Vanilla cupcakes with honey and cinnamon frosting!

Yum! Made these some time ago!
So I hadn't baked proper cupcakes for some time and I decided that it was high time I did this. So they happened, were delicious and killed the ache for cupcakes!
I baked the vanilla cupcakes (click the link and it will take you to the recipe I posted a long time ago! I still use the same one, it's still my favorite!) and topped them with this delicious honey cinnamon frosting!
You need to try out this recipe, for realz, it's absolutely delicious!

  HONEY CINNAMON FROSTING

Ingredients:

---

(covers 10-12 cupcakes)

• 1 & 1/4 cup powdered (/confectioners/icing) sugar
• 1/2cup (113g)room temperature butter
• 1tbsp honey (yes, that is enough to give it the honey flavor, I know, CRAZY)
• 1/2tsp cinnamon (but that really depends on how much you love cinnamon, I love it dearly, so I think I've put a bit more)

What to do?

---

1. Cream the butter, add sugar (not all at once! Bit by bit!)
2. When about half way through add in the honey and cinnamon. And keep on adding in and mixing the sugar.
3. DECORATE!

And there you have the "finished look"! Me and my best friend went a bit crazy with decorating them hence the rose and fairy dust!
I also dripped a bit of honey on one, just to go with the honey in the cupcake's frosting, as an idea for all of you to decorate!

Hope you enjoyed this "only frosting" recipe & let me know if you make them!

Lots of love,
Annie

HAPPY EASTER!

I just wanna quickly wish you all a very happy, calm and relaxing time during the holidays!
I hope you'll all bake away and come out with some delicious treats that will bring happiness and a lot of smiles to both your and your loved ones faces :)
Now go and spend some time with them!
I'm gonna do just the same

xx

Annie

BASIC: chocolate cupcakes

I've baked amazing cupcakes today! Although I didn't decorate them with frosting today, I've made them so many times before and they are definitely my favorite recipe for the chocolate cupcakes batter. The frosting is up to you, you can decorate it with whatever your little heart desires. I'm just gonna give you the BASE today.
Another recipe to my BASIC series.
(first one was this one, if you haven't checked it out yet, go!)

  CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

ingredients:

---

(makes 12 muffins)

• 1/2 cup (50g) unsweetened cocoa
• 1 cup boiling hot water
• 1 1/3 cup (175g) all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup (113g) room temperature butter
• 1 cup light brown sugar (you can substitute with white, yet it, in my opinion, tastes better with brown)
• 2 large eggs
• a few drops of vanilla extract

What to do?

---

1. Preheat oven to 190C and line muffin tins with paper liners.
2. In a small bowl stir until smooth water and cocoa.
3. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder & cocoa.
4. In a big bowl beat together butter with sugar with an electric mixer. When nice and fluffy start adding the eggs, one at a time, and beat that together Add vanilla extract.
5. Mix in (with a spatula) flour mixture. Then add the cocoa and stir it all just until incorporated. 
6. Fill muffin tins til about 2/3 and bake for 16-20 minutes .
7. Let them cool down and DECORATE.

And this oldie was my frosted basic chocolate cupcake ;)

The recipe is adapted from joyofbaking.com recipe :) 

Have a great week! 

xx Annie

Talk TART to me!

Hi,
Soo...
Ahh, the awkward moment after you (YET AGAIN) have not posted anything on your blog for a couple of months.
I don't really think I'm good at it. Am I?
Good then that I post recipes, at least it doesn't get old and you can always visit that even if there's nothing else interesting in here. Or new. Interesting as in new. I hope.
Anyywayy, how have you all been?  Baking a lot? No? Oh well... Oh, you have? That's awesome!

What I've been wanting to do today is talk to you about something that became a little love of mine some time ago that still has not been expressed here. And that is (as you may have guesses by the title, you sneaky people)

TARTS!

So basically all you need to know is that they're amazing.
I'm done.
Goodbye!

haha No.
Tarts are amazing but that's 'cause they're super versitile and like you can make them sweet or salty. Tarts and little tartlets. I mean they're just so different from cookies or cakes or cupcakes, they hava the crispy dough and that's topped with some more goodness. I mean, there's no way there's a single person who doesn't like tarts, 'cause there's always a way to prepare them in a way that you'd enjoy them.
Me and my mom found our favorite way to make the dough with a normal all purpose (wheat) flour as well as  whole wheat flour, which makes it healthier yet doesn't compromise it with the taste.

I'd love to show you a couple of pictures I took of my tarts, but unfortunately I'm unable to. My laptop where I stored all of the pictures that I could maybe use someday had it's hard drive broken and therefore changed. So it's all GONE. PUFF. DISAPPEARED.
Soo to make your mouth water I'll use a couple of pictures I found in the internet. GET READY. It's gonna be intense.
#foodporn

lemon tart anyone?

Chocolate & chocolate and salted caramel! 

fruity blueberry?

These I absolutely need to make! Their "case" is made of digestive biscuits (which are my fave) and the filling is creme pattisiere!! And the rasberries! A GREAT COMBO! 

And let's move on to salty more "serious" tarts ;)

Spinach and onion sounds good?

That one looks interesting! Sweet potatoes, feta, swiss chard, could be amazing!

