Cookie Swap

Over the weekend we met up with some very talented bloggers at a cookie swap hosted by the lovely Lydia of Lydia Bakes!  It was fantastic meeting Kirsten of High Tea With Dragons, Danelle of A Couple of Night Owls and who also runs a personal blog; Danelle Bourgeois, and Amanda of Here Comes The Sun.



What is a cookies swap you ask?  Cookie swaps are generally held at Christmas time, the idea is that you invite a group of friends, and have each person make enough of one kind of cookie to share.  The cookie swap is a chance to catch up with friends during the busy holiday season while you sample the treats, then trade and get an assortment of delicious treats to take home.  Everyone leaves with a lovely gift and plenty of new recipes (great for when people pop over at Christmas).  We were lucky enough to have some cute boxes to take home our cookies in courtesy of Little Ink.  Because of the cookie swap’s link to Christmas Lydia set everything up with a mid winter Christmas theme, it was so cute!



Since we all blog we didn't share the recipes at our swap, we will all be posting them on each of our own blogs, but we will link everyone’s recipes into this post as they appear.  Over the next week or so you will see our recipes for Monte Carlo Biscuits, Chocolate Sprinkle Cookies and Sprinkle Sandwiched Cookies.  Lydia made some Browned Butter Snickerdoodles, Kirsten made White Chocolate and Raspberry Crinkle Cookies and Danelle made some decadent Chocolate Truffle Cookies - so there is plenty to look forward to.


Have you hosted a cookie swap before? Maybe you are keen to give it a go... remember, if you do we'd love to see your photos.  Also if you bake something from our blog and send us a pic we will enter you into the monthly Billington’s competition.

Thanks for hosting us Lydia – it was a great afternoon!

Check out these links for event round-ups and recipes from the Cookie Swap (we will add them as they pop up on the internet):

• Recipe post for Mel’s Chocolate Sprinkle Refrigerator cookies
• Recipe post for Mel’s Monte Carlo biscuits
• Recipe post for Courtenay’s Cookie Pops / Sprinkle sandwich cookies
• Danelle’s Chocolate Truffle Cookies and post about the Cookie Swap
• Lydia's Brown Butter Snickerdoodles
• Kirsten’s post about the cookie swap and her White Chocolate Raspberry Crinkle Cookies recipe
• Photos and a quick write up about the Cookie Swap by Amanda on Here Comes the Sun

Vanilla Cupcakes by Lydia Bakes

Hello lovely followers of Baking Makes Things Better, it’s Lydia from Lydia Bakes here.  Thank you for having me today, I am truly honoured to be guest posting for Melissa and Courtenay.  As you know, the three of us organised a little get together and decided on a high tea picnic.  We were blessed with gorgeous weather (although I did end up getting severely sunburnt - my fault!) and had a great afternoon getting to know each other while sampling some delicious baking.

Although the idea was to bake something new and exciting I was having a bit of a blonde moment and thought I’d just bring something I’d made before.  Oops!  In any case, I think cupcakes deserve to be at a high tea!  So here is a very simple vanilla cupcake recipe.  This recipe is not your typical beat-the-butter-and-sugar type, but rather aims to be more like “packet” cake mix where you add oil to your batter. I adapted the recipe from Glorious Treats and find it has been more reliable than my last vanilla cupcake recipe!

Makes approximately 24.

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:
2 ½ cups cake flour (see below for instructions on how to make this)
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup oil (vegetable or canola)
1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk with 1tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice)

Vanilla Buttercream:220g butter, softened
3 - 4 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 - 4 tablespoons milk

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C and line two muffin tins with cupcake cases. 
Mix up buttermilk (if you're making your own like I always do) and set aside, this will look funny and chunky when you go to use it later.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl, stir together and set aside.
Beat eggs for about 20 seconds and gradually add sugar.  Beat for another 30 seconds.  Add vanilla and oil to egg mixture and beat.  Add a third of the flour mix to the eggy mixture (make sure your beater is on a low setting or the flour will fly everywhere!) and beat.
Add half the buttermilk and beat, then add another third of the flour.  Add the remaining buttermilk and then the flour and beat until combined.
Pour the cake batter in to cupcake cases about ⅔ full and bake for 12 - 14 minutes.  Cool in tin for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.  Wait for them to cool down completely before icing.

Vanilla Buttercream:
Beat butter for a few minutes until nice and fluffy. 
While butter is mixing (if you have a stand-alone mixer) sift icing sugar into a large bowl and set aside. 
Add vanilla to the butter and beat for about 30 seconds.  Add the sifted icing sugar one cup at a time.  When icing starts to get lumpy add a tablespoon of milk.  Continue adding milk until you reach the consistency you like.
Tint your favourite colour and pipe on to cupcakes with a large star tip (my favourite is Wilton 1M).

Cake Flour Recipe (makes one cup):
Place 2 tablespoons of cornflour in a measuring cup.  Spoon normal flour into the measuring cup, use a knife to scoop away the extra on top of the cup.  Sift the cup of flours at least 3 or 4 times to mix them together.

I decorated these cupcakes using the famous cupcake swirl and topped them with a mini fondant rose. You can find tutorials for both of these techniques on my blog, Lydia Bakes.

Thank you so much for having me. I loved collaborating with Baking Makes Things Better and I get a feeling this will not be the last time we bake together!

High Tea Picnic Party

Happy New Year everyone! At the end of 2012 we got together and created this gorgeous high tea picnic. We’ve put together a couple of high teas before and they have been lovely, this one definitely takes the cake though! We had beautiful sunny weather, an amazing set up, so much amazing food and we got to meet and share it all with the lovely Lydia of Lydia Bakes. Lydia made some gorgeous cupcakes (that she will be sharing with you in a guest post very soon) and lots and lots of sandwiches. Melissa hosted us all at her house and made some too cute little mince pies, some feta and spinach pinwheels and delicious individual raspberry swirl cheesecakes, she had also whipped up some of these orange drop cookies. I made a raspberry and lemon cake with cream cheese frosting (which even if I do say so myself is delicious) and some apple and pork sausage rolls. 

We need to say a couple of thank you’s to the people who provided us with things that helped the whole event come together the way it did; The Vintage Table for supplying us with all the gorgeous vintage serve wear, the table cloth, tea tins and that sweet picnic basket, The Pretty Baker for providing us with the gorgeous pink and white honey comb balls and the bakers twine, and Karyn of Milly Made It who lent us the beautiful quilt.

We’ll be sharing all our new recipes with you over the next month. Just putting this post together made me hungry and has made me craving home made sausage rolls. We hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year, we are looking forward to sharing lots of new and delicious recipes with you this year.