Decorating Buns

After our success at making pizza's, I thought I'd give cake decorating a go with Kiki.

Whilst she was down for a nap, I made some vanilla buns, cupcakes, or whatever current name is.

I used a recipe from Netmums:

Fairy cakes or cupcakes - here's our simple but delicious recipe for making these little sponge cakes. They are perfect for any treat including birthday parties. For some great ideas on how to decorate your fairy cake take a look through our inspiring fairy cake decorating and topping photos for ideas. 

• 100g/4 oz butter (softened)
• 100g/4 oz SR flour
• 100g/4 oz caster sugar
• 2 eggs

Put the oven on first - on medium (Gas 4/180 C/170C fan).

Whisk all the ingredients until creamy and spoon into a bun tin or bun cases. It makes 12.

Cook for about 10 - 15 minutes until cooked. To check they are cooked just press gently and they should spring back.

Once cooled, the cakes can be decorated.

 The only difference being that I added some vanilla extract.

I again covered the table with a taped down black bag and set up our decorating station. I used a muffin tin that had 6 sections, adding some different decorations to each one. I also made some glacé icing and coloured it red.

I originally gave Kiki a teaspoon to put icing on the buns, but she ended up just shovelling it in her mouth! I then tried a pastry brush to paint it on, that worked better.

 End results

Let's try baking pizza's

I've never baked or cooked with Kiki, but it seemed like a good idea to try.
Again, my OCD was making me grimace at the thought of the mess, but I did the black bags taped to the table thing, works so well. 

I decided to make pizza's for our lunch, but didn't have any yeast, so looked online for a yeast free recipe and found one at allrecipes.co.uk.

Ingredients 

Serves: 4 

• 225g self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 60g butter
• 150ml milk
• pizza toppings of your choice 

Method

Prep:10min  ›  Cook:20min  ›  Ready in:30min 

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C / Gas 5.
2. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Pour the milk into the bowl and mix to a soft dough.
3. Knead the dough and roll out into a large circle about 1cm thick. Place on oiled/buttered baking tray.
4. Add whatever toppings you like.
5. Bake the pizza in the preheated oven until the crust is golden, about 20 minutes.

Tip

You can bake the dough in the oven for 2 minutes before adding the toppings and cooking it. This results in a softer more 'pan' type dough compared to thin and crispy.

Toppings

• Cheese - As Kiki is a bit picky about cheese, I pulled some cheese strings apart, that's a tedious job, in future I'd grate some mild cheddar or buy spaghetti cheese strings.
• Sliced hot dogs
• Sliced ham
• Sliced cherry tomatoes
• Red onions
• Tomato Puree

Kiki didn't quite understand the concept of tomato puree, much more fun to squeeze and eat, so I spread a thin layer on the dough, but she enjoyed scraping it off, so gave up!

I put the toppings in separate tubs and we got to work.

 The end result