Yesterday was my lovely, talented friend Claire's book launch at Loop. She was short of cakes for the event, seeing as I have lots of spare time at the moment I put my domestic goddess hat on and started baking. I don't have many baking cook books, I'm much more interested in savoury food, however a quick trawl on the internet brought up some mouthwatering patterns, ahem, recipes.
The first one is for lemon and vanilla cupcakes. I don't think I spooned enough mixture into the cases as they didn't rise very high, however they tasted good. They also gave me an opportunity to use some of the vanilla pods I bought direct from the sorting factory when we volunteered in Madagascar.
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The second is for strawberry cupcakes. These look so fancy I just had to try them. The downside with the recipe is it doesn't say how many cupcakes to make and the amount of icing I ended up with was ridiculous. Even after icing the cakes I still had over 1 litre of icing left over. I've used it up today, half in a frozen desert thing, mixed with mascarpone cheese and lemon juice to take the edge off the extreme sweetness, the other half in a cake experiment. If the cake experiment works I'll write about it, if it doesn't it's going in the compost bin.
Anyway, these are the cupcakes I ended up with.
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Typically, after a hot and humid day baking, the heavens opened as I set off for Loop. Luckily the downpour didn't deter people from coming to Loop to celebrate Claire's new book and the shop was buzzing with knitters, friends and family.
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Claire's really hit a gap in the market with her beautiful book of patterns for kids age 3-10, all of which are everyday wearable but with enough interest for your average knitter.
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At the end of the evening there was a raffle and I was lucky enough to win 10 balls of Sublime Soya Cotton yarn.
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So all in all a fab evening, I met some lovely knitters, ate cake, got some free Soak samples and more yarn for my stash.
The first one is for lemon and vanilla cupcakes. I don't think I spooned enough mixture into the cases as they didn't rise very high, however they tasted good. They also gave me an opportunity to use some of the vanilla pods I bought direct from the sorting factory when we volunteered in Madagascar.

The second is for strawberry cupcakes. These look so fancy I just had to try them. The downside with the recipe is it doesn't say how many cupcakes to make and the amount of icing I ended up with was ridiculous. Even after icing the cakes I still had over 1 litre of icing left over. I've used it up today, half in a frozen desert thing, mixed with mascarpone cheese and lemon juice to take the edge off the extreme sweetness, the other half in a cake experiment. If the cake experiment works I'll write about it, if it doesn't it's going in the compost bin.
Anyway, these are the cupcakes I ended up with.
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Typically, after a hot and humid day baking, the heavens opened as I set off for Loop. Luckily the downpour didn't deter people from coming to Loop to celebrate Claire's new book and the shop was buzzing with knitters, friends and family.

Claire's really hit a gap in the market with her beautiful book of patterns for kids age 3-10, all of which are everyday wearable but with enough interest for your average knitter.

At the end of the evening there was a raffle and I was lucky enough to win 10 balls of Sublime Soya Cotton yarn.

So all in all a fab evening, I met some lovely knitters, ate cake, got some free Soak samples and more yarn for my stash.
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Agnes xx