marmalade cupcakes with lime drizzle

so i've been really enjoying marmalade recently. my mum bought this jar of thick cut dark bitter marmalade (it's really dark brown as opposed to regular marmalade which is light orange) and it has been so good having it on my toast in the morning that it kinda wanna makes you wake up just to have breakfast! so i thought i'd try some marmalade cupcakes...i found a jar of not so dark marmalade in the fridge and thought i'd use that up. it wasn't too strong because i didn't want it to overpower the mixture. well it worked out just nice...the cupcakes had a lovely subtle taste of orange marmalade and then to top it off i made some lime drizzle to put on top just for that extra tangy bite. delicious and a great start to the day - sorta puts that extra 'zing' in your step as you head out the door!

caramel mudcake cupcakes

so it was hubby's birthday today and had to make something special for him because it's his first time away from home on his birthday and from family. so i had been thinking about making something toffee-like because i love the taste of toffee and recently bought a toffee cake from the local supermarket but was disappointed by how much ginger was added to the recipe so that you really lost the smoothness of the toffee taste and were overwhelmed by this aftertaste of ginger (which i'm not a big fan of - giner that is, as opposed to toffee, which i'm a huge fan of!) not great! so i stumbled upon a recipe for caramel mudcake cupcakes and decided to give it a whizz. you melted the important toffee base ingredients first - golden syrup, brown sugar, butter, etc and even the smell of the ingredients melting together was enough to make you salivate. when they finally came out of the oven, the smell was so good.....WOW - just not enough words to describe it! i iced them with vanilla buttercream icing which tasted just like vanilla ice-cream (thanks to this great vanilla extract i bought at a local gourmet shop) and decorated with rainbow sprinkles because let's face it...a birthday ain't a birthday without some rainbow sprinkles!!!! Happy Birthday, honey x

lemon muffins with lemon drizzle

so i decided to take a break from cupcakes and make some chunky muffins for breakfast. i love the taste of lemon so went with lemon muffins. now i don't know about you but i just don't feel right icing muffins...so i thought a drizzle might be nice instead. i mixed some icing sugar and lemon juice together until i got the consistency i was looking for and drizzled it on top and wow! it was perfect. it had this lovely tangy flavour to it that just made the muffins taste so great. must explore some more with drizzle and maybe on cupcakes this time....

white chocolate cupcakes with baileys icing

ok so i lurve white chocolate and baileys and wanted to pair the two...and it turned out so nice...i put one of those small bottles of baileys into the icing mix and it was just nice - the right amount of flavour that allowed you to enjoy the taste of it without overpowering the white chocolate cupcake. the cupcake itself, with the melted white chocolate in it, was melt in your mouth divine - soft and spongy. these went down a treat...