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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Recipe: Pineapple upside down cake

It's that time of the week again.. GBBO night! So of course here is another recipe that I made lately, I actually made this last week when I didn't manage to upload the post (ooops) but I'm starting to get use to baking every week! So for this weeks recipe I thought I'd bake something I've never tried before and that is a pineapple upside down cake from the recipe book Tanya Bakes, by Tanya Burr. I may have to do a separate review of this recipe book because it is SO good. Almost everything you could ever want to bake and more is in this book so it took me a while to decide what to bake first.

Ingredients:

150g butter

3 tablespoons golden syrup

6 slices tinned pineapple

150g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

150g plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

60ml pineapple juice (leftover from the tin of pineapple slices)

Method:

1. Firstly preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas mark 6. Grease the cake tin with some spare butter and microwave the golden syrup for 20 seconds and add it to the cake tin, covering the bottom.

2. Dry the pineapple rings slightly with kitchen paper and lay in the bottom of the cake tin. In Tanya's recipe she added glace cherries too but I decided not to along with a splash of rum.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl before beating in the eggs. Then add the flour and baking powder before slowly adding the pineapple juice and beat the mixture again.

4. Pour the cake mixture on top of the pineapple in the cake tin, smooth over and bake for 30-35 mins until risen and golden. Turn the cake out onto a plate and ta-daaa, pineapple upside down cake.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and maybe even creating this recipe. Let's hope I can keep up all of this baking through this series of bake-off. Who knows what the Great British Bake Off will be like next year after this weeks news!

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RECIPE: Banana Loaf // Blogging Anniversary

Today marks the day that I've been blogging for 3 whole years! My blog has changed a lot since then from the name and web page to the design and what I like to blog about most. So today I thought I'd write one of my favourite kinds of posts - baking! It's also fallen on a Wednesday which, as most of you will know is Bake Off day! Last week as the first episode of the new series aired I posted a recipe on Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, so Wednesday's on Abigail's World could become days for everything baking!

Today's recipe is Banana Loaf which I made a couple of weeks ago and it went down a treat! I originally found the recipe here on BBC Good Food and although I had to alter the cooking time, it was delicious, so if you're a banana lover the recipe is below.

Ingredients:

140g butter (softened)

140g caster sugar

2 eggs

140g self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

2 bananas (mashed)

50g icing sugar

(optional) banana chips for decoration

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin with baking paper.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs slowly with some flour. Then fold in the rest of the flour with the baking powder and banana.

3. Pour the mixture into the baking tin and bake for about 30 mins, however mine took slightly longer and baked until a skewer came out clean.

4. Set aside to cool once cooked and make the icing. Mix the icing with 2-3 tsp of water and drizzle over the top of the banana loaf and add the banana chips to decorate.

I really enjoyed baking (and eating) this Banana Loaf, and I can't wait to bake it again soon!

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RECIPE: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you love baking just as much as I do then you'll know that tonight is the start of a new series of one of my favourite shows.... The Great British Bake Off! To get in the mood of baking yesterday I decided to bake these oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I've never made these before or any cookies with oats for that matter so I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out, but they taste so so good if I do say so myself!

I managed to make 12 (quite large) cookies with this recipe, although there's definitely not even half that many left now!

Ingredients:

150g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

175g unsalted butter

100g dark brown sugar

100g sugar

1 egg

2tsp vanilla extract

250g rolled oats

75g chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line two baking trays with baking paper.

2. Stir together the flour and baking powder in a bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the butter and sugars with an electric mixer.

4. Add the egg and whisk again, followed by the vanilla.

5. Then gradually add the flour to this mixture and mix together with a wooden spoon until combined. Then add the oats and chocolate chips and mix again.

6. Using a tablespoon add the mixture to the baking trays (I managed to fit 6 onto each tray) and flatten slightly with the back of the spoon, but ensure that there's space between the cookie mixtures.

7. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes until golden.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe and let me know if you decide to make them too! They're definitely the best cookies I've ever made before, but would Mary and Paul approve? I hope so!

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Recipe: Easter Caramel Eggs Cheesecake

Last night I made this cheesecake and decorated it this morning, and I just couldn't wait to write this post to share the recipe with you all just in time for Easter! I love baking when I come home from uni and thought Easter was the perfect excuse although when searching pinterest for something to make I just couldn't decide. I wanted to make something I've never tried before and most of the recipes seemed to be creme egg based - so as I don't like creme eggs I wanted to mix a few recipes together to use these Galaxy caramel eggs instead! It's the first time I've made a cheesecake so I had no idea what to expect or whether it was going to even work and I'm so glad it did! Half of the cheesecake has disappeared already....

Ingredients:

Base:

300g Digestive Biscuits

125g Melted Butter

Cheesecake:

500g Full Fat Cream Cheese

1tsp Vanilla Extract

100g Icing Sugar

150g Carnation Caramel

300ml Double Cream

175g Caramel Eggs (or more/less if you'd like)

Topping:

Leftover Caramel

Mini Caramel Eggs to decorate

Method:

1. Smash up the biscuits and mix in with the melted butter. (I put the biscuits in a sandwich bag and used a rolling pin to crush them.

2. Add the biscuit and butter mix to a tin lined with baking paper and leave to set in the fridge.

3. Whisk together the cream cheeses, vanilla, icing sugar and caramel until smooth.

4. Pour in the double cream and whisk for a few more minutes until it almost becomes a meringue type texture.

5. Chop the caramel eggs that are going into the cheesecake and fold through the mixture, then add the mixture to the tin on top of the biscuit base and return to the fridge. You will then need to leave this for at least 5 hours, but I chose to leave mine overnight just to make sure it was ready for decorating the next morning.

6. Decorate the cheesecake however you like with the left over caramel and the caramel eggs and enjoy!

Let me know if any of you decide to make this or any other Easter recipes! You can leave me a comment below or tweet me @AbigailsWorld94.

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