Baking bonanza day!

This week is a week of big occasions. On Wednesday it is my sister's birthday and Friday is my last day at the newspaper.

I am finally moving over to the world of magazines! Same company but after two years at newspapers I am moving to their magazine and I cannot wait. I am sorry to leave the team at the paper but really looking forward to the new challenge and the next step of my career.

Today I was home alone with not much on so I decided to bake! 

I wanted to make cupcakes for the people at work so did it today. I made chocolate cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book and then made a simple vanilla icing. I just hope the guys at work like them.

As I was baking my sister asked if I would make her a banana loaf. I didn't have any chocolate chips so decided to risk it and make the loaf without the chocolate. I was a bit worried as the mixture didn't look like a lot but in the oven it expanded quite a bit.

My sister tried it and loved it! So all good.

Below are the cakes and then in a bit I am making chilli from scratch! Get me....turning into a domestic goddess....slowly.

Early Easter chocolate cupcakes

It may be a little early to be making Easter cakes but I'm not sure if I will be making any next week but had an egg and flour that had to be used up so made some cakes.

I used the Hummingbird cupcake book, just a normal chocolate cupcake recipe. I did add chocolate chips but they seemed to drop to the bottom even though I put them in the batter. They didn't burn but they were a little crispy and it annoyed me a bit that it didn't really work.

The icing is just the usual chocolate butter icing, which I seem to have mastered which was good. The recipe said to use 300g of icing sugar but I used 200g as I always have too much and have to bin most of it but that amount worked.

I added mini eggs to the top make them more Eastery.

The cakes were so soft and crumbly really delicious and would be perfect with ice cream.