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

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

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

Oreo Cupcakes!

Long awaited there it is, you wanted it, you got it!
Although I have not made them in quite a while, I found the site I got the recipe from and translated it for you, my loves and added my personal tips ;) Hope you'll enjoy it!

  OREO CUPCAKES 

ingredients:

---

cupcakes:

• 2 eggs
• 175g white sugar 
• 4 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
• 5 tbsp butter (~70g)
• 1/3 cup hot water
• 200g plain flour
• 75g ground coconut (or nuts) - I used coconut and although I'm not a big fan, I really enjoyed how                                                                 they taste in those cupcakes :)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 100g plain (natural) yogurt
• 12 oreos

frosting:

• 250-300ml COLD whipping cream (30%)
• ~125g mascarpone
• 8-10 oreos
• 2-3 tbsp icing (/powdered/confectioners') sugar 

What to do?

---

1. Preheat your oven to 180C and line muffin tins with paper liners. Put an oreo on the bottom of every paper liner.
2. In a pan melt butter with hot water and cocoa.
3. Beat eggs with sugar until mixture has thickened and turned a very pale yellow.
4. In a seprate bowl combine flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda and coconut (or nuts).
5. Turn the mixer on low speed and start adding to egg mixture: a spoon of yogurt, a spoon of cocoa mixture, a spoon of flour mixture and keep doing this untill you're incorporated all of the ingredients. Be careful not to overmix though! Turn the mixer off as soon as you mixed everything!
6. Pour the dough evenly to 12 paper liners you've put oreos in (put the dough on top of the cookie)
7. Bake for 15minutes :) And while cupcakes are in the oven start making frosting.
8. Crush oreos - you can do this in blender, food processor or simply by putting oreos in a plastic bag and using rolling pin or  meat tenderizer ( be careful and don't hurt yourself or anyone else, please!)
9. Beat whipping cream with icing sugar (remember to keep the whipping cream in the fridge till the last moment, it needs to be really chilled or it will start running and you won't be able to make whipped cream!)
10. At the end of whipping (when it's pretty thick) add mascarpone.
11. Really slowly mix in oreos and rather leave it not too corporated than go crazy with mixing.
12. Wrap the bowl with cling foil and leave in a frigde to chill, while the cupcakes are cooling. 
13. When cupcakes are ready and cooled decorate them with frosting!

And voila! There you have the delicious oreo cupcakes :) You can also decorate them with oreo cookies cut in half on top of the frosting 

Zucchini Cupcakes

It is really amazing to get the feedback from you guys! Even if it's not as a comment, but just as a private message it's... wow, I can't tell you how great that is! Makes me smile (banana smile - you know what i mean!)

Anyways, I have loads of pictures and loads of subjects for posts I could do so I think I should use them. Now that it's decided.... I'm on a diet. Again. You know, bikini season's coming up, you gotta look good! But don't you worry. I'm not going to stop baking. N E V E R!I actually baked brownie cupcakes just 2 days ago :>

But as the "diet" subject came up I thought about my diet cupcakes (I know that's kind of an oxymoronic expression :>) and I figured I have to find more recipes for healthy stuff like that. BUT for now, I figured out I still haven't posted the recipe for them!

DIET (zucchini)  CUPCAKES

from  "Cook Yourself Thin " show :)

Ingredients:

---

cupcakes:

• 1 1/4 cup  flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp of seeds from vanilla bean or you can simply add a bit of vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1  3/4 cup  ZUCCHINI! peeled and grated! :) - that does the trick!
• you can add 1/2 cup of ground almonds if you want 

frosting:

• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup of sugar
• pinch of salt
• vanilla extract
• zest from 1/2 lemon

What to do?

---

• Start with the frosting! So in a heatproof bowl combine egg whites, sugar, salt & extract

Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until it's warm and everything's melted (1-2 min)

Take the bowl from the pan and mix its contents until  it's glossy, cool AND STIFF  (when you put it over your head upside down nothing can fall out of it!) - it can take a good 5 minutes...

 Stir in gently the lemon zest and put in a fridge for about 30 minutes

Now let's proceed with the cupcakes!  Preheat oven to 180C. Combine flour, (almonds) and baking powder in one bowl

In another bowl whisk eggs with sugar and salt and vanilla until it is one-colored and combined

Beat the zucchini with a mixer on low speed a little bit

Mix zucchini, dry and "wet" ingredients together until corporated 

Fill in the paper liners and bake for about 20-25 minutes in an oven preheated to 180C (356F)

 Decorate the cooled cupcakes with frosting and  BON APPETIT! 

