Recipe: Gluten- Free Spider Web Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post about some Halloween themed baking ideas I'd found on pinterest and last week I decided to bake some. I also changed the recipe for the cupcakes so that they'd be gluten-free so more people can eat them. I've never baked something with gluten-free flour before so I wasn't sure how they would turn out but they were great and don't taste too different to the real thing! The chocolate on top of the cupcakes also adds some more flavour as well as the vanilla extract in the cupcakes.

Ingredients
125g butter (melted)
125g caster sugar
125g gluten-free self-raising flour
2 eggs
3 tbsp milk
few drops of vanilla extract
For the topping
100g milk chocolate
100g white chocolate

How to
1. Heat the oven to 190c degrees (170c fan)
2. Add the melted butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk and vanilla extract to a bowl and mix with an electric mixer.
3. Spoon the mixture into paper cupcake cases.
4. Bake cakes for 18-20 minutes and allow cakes to cool.
5. Melt the chocolate in two separate bowls.
6. Working on one cupcake at a time spread milk chocolate onto the top, then pipe four circles in white chocolate inside each other on top. Using a cocktail stick or skewer, from the centre drag the stick along to the edge of the cupcake to make a cobweb effect, I did this about eight times on each cupcake.
7. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes alternating the chocolate to white chocolate with a milk chocolate cobweb. 

I enjoyed making these and attempting the cobwebs on top (plus eating all the left over chocolate of course). Let me know if you decide to bake these too!

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Halloween Baking Ideas

Now it's October I feel like I can start looking as everything to do with Halloween - pumpkins, fancy dress and spooky films! To me it also means it's getting closer to my favourite time, Christmas but I can't let myself start shopping for that until November. Pinterest is fab for looking at anything to make or bake and I've found quite a few different baking ideas for Halloween so I thought I'd share these with you, they're all linked below too.

Ghost Meringues - These look so good and they're probably quite easy to make, you could even put these on top of cupcakes.

Halloween Cookies -I love baking cookies but I don't think my icing skills are quite this good yet.

Spider web chocolate cupcakes - These are my favourite that I've found so far as they look easy to make, plus they're chocolate.

Spider cupcakes - These cupcakes would be good for a party or for someone who you know doesn't like spiders *cackles*.

Graveyard Mousse - This is such a good idea, I've not seen anything like this design before and it looks like chocolate heaven.

Hope you all liked this post, if I give the spider web cupcakes below I'll be sure to write a post about them. You can see more from my Pinterest page here.

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Back to blogging

'Abigail's World' has been lacking blog posts for six months now and it's time to get back to it. I started a new job over six months ago and juggling this along with driving lessons and a blog was just too much (I like to sleep in sometimes too). But now I'm settled into my job, I've passed my driving test *yay* and got myself a car which saves some time too so I feel like it's time to give the blog another go.

Getting back into blogging I think I want my blog to include less beauty and makeup but more photography, days out and food with the same hauls and wishlists included. I also might start to include some craft/diy pieces such as candles which I have been making for a couple of years.

So this was just a little post to say that I'm still here and will be back again shortly. I also hope that you're all as excited as I am that it's now autumn.

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Weekend in the Lake District

Last month I had the chance to visit my friend Alice in Cumbria and of course I thought I'd share some of my many photos with you. I love the Lake District, it's a beautiful place and I had the chance to visit some places I'd never been before, despite the cold and rainy February weather I had a great time.

On our first day out we visited Tarn Hows, it was a great place to walk around with pretty views of the snow at the top of the hills and blue skies. I made friends with a couple of posing ducks as you can see below, and I particularly liked the trees with pennies in them. I find them so interesting and wonder who started it and for what reason.

We then stopped at Windermere for some lunch (we both had soup of the day) before heading on for our next adventure at Levens deer park. There are two separate sides to the deer park, divided by the river. We walked through the first half and didn't manage to spot too many deer, although there was a little family with its young which we spotted. Then we had quite an adventure crossing to the other side via country lanes, spotting some birds and sheep on our way. Then back through the deer park we managed to find a LOT of deer. That's where they were hiding!

After finishing the very muddy walk through the deer park, we called it a day for exploring and went out for tea and cocktails. The next day which was my last full day of visiting the lakes this time around, we started the day by heading to the Lakes Aquarium. I love places like this as I'm a big animal lover and this was more than an aquarium, there were also marmosets and otters and more.

After stopping for lunch at a cafe by the aquarium, we headed on to Fell Foot. It was only a short place to walk around but it was lovely. The views of the lake and the boats were great and Alice says it's a good place to visit in the summer too!

The last adventure of the weekend was a walk up Gummers How. I'm not quite use to walking these hills like Alice is so I was quite out of breath (which is an understatement) by the time we reached the top, but the view was worth it.

If you want to see some more photo's of the beautiful lakes, Alice also wrote a blog post about this weekend which you can find here.

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