bakewell cupcakes

I've been on holiday for the last nine days and realised the other night that I hadn't done any baking! I love baking and generally try to make something at least once a week now, as in my old flat it was nigh on impossible.

Although my flat was generally a nice size and reasonably cheap the kitchen was abysmally small, think of a box with three sides. The floor space is probably about the same as your average public loo space only square instead of rectangular, the floor is also made of that cheap plastic lino that everything sticks to. A mop doesn't work on it so you end up on your hands and knees scrubbing it with a brush.

On the back wall you have an old white electric oven and next to that the fridge- freezer which has a microwave on top. There wasn't any cupboard space along this wall so I ended putting up open wooden shelves.

Directly on your left you have the window which the freezer covers slightly as the room is that small. You have a bin there and a vegetable rack which needs moving whenever you want to open the fridge.

Lastly on your right you have the sink and draining board with a cupboard underneath for cleaning materials, and a small cupboard above which was the only suitable place in which to store your plates and glasses.

This left you with a working space between the sink and the oven, yet because of where the oven was (the only place you could put it), there was only one place you could position yourself without leaning over the oven in a directly dangerous way when it was on.

Of course this tiny bit of work space wasn't exactly clear all the time either, the kettle alone seemed to take up about a fifth of the space available and the toaster got a strange new home in the living room.

And yes although the room was technically big enough to swing a cat in if you had proceeded to swing a cat by it's tail (surely the only sensible place to swing a cat from if you insist on it) it would have smacked it's head on so many things that it would probably have ended up with brain damage!

This cramped atmosphere was not conductive to the whole baking experience, before you could even start the process everything had to be taken of the workspace and either deposited on the coffee table in the living room or on the kitchen floor. Then if you needed more than one bowl , ingredients would have to be placed on top of the oven which ruled out making anything that might need a sugar syrup. Overall it was an absolute pain and I didn't feel like the hassle most of the time.

My new kitchen isn't particularly large being of the galley kind feels cavernous in comparision, and the best thing is that I'm the only person in the house who really uses it.

Over this year I've been trying to teach myself to bake with mixed results due to the oven. I've tried several times to cook a normal sized cake with dire results. I have now tried twice to cook the maidera cake from how to be a domestic goddess by Nigella Lawson and both times it has come out of the oven with a black charcol crust but a deliciously tender interior.

I've tried turning the heat down by 20% like they recommend for the fan oven it is to no avail. Hell, I've tried turning it down by 50%, putting the cakes on different shelves, I've tried anything I've read or heard that tells you it may help the problem and nothing seems to work. If anyone has any other tips then please let me know, but to be honest I really do think we just need a new oven and I don't want to ask the landlord for one as he's just had a baby and he's a mate. This is however getting in the way of my secret goal of being good enougth at cooking to be able to go on masterchef by the time I'm 30, I'm 27 next month and I havn't cooked a large cake in years!

The one thing that does always turn out well is cupcakes, and I keep experimenting with different flavours and the like. So the other night I started cooking these cakes at around 10pm, they probably took me around 45min to cook overall and were a good hit.

The above picture is of how they turned out and a cup of tea is besides them because my boyfriend insists that cake should always be tested alongside tea.

They passed he's tea and cake test with flying colours and he even took one to work with him the next day which is a rarity as he doesn't have a sweet tooth.

These cakes are made from the same sort of ingredients you would use for a bakewll tart. The cake mix has almonds in it and isn't overly sweet. After the cakes cool you cut the tops off and spread a layer of jam over the top before you reconnect them, use a sweet jam here to get the balance right. The recipe is from a little book simply called Cupcakes by Sue McMahon and goes a bit like this

Bakewell Cupcakes

Ingredients

125g butter

125g caster sugar

few drops almond essence

2 medium eggs

2tblsp milk

100g self raising flour

30g ground almonds

2-3tblsp flaked almonds

jam of your choice

icing sugar to dust

Method

• the book says to preheat the oven to 190'c\ 375'f or gas 3 I just bung it on medium
• cream the butter, sugar and almond essence together
• add the eggs, milk, flour and ground almonds when the mixture is light and fluffy
• beat until the mixture is smooth, it did look rather thin to my eyes
• pour the mixture into either 12 bun tins lined with wrappers or roughly 9 muffin tins. I personally prefer a larger sized cupcake
• sprinkle the flaked almonds on top and bung in the oven, the book says for 12-15 min, I don't time mine I watch them through the oven door like a hawk
• when the buns are golden and risen a bit they're done, leave them to cool o a wire rack
• when you can comfortably handle the cakes, chop the tops off and spread the surface with as much jam as you fancy and then dust with icing sugar
• Consume with a cup of tea and rate them according to your own tea and cake test

This was the first of my recipe unrelated to a book post, I'll generally only do these when either somethings worked out really well and I want to share it with you or it's soooo bad that I want to warn you to stay away at all costs.

Hopefully I'll post you a review in the next few days of William an Englishman and tell you what I cooked to go alongside it.