I want to stress that YOU CAN'T MAKE OUT ZUCCHINI in them while eating! They don't taste like it at all! Try them yourself and check that out! It is just a substitute for butter and they have half of the calories they would normally have.
And that's how my cupcakes look today! I've decorated them with banana as I had it at home and thought it was pretty good idea :)

enjoy!

xoxo

Annie

BASIC : Vanilla Cupcakes

Hi, there! Like I said, I'm back in my baking shape, so as I've done vanilla cupcakes w/ chocolate frosting I thought I'd share this really basic recipe for pretty much "plain" cupcakes :) My favourite is from joyofbaking.com , ah thanks Stephanie Jaworski! You ALWAYS have those ingredients at home and whenever you feel like baking OR EATING cupcakes it's just great to have that tested recipe. Oh, there's an idea, I could do a series of just those super easy, BASIC, recipes, what you think about that?
Anyways, today vanilla cupcakes are on!  Soo there you go!

  VANILLA CUPCAKES  

Ingredients:

---

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup (130 grams) granulated white sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Zest of 1 large lemon (outer yellow skin)
1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (60 ml) milk
( of course, you CAN skip lemon zest, but well, it's better with it!)

What to do?

---

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
2) In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

3) Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract!
4) In a separate bowl whisk together the lemon zest, flour, baking powder, and salt.

5) With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and milk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

6) Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter

7) Bake for 17-20 minutes, let it cool for a moment and ENJOY!

haha I've baked those a couple of times, and they are delicious every time, really! And here you've got the pictures from the last time :>
Soo now I see you running to your fridge and puttin everything out on the table. Soo good luck and see you next time! :)
xoxo

Annie

Peanut butter & jelly cupcakes!

Ahh, do you know how amazing it is to bake twice a week again? Feels like I'm living again! So let me tell you about those cupcakes.
So friday - my classes were cut short and my and one of my best friends figured that we could bake something.  And we did, amazing peanut butter cupcakes with peanut butter and frosting and jelly haha loads of peanut butter, huh? I hadn't done them before, 'cause well.. I'm a huge peanut butter fan and I had been thinking about peanut butter cupcakes as a waste of such a goodie (you do put like a half of a jar!). But Maya talked me into trying it and I gotta tell you, it's amazing! It wasn't a waste after all :) Their fascinating salty-sweet taste is something you HAVE TO try! I mean it, if you were scared, just like me, to try them, DO IT!
We've used a really good recipe from foodmess.com :)It's in polish, so I believe I'll translate for y'all!

 PEANUT BUTTER & JELLY CUPCAKES 

Ingredients 

(makes about 18 bigger cupcakes):

cupcake dough:
1 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
170g unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
75g = 2/3 cup peanut butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup half and half cream (12-18%)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

frosting:170g cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

+ JELLY - we used my favourite - rasberry

What to do?

1) Preheat the oven to 180'C (355'F) and line cupcake pan with paper liners

2) In a smaller bowl sift together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt).

3) In a bigger bowl combine butter and sugar until nice and fluffy, add peanut butter and mix thoroughly

4) Add eggs, one at a time and mix after each one

5) Add cream and vanilla extract and mix it all until just incorporated

6) Add dry ingerdients in three additions, stiring after each one

7) Fill the cupcake liners about two-thirds full

8) Bake for about 20 minutes or until they are gettin' a nice golden color

9) Leave it to cool and prepare the frosting!

1)Combine cream chees and sugar

2) Add peanut butter, salt, vanilla extract and mix it well (if it's too thick you can add a tiny bit of milk!) 

Put the frosting over cooled cupcakes and decorate it with jelly!
I actually before putting the frosting on, cut wholes in cupcakes and put a little bit of jelly inside of the cupcake, 'cause I liked the cupcakes with more distinct taste of jelly, but if you do not then it's alright to skip it and just enjoy it like it is! 

I think they look adorable and they taste even better! Mmmm amazing! Now you have to try it, no other option.
Guys, I'm loving all the feedback and when you tell me that you've baked "my" cinnamon rolls it just... it's just amazing, so thank youuu! And keep going, baking and getting pleasure from it just like I do :)
Waiting for your thoughts on this peanut butter subject, are you loving it as well? Would you "waste it" like that?
xoxo
Annie

Going green!

