Aldi's best budget bake - Tiramisu cupcakes

Having been invited to take part in a food blogger challenge to celebrate Aldi Specialbuys Home Baking range which are on sale from Sunday 15th March 2015, we each received a hamper containing some of the range of kitchenware that would be on sale in store, along with a voucher with which to buy our ingredients.

Spurred on by the contents of my hamper, I chose to make some Italian Tiramisu inspired cupcakes and duly nipped out to Aldi to buy my ingredients: Eggs, self raising flour, caster sugar, butter, ground almonds, icing sugar, soft cheese, Amaretto, chocolate sprinkles and cupcake cakes. From my store cupboard I added almond extract and a splash of milk along with some coffee.  Here is how I made them:

For the Cakes (Makes 12):
4 Large free range eggs
140g Self raising flour
200g Caster sugar
200g Butter, softened to room temperature
80g Ground almonds
5ml almond extract
30ml milk
For the icing:
50g Butter, softened to room temperature
50g Soft cheese
250g Icing sugar
20ml Espresso (or very strong) coffee
15ml Amaretto
1 tub Chocolate sprinkles

1. Preheat the oven to 190℃.
2. Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cupcake cases.

3. Place a large bowl onto your scales and add your eggs, reset the display to zero, then weigh in the flour, caster sugar, butter, ground almonds, almond extract and milk.

4. Using an electric mixer, thoroughly mix your ingredients together until light and fluffy.
5. Divide the mixture between your cupcake cases, making sure not to overfill the cases more than ¾ full.
6. Bake on the centre shelf of your oven for 15-18 minutes until lightly brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cupcake comes out clean.
7. Remove the cupcakes to a cooling rack and leave until cold.

To make the icing:
8. Place a large bowl on to your scales and weigh in the butter and soft cheese.
9. Remove the bowl from the scales, and using your electric mixer, beat these two ingredients together until fully combined.
10. Place the bowl back on your kitchen scales (reset the display to zero) and weigh in the icing sugar.
11. Measure in the espresso coffee and the Amaretto.

12. Starting slowly to prevent a huge dust storm of icing sugar, combine the icing ingredients together.
13. When the icing sugar is fully combined into the butter, soft cheese, coffee and Amaretto mixture, increase the speed then beat for 5 minutes until pale in colour, and light and airy in texture.

14. Spoon this into a disposable icing bag fitted with a star shaped nozzle (I used a Wilton 1M nozzle).
15. Pipe the icing onto the top in spiral pattern.
16. Sprinkle generously with the chocolate sprinkles.

17. Put the kettle on. Make yourself a coffee. Grab yourself a cupcake and enjoy your creations!

From my hamper I chose to use:
12 hole cupcake tin £1.99 This is a lovely and deep, teflon coated, non stick tin. What makes it even better is that you can put it in the dishwasher after you've used it! Always a bonus in my eyes being someone who hates washing up and tries to avoid it/delegate the task at all costs!

Slimline Electronic Kitchen Scales £6.99 These have an easy clean, stainless steel finish, are lightweight, slim and have an LED display.  They're powered by an easily available CR2032 battery (which is included). Not only do they weigh in both imperial and metric weights, but they have the added feature of being able to weigh fluid ounces or millilitres of both milk or water at the touch of a button; truly functional and cook friendly.  With the added 'tare' function, you simply weigh your ingredient out, press the button to return the scales to zero and weigh out each additional ingredient in the same way.  Again, this really does appeal to me as I can weigh all my ingredients out in one go and into one bowl; saving washing up!

Double Oven Gloves £2.99 Part of a co-ordinated range of matching products, these are 100% cotton with a 100% polyester filling.  They're a generous 18x92cm in size and more than big enough for the largest of hands whilst not being too large for little hands like mine. The hanging hook allows you to keep them handy near you oven and they're washable too.

Party Butler cake container £4.99 The ideal solution to storing and transporting your cakes, snacks or pizzas.  It's make from temperature resistant plastic which means you can easily clean this in the dishwasher (bonus!) It's the perfect size to store 24 decorated cupcakes, whilst the two integrated, fold down handles, mean that you can easily carry your bakes to share with friends and family.


