Wednesday 31 October 2007

Halloween cupcakes


I guess it's a bit late to be making a post about anything Halloween related. Supermarket stackers are no doubt already pulling all the Halloween confectionery from the shelves. Somewhere out there, hardcore Halloween enthusiasts are starting to realise that it won't be 31st October again for a whole year and asking themselves "Do I have enough energy to drag myself down to Sainsbury's to check out the half price chocolate witches and reduced vampire make-up which would really come in handy for fancy dress parties?".

I made these ones with a friend. At first orange seemed like a great idea because it meant we could make pumpkin faced cupcakes which worked for the one at the bottom in the middle but then confused us when we wanted to do anything that wasn't orange which is why every other one looks a bit naff unless you try to imagine another colour in the background.

To make the orange Royal Icing simply whisk an egg white for about 20 seconds until a little bit frothy. To get enough to cover about a dozen cakes, just use about a third of the egg white and then slowly keep adding sieved icing sugar with a couple of drops of red and yellow food colouring. When it gets firm enough to roll into a ball, dust some icing sugar on a clean surface and roll out. I used a cup to cut out the circles to go on top and some ready made tubes of 'writing icing' for drawing. Oh and I heated up about 2 tbsps of apricot jam with a tbsp of water to make a glaze which was then painted on the cakes to enable the icing to stick.

Sunday 28 October 2007

Chanelle has a tantrum on Ready Steady Cook

It's all too easy to bitch about this princess but seeing as she had never crossed over into the food/restaurant territory, I never had the means to warrant a good old Chanelle rant.

So imagine my joy when I saw her on Friday's edition of Ready Steady Cook!



What confuses me about this video is the number of opportunities Brian Turner has to head-butt Chanelle but turns them down. That's fair enough Brian. After all it's a family show and it's shown before the watershed but that really doesn't explain why you had to hug her instead. We'd rather be watching Deal or No Deal.