Cake in a cup - Day 10 Use What You've Got

Last night I decided to try out a recipe that I'd pinned months ago - for a cake in a cup!

There are lots of different recipes out there but I used 

 one from Sweet Little Bluebird.

Apart from being a little confused with the amount of some of the ingredients - like 5 Tablespoons of flour (in a cup?). Once I realised I should just measure everything in teaspoons it was all good!

Here's what it looked like before cooking..

And after just 1 minute in the microwave..

(sorry didn't get a better picture before the toppings were added!)

We added squirty cream, a little chocolate sauce and sprinkles!

My husband and I enjoyed the cake, but my kids were less than impressed. Perhaps it was a vegan cake recipe - with no milk or eggs in it? We don't usually have vegan cakes..

I think to be fair I'll have to try this again with a different recipe.

Does anyone have one to recommend?

Have you ever made a cake in a cup?

Jill

Blue Macarons - Use What You've Got Day 7

A couple of days ago, some new baking supplies arrived in the post.

Macaron baking sheets!

My daughters had helped me choose them, we've never made macarons before and thought it would be fun to try.

So yesterday my younger daughter and I found a recipe online (Of the HUGE pile of recipe books I have - would you believe none had a macaron recipe!)

We decided to use this recipe. We also made sure and read the top tips for making macarons on the same site AND watched a short Youtube video which was great as it showed what the mixture should look like at each step.

My daughter chose blue as the colour to use!

We whisked the egg whites and sugar until we could hold them upside down without them falling out of the bowl. 

(My daughter loved this part!)

Then we folded in the icing sugar and ground almonds.

Then piped and scooped the mixture onto the trays!

We banged the trays on the bench a few times to try to settle the mixture and get any bubbles out.

Not sure how successful that was....

I'm really glad we had these trays with special shaped grooves. Not sure how good we would have been at piping them into uniform shapes ourselves!

Then we baked them.

My daughter didn't know her own strength when she was 'gently' pressing down on one to see if it was ready! He He!!

We let them cool completely before taking them off the trays.

Then all we had to do was sandwich them together with the icing, taste test them and take some pictures of our finished macarons!

A Hello Kitty shaped one...

And a Mickey Mouse one!

I think we did OK for our first attempt - and they certainly taste yummy!

Have you ever made macarons?  

Chocolate, oat and cereal cookies

Do you always end up with a pile of crumbs at the bottom of your cereal box that no one wants to eat?

I decided that I need to make use of these crumbs, so I turned them into some tasty cookies - also using up some Chocolate milk powder (Sustagen) that my girls used to drink but decided they no longer like! 

Here's what I used (rough measurements)

135g weetbix (Cereal) crumbs

150g currants

150g oats

6 rounded spoonfuls of Sustagen (chocolate milk powder)

200g butter or margarine

150g golden syrup or honey

Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl:

Melt the margarine/butter and syrup/honey in a pan.

Mix the wet and dry ingredients together, then roll into balls and flatten onto baking trays.

Bake at 180C for around 15 mins.

Then enjoy with a nice cup of tea!

I also tried a few of these just rolled into balls and put in the fridge to set rather than baking them - they were a big hit! Really tasty.

I'm trying to reduce our food budget just now - and using what I have in the cupboards and pantry is a part of this.

Do you have any recipes for left over cereal crumbs? Please share if you do! These are really tasty cookies but I'd love some alternative recipes to try too!

Cute cookies!

Every Sunday my youngest daughter bakes us some cookies.

This week, she got to try out some new cookie cutters.

She made some chocolate cookie dough and rolled it out - then the fun began!

We had Character Cutters:

And some smaller 'stamping' cookie cutters:

My eldest daughter and a friend also joined in the cutting as it was so much fun with so many different shapes to try out!

They turned out well for our first attempt - and considering how many hands were involved grabbing the cutters from all directions!

I think these small 'stamped' cookies will be great to make batches of for gifts. I'd like to make some 'green' frog ones and some white snowmen ones!

My favourite though is...

So funny to have your cookie standing up on your plate!

Brilliant for parties.

Do you have any fun cookie cutters?