With Christmas around the corner, I felt the need to get baking. There’s always an excuse for cake but especially at Christmas, anything remotely festive is quickly consumed. I love baking cupcakes and particularly decorating them so when I received some Christmas cupcake decorations for my birthday recently, it just had to be done. But I didn’t want them just to look Christmassy; the flavour needed to be appropriate too so I trawled the internet and found White chocolate and Cranberry cupcakes. You can see the recipe I used here.
With relatively easy to follow instructions and easy to source ingredients, I was sold! The only recommendation I would make would be to substitute the butter with Stork because despite leaving the butter at room temperature for a while before beginning, it still produced a couple of very messy mixing incidents when the flour (and icing sugar later) just did not want to blend! If you don’t want to use Stork, make sure to mix the butter on its own first to soften and you’ll be good to go!
I treated my colleagues with these cupcakes and they were a resounding success. A few were slightly skeptical about the cranberries but after tasting, they were won over. I obviously had to taste test too and my favourite part was the buttercream which was luxuriously rich and satisfyingly sweet. Even if you choose a different cake base, make sure you try the white chocolate buttercream. I made mine with golden icing sugar which just enhanced the flavour! I have only ever found golden icing sugar in Waitrose so if you struggle to find it, normal icing sugar will definitely still do the job.
Wishing you all a very happy (and delicious) Christmas!
The kit comes with plenty of sweets in different shapes and colours to adorn your house and the icing can be used to outline the windows, doors and roof tiles as well as act as the glue for the decorations. So much fun!
What impressed me most about the Costa hot chocolates was that the flavour vs syrup balance was just right. There was just enough syrup to make each one clearly recognisable but still a definitive chocolate flavour and no sticky syrupy after-taste.
The definite knock-out flavour though was the mint. I had to have three of them in the past month just to triply confirm how yummy it was (I seriously couldn’t get enough) and I will be incredibly sad when this falls off the menu in January.
For someone who doesn’t drink coffee, the Tiramisu option is a very happy medium. I’m not sure I could have it daily like people have their morning coffee though! I opted for this hot chocolate when I needed to warm up but didn’t want such a sweet drink and it was a great choice.
Starbucks had a very limited (i.e. one) hot chocolate festive option but what they do, they always do well. Their Fudge Hot Chocolate was the closest out of all of them in delivering the flavour they promised and it was thicker than the others, which I think just shouts luxury. I would campaign for this to be on their menu all year round. It’s not necessarily just a festive flavour!
Pret went very simple (which I think is just their style) and only offered a mint hot chocolate on their festive menu. This was the most disappointing of the lot. The mint tasted very fresh so clearly the flavouring or syrup they use is made from natural ingredients but it reminded me more of toothpaste! Not quite enough sweetness. I mean, it was still a hot chocolate so not to be sniffed at but I’m not sure I would order it again.
During the afternoon, a large silver balloon began to inflate in the square which was very curious! But all was revealed once all the lanterns had gathered. The balloon began to rise and a silver fairy was elevated into the air, performing acrobatics and waving to the crowd. It was so engaging and we did find ourselves mesmerised for a good ten minutes as the fairy moved above the crowds.
1. Frozen
Live, Love, Savour 