Tomatoes and Chanterelle rye tart!

Basil, pea and pancetta (bacon) tart? YUM!

SKY'S THE LIMIT. GO CRAZY. GO BAKING TARTS.

With love,

xx

Annie

P.S. You should be able to click the pictures and they'll take you to the sites with recipes ;)

PUMPKIN MUFFINS

Ohhh yes! This time of the year is awesome not only because you get to wear those cute coats and sweaters, but it's also the PUMPKIN SEASON.
Okay, point taken, you can't wear pumpkins, but they're delicious. And healthy. And you have to eat SOMETHING.
So what I think you should try is....

  PUMPKIN MUFFINS

ingredients:

---

(makes about 18 muffins)

• 1,5 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I love cinnamon so I put a bit more!)
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger 
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 113g (1/2c) butter
• 1c white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• a few drops of vanilla extract
• 3/4c pumpkin puree (as it's not really available in Poland, or at least I've never seen it around here, I                              make one myself, if you want to know how I make the pumpkin puree let me know)

What to do?

---

1. Preheat oven to 175C and line muffin tins with paper muffin cases.
2. In a small bowl sift together the flour, soda, spices and salt
3. In a big bowl beat butter with sugar. When nice and fluffy start adding the eggs, one at a time, and beat that well together. Add vanilla extract.
4. Incorporate half of the dry ingredients and half of the pumpkin puree to the big bowl (butter, sugar, eggs mixture).
5. Add the remaining halves of dry ingredients and pumpkin puree.
6. Pour the batter into muffin cases and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Yummm! They're soo good! This time I decorated them with little panda heads made from fondant and for halloween as little spiders and with worms going through them! Ugh! Nasty! 

Take a look!

Oh, by the way, just wanted to share my enthusiasm, they opened a store with everything you need for baking close to my house! I could not be more happy! I mean, there was one I'd buy everything in but it was soo far away! So now, no worries! :) Ahhh!

BAKE THEM!

NOW!

haha 

xx 

Annie

The Great (Britain) Adventure!

Soo I was gone for a long time. I know. 

But there's been a lot of crazy stuff going on! Crazy in a very good way though!

One of the things was me going to live in London for 2 months. Fun? YES!

And I thought I'd share some pictures from my trip with you. 

They're all obviously CUPCAKE/BAKING/FOOD related! And oh my goodness, you can find cupcakes EVERYWHERE there. And every freaking store has a well stocked baking section! You can buy pretty much everything you'd need! 

Okay, but let's go ahead and look at the pictures!

That's the view from my balcony. It was TRULY AMAZING. The view and the cupcake make this picture I think my favorite picture of the whole trip.

Did you ever try them? YUM. I definitely recommend these little guys! And obviously they're the best warm!

Cupcakes I made for my brother's birthday over there :) Chocolate with lemon frosting!

Standard and soo british.Tea and digestive cookies. Ahhh my favorite ones! 

Ohh and the Reese's - chocolate cups that are filled with PEANUT BUTTER! <3 p="">

 Window shopping? More like window eating!

CUTE british cupcakes baking? ;)

Ben & Jerry's ice cream machine? HOW AWESOME IS THAT?

Adorable little cupcake store

And even in stupid Tesco or Sainsbury's you can find a variety of these little things!

That's all, you guys, of my baking-related GB pictures!
I hope you liked this post! :)
So I'll end it with Mr. Ben. Big Ben.

I love you, London.

xx

Annie

Banana Bread

It's time, you guys. It's time for you to get to know this AMAZING recipe. It's SUPER SIMPLE, I mean it, everybody can do it! Even if baking doesn't come easy to you, try this banana bread.
It's so tasty, really sweet and quick and simple to do. What else could you want from a recipe?
I foumd it at this blog and gonna translate and give you my tips.
I just have to share this one, I can't keep it a secret anymore.

  BANANA BREAD

ingredients:

---

• 4 really ripe bananas (their ripeness is important, it is the best with those bananas that you have left                                        laying around for too long, they don't look too good and therefore no one is                                        eager to eat them. It's pretty much like making use of something that could be                                                     thrown out and wasted)
• 150g brown sugar (3/4 cup)
• an egg
• 75g soft butter
• few drops of vanilla extract
• a cup of plain flour
• pinch of salt
• tsp baking powder

What to do?

---

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line long loaf pan with parchment paper.
2. Mash bananas with fork (or blender)
3. Mix together mashed bananas, sugar,egg, butter and vanilla extract
4. Add flour, salt and baking powder to the mixture and combine it all.
5. Transfer the dough into the loaf pan and bake for around 45-60minutes
   (depends on the oven, so you have to check on it. Bear in mind that the bread IS supposed to be rather wet, so when there's a nice golden skin and the insides aren't flowy anymore, it may be ready)

Just don't think I stopped at that ;)

I reaalllyyy hope you'll try this recipe as it absolutely is one of my faves, especially for summer as it's easy, you don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen and are free to chill in the garden while it's baking :)

Hope y'all are having a PHENOMENAL vacay and if you're working and not having such great time, make the banana bread, it will improve them.
CAUTION! You may become addicted to the banana bread and bake it all the time. 

xx

Annie