Cupcake dilemmas!!

Please have a good look at the above photo and you can clearly see how the cupcake patty is heaps smaller then the baking tin (a muffin tin) but do you think that I am able to find a cupcake baking tin? Nup, I have searched far and wide and I swear I have been to every baking/catering website in the world, from Canada to the UK to no avail - WHY?

Why in the hell make cupcake patty's that do not fit into muffin pans, yes I know they make muffin patty papers, but why make cupcake patty papers with no tin to cook them in. I asked the store where I get my cupcake papers and they state that I should just double line my cupcakes and place on a standard try - rubbish, I want a tin, I want two!

I will not be satisfied till I have one, for the time being I will just have to continue having crappy lopsided cupcakes, barrr humbug!

If anyone reads this and knows where I can buy a cupcake tin with a base of 45mm diameter and 32mm high, please share!

French Macaroons

I tried and although they tasted great I do believed that I failed. The process seems relatively easy but there is heaps of waiting going on and fiddly piping, I just assumed that I could whipped them up in a hour or two but it's more like a 24hr process if you want them perfect.

All piped and ready to sit about to rest...
My camera is giving me the craps at the moment in macro, so apologies for the blurry shot.

My Macaroons:

What they are meant to look like:

I do not give up easily, I will try them again, this time when the kids are not around as the more I said "don't touch" they couldn't help themselves.

Why buy when you can bake at home!

My entire family loves Arnotts Full 'O Fruit Slices and they are not that cheap when you have to buy several packets and to me they seemed rather simple and so I thought it would be really easy to find a recipe and make it at home.

Well finding a recipe that seemed to match wasn't that easy, some looked like big slices others were like cakes, nothing that even remotely looked like it would turn out the biscuit I wanted. Well I don't give up that easy and found a recipe on a playgroup forum and gave it a go:

This is the Arnotts version:

My version: (yet to be cut up)

Although I haven't tasted it yet, it smells great but it feels slightly crumbly and not as hard as the biscuit should be, but it's similar enough, easy peasy and quick too.

During the baking time I kept searching for other recipes and found this one, it sounds like it may be the one, it's called a Fly Cemetery which doesn't sound appealing at all, but I will give it a go next time.

Now The Man said that my Napolitains didn't have enough Jam in them last time, so I made some more adding heaps of jam and they looked just awful - why do I listen to that man!

These are my son's favorite homemade biscuits, they are requested more then anything else I bake. The recipe was from the book "Honey Biscuits":

I tried to pipe them rather blob them as normal (you are meant to roll them into balls and then into cinnamon sugar - but I'm lazy, I just sprinkle on top) but my piping bag broke, so blob away:

Umm, I forgot them in the oven, they are not meant to be that golden, but they still taste great!

Diet baking?

Is it even possible?

The following biscuit/cookie is a Mauritian sweet, it was something that my grandmother made and only on special occasions and they are just melt in your mouth butter YUM. The reason that they are melt in your mouth butter is because they are 70% butter. Traditionally they are iced pink, but as I have males in my house who refuse to eat anything iced pink, I had to ice a few plain. They are relatively easy to make, but as with most pastries it took forever to have the final product.

Find the recipe here: Napolitaines

Napolitaines:

Now the following is a diet sweet treat that I made as I'm trying to shed a few kilo's before our breach holiday in March and were having guests coming over. In essence it is just a huge scone cut up, rolled with sugar, cinnamon and sultana's. I found it dry and very unappealing, something I am very unlikely to make again, but my guests loved it... I still don't like it. Recipe taken from A.Sym "Symply Too Good to be True" Book 3 pg 64

Fruit Scone Rolls