Easy-Peasy Strawberry Filled Fairy Cakes

Today was my 'me' day.  A day to get all the things done that I'd been wanting to do and relax. Baking/decorating cakes is one of my favourite things in the world to do, so my mum had bought some decorating bits for me the other day, and I nipped to Tesco to get some ready made fairy cakes (I didn't have the time or the patience to make any from scratch today) and set to work.

To make these scrummy cakes, you will only need a few ingredients (plus spoons and knives):

- A pack of 12 fairy cakes (or you can make your own) - Seedless raspberry jam - Strawberry flavour frosting (you can make your own of this too if you're better than me) - white chocolate stars (or other decorations of your choice - I just think the stars look cute)

The first thing you'll need to do is to cut little holes into each individual cake. I found it easier to cut them all at once rather than to cut them, fill them, ice them and repeat on another cake. Just get a knife and take it in a circle in the middle of the cake. Make sure you don't make it too shallow, but mostly, make sure you don't make it too deep. If you make it too deep the jam will go everywhere.

Once you've done this step, remove the circle from the cake and place it to the side. Take about a teaspoon full of the raspberry jam, fill the hole (no intended euphemism).

Place the circle back on over the top of the jam. It will look slightly raised and you should be able to see some of the jam, but that's fine. We'll cover this with icing later, so it doesn't matter how neat it is. Just try to keep the amount of crumbs on the cakes to the minimum otherwise you'll get crumby icing.

Now they're ready to be iced! Take the frosting with a knife and spread a slightly thick layer on the cake, just to cover up the holey, jammy mess. Then, take a larger bit of icing and spread it to make the icing a bit more 'cupcake-like'. I'm sure you don't need me to teach you how to ice cakes.

As you can see, because I bought the cakes ready made, the cases were flimsy and were coming away from the cake by this point and looked horrendously messy. You can either remove the cases now or wait until after you've decorated the cakes. I, personally waited until I'd finished. Now take your decorations and strategically place them on the cupcake.

I don't know why I chose this cupcake to photograph as it was probably the worst one! I quite like the messiness of some cupcakes though, I think it adds to their charm. Remove the cake cases (if you didn't do so earlier) et voila!

I wish I had some edible pink glitter to sprinkle on these but I think they look okay as they are. These actually tasted really good when I tried them! I actually don't like shop made cakes that much, so I would have liked them a lot more if they were home made but I really didn't have the time to make them today.

I know this was a really simple recipe post, but I wanted to start practising taking pictures and sorting it all out with a simple one than to go straight in at the deep end and try a more complex recipe.

Did you like this recipe post? Would you like to see more?

Inspiration

A little bit of a different, more 'lifestyle-y' type post for you today. I'm not going to go into my personal life on the Internet because a) it wouldn't be of any interest to you whatsoever and b) I don't want to broadcast things on the Internet that most people 'in real life' probably have no idea about. However, the past 3 or 4 years have been a bit of a difficult time for me and I probably wouldn't have gotten through what I have without the support of my friends, my family and the odd bit of inspiration every now and then.

As sad as it may sound, the Internet has played quite a massive part in my 'recovery' - if you will. In fact, the main reason in the first place that I started this blog was to give myself a sense of direction and purpose. I needed a distraction from what was going on in my life and blogging has been a big part of that. The world can be a big, dark and scary place, but you are most certainly not alone in anything you encounter in life and that's what I've learnt through the help of inspiration from the Internet. 

Today I wanted to share with you some of the inspirational 'art work' and images that I've found on the Internet that I often refer back to more or less every day. Some people may look at me a bit weird when I get so perked up by a bit of text on a coloured background but to me it's more than words, it's a reminder of all the good things in life that you can easily forget when times are a little hard.

When I have my own house I want to make a 'feature' of these sort of things around the house. I think what I'd like to do is print my favourite ones off, frame them and then make a big photo frame wall of them. How Ikea-esque, eh? I really do think that they're such an important thing to have in your life and hopefully I've inspired you somewhat. Next time you're having a bit of a down day, come back and look at this post and try to find your own positive little quotes and sayings. You'll be surprised how much good a little bit of positivity in your life can do...