Adventures in Baking

I've recently started baking, which is a huge thing for me. I am terrified of the kitchen! Or well, doing things without supervision, and yes I am 21 years old and decided this needed to change! When I moved out for uni (just one year) I only knew like two dishes, but I usually microwaved things, or cooked with my flatmate who would help me, shocking I know. I've managed to learn a few dishes off by heart now that I can do by myself, but not that many. I've baked things by myself before, but not from scratch until this month! My boyfriends drama society was having a bake sale and I wanted to bake things for it. 

I practiced making a few things first, which I had crappy cupcake holders and no proper cupcake/muffin tray, they looked ugly but were yummy. I then bought some pretty cupcake holders and double lined then for the above attempt which are melt in the middle chocolate cupcakes. They are heavenly! They were like mini cakes since they were quite large, I only made four. They were best warm, since the next day the chocolate had hardened in the middle so was a bit awkward to make. They're really simple, make your mixture, spoon half of it in, then put a dark chocolate chunk in the middle and cover up with the rest of the mixture and bake, and voila! 

For the bake sale I went to Hobby Craft (and spent a lot of money on things), and bought a cupcake/muffin baking tray which is awesome! I made chocolate chip cupcakes, with butter icing and added various sprinkles on top. I really like the fun cupcake holders, they went really quickly for the bit I was there. The drama society were raising money for charity and the play they were putting on. I made these, the above and a bunch of other things from a cupcake book I got from the works for like £2, they are really simple and easy to do.

I also bought a cake pop making kit from Hobby Craft too. I've wanted to make them for ages! If you haven't heard of them before, they are an American thing where you bake a cake and mush it all up to make cake pops and stick them on a stick and add melted chocolate. I followed A Beautiful Mess's guide to making cake pops. Since I was short on time I stuck them in the freezer, but next time I won't do that as I found them too hard sometimes, and they would crack and fall into the melted chocolate boo. In Hobby Craft they had the melted chocolate Elsie suggests, but were quite expensive so I may look online next time. I probably won't buy the kit again unless I'm giving them to someone again. I didn't try them cold, but people liked them so that makes me happy!

Anyway that's a little bit of what I've been up to. It's amazing how easy it is for me when I tell myself I can do something, since normally I'd always ask for help before I even needed it which I need to stop doing in life. I just want to bake all the time now!