Multiple Baking

My New Year's Resolution to be more selfish seems to have led to increased baking. It's now a case of "I want cake, therefore I shall bake cake, and other people will just have to damn well eat it!" They don't seem to mind eating it thankfully. I'm currently imagining some sort of fairytale situation with a curse and vast quantities of cake over-running a kingdom...

Anyway, cake. I got a great recipe book for Christmas; The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. it is full of fabulous cupcake, cake, muffin and pie recipes. I've only made three things from it so far, Chocolate Cupcakes, Brooklyn Blackout Cake, and an apple nut loaf (unfortunately no pictures before it got eaten). A new recipe for scones was also discovered (from another recipe book), they barely had chance to get cool. Amusingly, on rolling out the scone dough, I realised I have a distinct lack of sensible cookie-cutters. I have various Christmas, Halloween, Canadian and Lego(!) cookie cutters but not round ones. I'm quite happy with my collection though. Fir-trees are evergreen after all, why should I be limited to tree shaped delectables during December only!?!

Brooklyn Blackout Cake with Chocolate Frosting:

(Rather hasty photo taken shortly before it was taken to work and promptly demolished)

Chocolate Cupcakes

Selfish baking; it's the way forward!