Free Cakes For Kids - Ealing Young Carers Project Christmas Party

There is a fabulous network called Free Cakes For Kids. As with a lot of great things the idea is very simple. It's a network of people who love baking who offer to make birthday cakes for children who otherwise wouldn't get a cake. It's so sad to think some children might not have the simple joy of getting a birthday cake and so simple to fix! Details can be found on the Free Cakes for Kids website
http://www.freecakesforkids.org.uk/

There wasn't already a group in existence in West London so my sister and I have been busy setting one up over the last few months. Today some children who are young carers from the Ealing Young Carers Project will be enjoying our cakes as part of their Christmas party.

My sister made the cakes. The recipe is a basic chocolate cake with chocolate chips topped with dark chocolate icing piped with a Wilton 2D nozzle with a few topped with holly leaves made from fondant icing, red and green food colouring and a holly leaf shaped cutter.

Here they are boxes up and ready to go



This fits in quite well with both #letsmakechristmas and Random Bakes of Kindness #RBOKindness.

Recipe
100g margarine or butter (I use Stork)
100g caster sugar
75g self raising flour (I use supreme sponge flour)
25g cocoa powder
1/2tsp baking powder
2 eggs

Beat all the ingredients together. Once fully incorporated carefully spoon the mixture to half fill muffin cases placed into muffin tins. Sprinkle a few chocolate chips on the top of each.

For the icing just add some slightly cooled melted dark chocolate. I use about 100g to regular buttercream. Have a look at my previous posts or let me know if you want the detailed recipe for buttercream.

Guest baker - Cupcake Heaven!

For my 10th ever post I thought I would write about a guest baker to Sarah's kitchen. My sister Helen took over the kitchen to make some cupcakes and I might be a little bias but I think they are pretty amazing.

The first cupcakes she made were for a friends birthday. They vanilla cupcakes but decorated in the style of ombré using plenty of red food dye, the theme of the party (for anyone who doesn't know ombré hair is very fashionable at the moment and basically means a graduation of colour so perhaps dark roots fading to blonde ends). The icing was piped using a Wilton 2D nozzle from the centre outward. For anyone who wants icing tips You Tube has loads of how to videos.

The recipe was just a simple sponge and butter icing but if anyone wants it let me know.







She then moved on to make two sets of cupcakes for an afternoon tea and to take to work with her.

The first was again a vanilla cupcake but this time she removed some of the centre of the sponge and hid a whole strawberry under the icing and decorated it with edible glitter and edible lustre.






















Finally she made a dense chocolate sponge using hound almonds for extra moisture and decorated them with chocolate ganache.















Again both of these were piped using the Wilton 2D nozzle.

All in all pretty successful I would say :)