

Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that I'm a big fan of this little café: the food is excellent, the staff lovely and the prices very very reasonable. Go!

University Farmers' Market

Every now and then, my university puts on a little farmers' market outside the front of the Student's Union. A couple of stalls get set up, mostly selling delicious, freshly cooked burgers and hot dogs, along with cuts of local meat, ready to cook home made pies and cakes.

After one of our lectures today, Jocelyn and I raced back to the SU to get in line for some food. We'd been drawn in earlier by the smell of gently sizzling meat and it had all we'd been able to think about for the past hour! Finally, we got to the front of the queue and were eagerly awaiting our food. I went for a hot dog with locally sourced sausages (loaded with onions of course) and Jossi went for a beef burger. Before long we were happily tucking in.

We hope there weren't really 'penguin pies'!

Having a farmers' market (or any market for that matter) on campus is such a great idea as it gives you access to lovely, fresh food of a good quality. For general student shopping it may be a bit on the pricey side, but at my uni there's always a queue for the BBQ-ing food and plenty of interest in the other stands. The only problem is our union seems to rarely hold such an event. Now, where I go to uni, the local market (which is huge!) is right in the middle of town, but student housing tends to be much further away (sometimes up to a 40min bus drive!). This unfortunately makes shopping at the market not all that practical when you're faced with a long journey home. This surely opens up a lot of potential for having more regular stalls on campus where there are a few thousand hungry students desperate to get some food and save themselves the walk? The stall holders definitely seemed up for it, so maybe it's just a matter of convincing the SU?

Anyway, how does it work where you guys are? Do any of you have regular market stalls at university/work/school? Would you use them if you did? Please tell me about your experiences where you are so I can use them to try and proposition my own uni!

Flower and Music Festival

Every year, my area's local church has a flower and music festival in order to fundraise for the church. This year, my mother and I popped along to see what was going on. The theme was 'The Celebration of Marriage' which was beautifully portrayed through various flower arrangements. These, combined with the church backdrop made for some very pretty scenes which I thought I'd share with you.

After a wander around the flowers, Mum and I headed for a quick home made cake stop while discussing which arrangements had been our favourite. Hard to choose, don't you think?

The Perfect Syrupy Lemon Drizzle Cake Recipe

On days when rain is bucketing down so hard that you'd get drenched walking between your front door and your car, you may feel that the last thing you want to do is leave the house. On days like these I often feel restless, wandering around the house wondering what to do with myself. Then, one particularly wet day I discovered the perfect answer. Baking.

Baking can keep me occupied for hours. The process of deciding what to make, picking out your ingredients, combining them in just the right quantities and then watching them cook in the oven is incredibly therapeutic and perfect for a day when really, you can't do all that much.

Over the many rainy days we have in Britain, I've perfected one recipe: my (if I do say myself) amazing lemon drizzle cake. Today, I thought I'd share it with you.

You will need:
175g of sugar
175g of self raising flour
175g of butter
3 eggs
2 lemons
a teaspoon of baking powder

This recipe is very simple and rather quick to make. Start by preheating your oven to 170 degrees centigrade. Then grate a little of the lemon peel off one of the lemons. (I tend to use a 'lemon zester' as you get lovely thin ribbons of peel.) Be careful only to use the yellow peel- the white pith can be quite bitter. Next, squeeze the juice out of one and a half of the lemons. If you heat them for 30 seconds in the microwave first, you'll get more juice out. Bung your peel and your juice into a large mixing bowl.

After this, simply tip in the rest of your ingredients and mix until you have a smooth creamy mixture. Pour your mixture into your well greased baking tins so they fill about half of the tin. Personally, I tend to use four mini loaf tins, but you can use anything from one big tin to cupcake cases.

Bung them in the oven for around 25 mins. This time will change slightly depending on the size of your tins. (If your cake is larger, it will take slightly longer). To check if your cake is done, see if it is a golden brown on the outside and 'springy' to the touch. If you're not sure, you can poke it with a skewer- if it comes out the cake covered in raw mixture, give your cake a while longer.

Once you've removed your cakes from the oven, let the tin cool and then tip your cakes onto a wire rack to cool further.

If you wish to ice your cake, take the remaining half of the lemon from earlier and squeeze the juice into a small bowl. Mix this with either three tablespoons of icing sugar or 3 teaspoons of castor sugar. The type of sugar you use will change the type of icing- you will get a thicker icing with icing sugar, where as you'll get more of a syrup with the castor sugar. If you wish to make a syrupy icing, you should heat your bowl for around 30 seconds in the microwave to help the castor sugar dissolve into the lemon juice. When your cake is cool, drizzle with your chosen icing and leave the icing to set.

I decorated mine with a twist of lemon coated in lemon syrup. To do this, take a thin slice of lemon and make a small cut to its centre. Twist and drizzle with your chosen icing. 

There you have it, the perfect cake to wash away rainy day blues!

DIY Macrame Charm Bracelets

Over the last few months I've noticed that many shops have been stocking these little knotted macrame bracelets, each for around ten pounds a pop. Every time I've seen them I've been tempted to buy one, but have been held back by what seems to be a ridiculously high price for what is predominantly prettily knotted string. So I did a little research and found out how to make one, which I will now share with you.

You will need:
Chinese knotting cord (I used 2mm but I think these could look just as pretty with thinner)
Connector beads
Scissors
Super glue
A clip board

Start by cutting a piece of cord which is long enough to wrap loosely around your wrist twice. Fold this in half and loop it through your connector bead. Fold this loop over the bead and pull through the rest of the cord. This will anchor the cord to the bead. Then, clip the bead to your clipboard. This will make the threads easier to work with as you don't have to worry about them not staying taut.

Next, take another length of cord about double the length of the first. Find the centre point of this thread and pass it under the threads connected to the bead. Now you are ready to start a simple square knot.

For the knot, take your left hand thread and pass it over the middle 'anchor threads'. Your right hand thread should then pass over the left hand thread and under the middle anchor threads. The knot is finished by poking the right hand thread up through the loop on the left side and tightening.

Now repeat this, starting with the new right hand thread.

Continue until your knot is roughly half the width of your wrist. Pull your final knot firmly and cut the left hand and right hand cords. I the dab a tiny splodge of superglue on the ends to insure they won't unravel. Tie off your two anchor threads with little knots at the end.

Repeat these steps on the other end of the connector bead. Now you should have two long knots attached to either end of the connector bead.

Finally, to make this bracelet adjustable, you need to make a clasp. Loop your bracelet in a circle so that your anchor threads from each end are crossing. These four threads will form the centre anchor threads for the clasp knot. You may find it useful to tie the threads together with some spare cord while you're working with them.

Cut a short length of cord (you only need to make around four or five knots) and centre it under the four anchor cords and knot as usual. This can be a little tricky just because the bracelet is loose and the there are more anchor chords.

Once your knots are complete, cut off the excess cord and secure with super glue.

There we are! One (much cheaper) macrame charm bracelet!