I also received but haven't yet used:
Train silicone baking case £3.49
Measuring Jug Digital Kitchen Scale £6.99

The hamper and contents were provided to me free of charge from Aldi UK.  I was also provided with a gift voucher with which to purchase my ingredients to create my #BestBudgetBake recipe.

Eva's Mushroom House

Eva is the daughter of one of my children's former junior school teachers. The original request was for a chocolate giant cupcake, but with the agreement of 'mum' she allowed me to play with an idea that I'd got in mind to upturn the base & decorate it as a giant mushroom.

I am so pleased at how this cake turned out. I freestyled with the idea as I went along; simply knowing that I wanted the 'roof' to be red with white hearts instead of spots. I also wanted a 'flying' butterfly overhead.

Mum tells me that Eva loved her cake, & her grandma tells me she loved it too!

Another successful cake from the kitchen of Freycob.

Laura's Zebra Cake

Carol is an old work friend of mine going back some 20 years. Laura is her daughter who was celebrating her 16th birthday and wanted a zebra striped chocolate cake with 12 matching cupcakes.

The colours were black and white with a contrasting fuchsia pink, and we all know that a birthday girl's gotta have what a birthday girl wants ;-)

Happy to oblige, this is what I made her. I loved making the zebra cake. I'm on the lookout though for fushcia pink gel paste though now to properly colour my buttercream.

80th Birthday cake for Elaine's Mother-in-law

I was asked to make a fruit cake for a special lady's 80th birthday. The lady in question was the mother-in-law of one of my colleagues, Elaine.

We discussed what she would like and settled on two individual cakes (one for the family get together, the other for friends at home). I wanted to do the cake in the shape of the two numbers and also wanted to keep it elegantly simple, fitting a lady of such a wonderful age.

The colours settled on we're pinks & purples and off I went to create this...

The fruit cake is covered in white marzipan and then white fondant. It's decorated with tones of pink & purple flowers. I then used white royal icing to add some 'texture' in the form of piped dots.

I received some lovely compliments from colleagues when I took it in to work, and some equally lovely ones from relatives of Elaine's mother-in-law. Seemingly it tasted good too!

I also made 4 co-ordinating cupcakes to go with it for those who don't love fruit cake.

Carrieanne's Cupcake Bouquet

Ok, this was a first time challenge. Can I make 'one of these?' was the question that accompanied the photograph. Ever up for a challenge, I said I'd give it a go!

There are 7 vanilla cupcakes in the bouquet, each housed in little cups which are stuck together to form a 'flower bouquet'. They're piped with pink/cream striped buttercream roses & embellished with a fondant flower & leaf. Wrapped in tissue paper and in cellophane just as a flower bouquet would be delivered.

Originally ordered as a present, she kept them for her own birthday the following day!

April's thank you cupcakes

April wanted some cupcakes to share with her friends who had kindly gifted her presents for her birthday. My brief was 6 chocolate and 6 vanilla cupcakes, lilac & girly.

I think I'm grateful that I didn't have to do 12 mini Spongebob cakes!

Jubilee cakes for school

My daughter had a Jubilee party at school recently, like many children around the UK I think. The previous morning the request was made for mum's cupcakes to take into school so I dutifully fulfilled her wish. She's not a 'young' 11 year old (indeed she has a rather mature and sensible head her shoulders) so I didn't want to go childish or gaudy as she wouldn't have wanted them to be like that.

Some simple vanilla and chocolate cupcakes were made (18 of each). I striped the piping bag with red & white butter icing and, using my trusty Wilton 1M piping nozzle, I piped some roses onto the vanilla cakes. The chocolate cakes had a simple 'squiggle' of vibrant red icing (not a lot, you understand, because if you've ever seen the colour your tongue goes after eating "red extra" food paste you'll know why less is more!) each cake was topped with a simple blue or white flower to match the theme.