Hi! It's St. Patrick's Day, so of course I wanna wish you all everything green! I saw so many beautiful cupcakes and cakes and pies and cookies with green frostings, for example, and I really wanted to bake something like that to celebrate this day properly! Unfortunately, rearranging my room absorbed me deeply and I didn't find time to do this. But look how cute they are!

Aaaah, these are amazing, I should have done something!

You can also find ideas for great toppings in here!

I guess the only thing green I've been eating today like crazy are pears! God, I love those. Anyway, I think a great idea for this green day is also to simply get a box of mint (or pistachio) ice cream OR, if you have more time, put those ice cream ON your e.x. chocolate cupcake! Especially when they're warm aaaaah I so wish I had done that. Yumm!

I gotta go, guys, but I hope you baked something green! Send me your baked green goods, I'd love to see that! Let's end it with green as well... Ce Lo Green :)

I LOVE THIS SONG, gives me such positive energy! That's why I had to add my personal fav!

I hope you liked this post! Comment and let me know wheather these ideas were good and how was your St. Patrick's Day.

xoxo

Annie

Diet cupcakes part 2?

I've made my diet cupcakes once again! Nothing special, you'd think,but I couldn't resist this time and found a recipe for a LOW-FAT frosting :) Well... I'm not that sure if it's that much different, but in my mind it's saved as a low-fat so I don't have as many regrets after eating the cupcake! Take a look at the pictures

P is for Pixie. She's been my best friend for like 11 years now :) Anyways we were to meet so I thought it would be cool to do maybe just one cupcake especially for her! And those little things on frosting are crushed pieces of biscuits, like it? 'Cause I do like how it looks, i thought it's a nice idea! 

So diet vanilla cupcakes with zucchini + low-fat buttercream vanilla frosting (with baking-margarine instead of butter) + crushed biscuits = NICE DIET CUPCAKE :) If you want any recipe or want more details or anything just let me now. 

I'm waiting for your comments and advices about my blog! 

thanks 

-Anns

P.S. one cupcake is supposed to have like 200 calories? That's.. i think that's less than a normal cupcake which is like 400? 300? not really sure, I'm sorry. But if you want me I can check that out for you! 

Diet cupcakes

As for like a week i've been on a diet, well maybe not as much being on a diet but eating healthy... healthier? Anyways I couldn't stop baking! And baking equals eating at least one cupcake... you know, to try it and everything. So I decided to make diet cupcakes! I've done them once and I knew they were good. The recipe was taken from Cook Yourself Thin TV-show and they were to have 1/2 calories of a normal cupcake. What made them so special and less caloric? Instead of butter you add grated ZUCCHINI! I was shocked of course and I believe you are as well. Don't worry after taking out from the oven the taste is perfect and you can't tell that there's something wrong with them or that there's zucchini inside. It's amazing and I really recommend those ones for everyone :)

here you've got pictures









Annie

Hi!

Well, hello. Umm God, it's really awkward, I don't actually know what to say to you at first. I think I should introduce myself a little bit and tell you the reason why I started this blog.
So my name's Ann, I'm Polish actually and I live in Warsaw (the capital). You can probably start wondering right now "why is she writting in english then". I enjoy talking in english, it gives me pleasure and makes me practise it and just feels better than talking in polish... Don't ask me why, because I can't answer that question. I've been criticized a lot because of it. But that's not the most important thing here, I LOVE to bake and that's it. My other interests are photography and fashion, but believe it or not I'm not really going to do anything like that in future, I mean, I don't plan to? I's been a year, I guess, since I found out I could work in PR (Public Relations). Is that odd? Well, I obviously checked confectioner's and photographer's jobs, but I they both have things I don't like or I can't handle and I don't think I would in future. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm talking to you about what I would do in future and you're wondering how old am I? I'm in high school , that's all I will say about my age.
OK, so now let's move to facts. Why i started this blog? I wanted to mix such great things like baking, talking in english and communicating with people? Maybe even someday getting fans or something.  Well, it's summer, I have some free time and I bake. I do that right now about 2-3 times in a week? Depends of course on how many other things I have to do, how many friends I'm meeting and if I have needed products at home
I think... I think that's all to say here. My blog will contain my thoughts, pictures of my cupcakes, muffins and anything else I will make and maybe some recipes if you'd like? Well, I hope there would be maybe just a single person to support me and read my blog and let me know how is it. Thanks for now,
Annie