So, 36 cupcakes were decorated, 4 given as gifts to each of 2 neighbours, which left 28 cakes. Plenty for school, work and home.

The morning of the Jubilee Party comes around and how many did she want to take into school? Oh yes! 6!!!!!!!! 6 came to work with me and didn't survive past 10am which was dutifully declared cake o'clock. 4 were set aside for my parents but hubby forgot to give them to them. It turns out that she didn't even get one of my cakes at school because the teachers bagged them first! This means that she then went away on holiday with my parents for a week and hadn't had a single one of the cakes that I made for her.

How come then that, out of the 36 cakes, 20 were given away or shared, which leaves 16 cakes, there are only 11 left? Wonder whether that had anything to do with the hubby and the 16 year old both being at home!! At least they won't be going to waste though, eh?

Cupcakes, creatures and Holly Bell!

This isn't a recipe today, but I HAD to share with you my day out yesterday with none other than the very lovely Holly Bell.

I had a truly amazing day yesterday (29th). Two reasons; it was my mum's 74th birthday and we had a family meal out, but before that I attended a course on cupcake decorating with Holly Bell (one of the finalists from the Great British Bake Off).

The theme of the day was creatures & flowers. We were welcomed by the very smily (and very genuinely warm & friendly) Holly at Bridge 67 Cookery School in Smeaton Westerby, Leics. We enjoyed a bite of breakfast over coffee, tea and juice, where we introduced ourselves and were presented with our itinerary and the most comprehensive & detailed set of instructions you could hope for.

Our day in the kitchen then began with a demonstration of Holly's recipe to make the cupcakes. Then it was our turn to make ours. 12 cupcakes made & cooling later and it was on to making the fondant decorations.

Following a demonstration and with the aid of the wonderfully detailed set of instructions, we first cut some butterflies, flowers & leaves, formed them & left the to dry. (Forgot to photograph these, sorry!)

Next came the cutest little snails. I was surprised that mine did actually look like snails and not just strange slugs, but they really did! *happy dance*

We moved on to ladybirds & rose buds, followed by tortoises and plant pots. By now we were all flying with confidence under Holly's expert guidance.

A break for lunch brought us beautifully crafted & presented sandwiches, crisps and home made biscuits to die for! There was even a glass of wine for those who wanted it!

Back into the kitchen afterwards we made buttercream that was as smooth and light you could float away as if on a cloud.

Now the assembly began! The buttercream was tinted as green as grass in the sunniest of meadows and our we 'planted' our roses and sat our ladybirds down in the sun beside them.

We rolled fondant & impressed a wood grain effect ready to place our snails; complete with a leaf or two to munch on.

Green fondant became grass on which our tortoise sat beside a pretty little plant pot of blooms.

A white full moon background became home to our owls; resting on a branch being all wise and seeing.

While others made ducks, I made robins and sat them on the sea of a swirly blue bird bath.

Holly taught us to pipe 'roses', 'swirls' and 'high hat' with buttercream on which we 'landed' our butterflies before we painted, glitzed and embellished them to shine & sparkle.

We were given lovely gold cake boxes into which we brought our creations home to share with our loved ones.

Mine came with us to the restaurant (complete with my cake stand) as a centrepiece for mum's birthday. Mum loved them & they also received admiring glances and complimentary remarks from the waiters & waitresses too.

We sadly had to leave Holly and the cookery school at 5:15pm, but not before we were each given a bag of her wonderful homemade biscuits to enjoy later with a cup of tea.

Armed with the wonderful memory of a fantastic day with a fabulous teacher in the company if some truly talented and lovely ladies, not to mention incredibly detailed notes for our future creations, we hugged and sadly said our farewells. Not goodbye but see you again in the future!

Holly, I wish you the best of everything I would hope for myself. You have a wonderful personality, a kind nature & a skill in presentation & teaching that many would envy! May your future take you to the moon & back. Your butterfly wings have grown; let them unfurl and you will fly!

Love, hugs and thanks xxx