The Most Perfect Baileys Cupcakes

2014 Blogger Challenge - post 6

I love Baileys and I love cupcakes, so when I realised that Baileys is basically alcoholic milk, and that most cupcake recipes include milk, I got a little bit excited. A year or two ago, I stumbled across the best cupcake recipe ever. It makes the lightest, fluffiest, most delicate sponge with just fifteen minutes in the oven. To save you the effort of lifting your finger to click on the link, I'll just type it out myself here with some slight modifications:


Ingredients you'll need:

(for the cake)
110g margarine
110g self-raising flour
110g caster sugar (super easy to remember, right?!)
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp of Baileys (perhaps more if you want to taste it strongly!)

(for the butter icing)
140g margarine
280g icing sugar
2 tbsp of Baileys (or more...)


How to make the cupcakes:

1) Heat the oven to 180 degrees and get your little muffin tin ready with the cupcake cases.
2) Mix together the butter and sugar till it's pale; this literally takes less than thirty seconds.
3) Tip the egg in and mixy mix it all up.
4) Fold in the flour with a spoon (no mixers here please) and make sure it's all mixed in.
5) Pour in yo Baileys!
6) Fill the cases halfway with the mixture and then proceed to lick the spoons and bowl clean.
7) Pop them in the oven for thirteen minutes, then check on them, and give them any extra time they might need.


How to make the butter icing:

1) Beat all the butter until it's soft and just looking good; it's instinct, you'll just know.
2) Add the icing sugar little by little. Really, or it flies everywhere and you'll be cleaning it up for about six hours. (NB: don't mix it with wet hair or the sugar gets stuck in it and makes it super sticky.. take it from me)
3) Pour in yo Baileys and mix it all up.
4) Wait for the cupcakes to cool. Be patient.
5) Either spread or, if you're being fancy, pipe the icing onto the cakes.


I did this last Wednesday night and wowie, I was stuffed until Friday breakfast time. I also had great fun tweeting my incredibly jealous best friend a series of photos of me with the cakes.

Happy baking!

The life we want to show you

I'm pretty sure I've written about it before, but I've absolutely been loving Nina Nesbitt's Selfies lately. Have a little watch of the video and even a read of the lyrics because that's what I want to talk about today.

Whilst watching the video, one particular part jumped out at me and kind of left me, well, not reeling as such, but with a sense of oh my god that is so accurate wow. It was this:

Source

Selfies... the life we want to show you. When have you ever instagrammed or tweeted or facebooked a photo of something you didn't want all your friends or followers to see? Never. Like, why would you want to appear less - for want of a better word - cool than you actually are? You just wouldn't. You put up a cute photo of your new tshirt like, oh I just went shopping, best day ever. Or maybe a photo of your super yummy lunch you made, and then a photo of your favourite candle and a book you're reading like, such a relaxing evening. Some particularly scheming (in my eyes!) people post photos of their revision guides and them surrounded in a sea of paper and notes to show how much work they're doing. To make themselves look good. I'm not saying they're not studying hard - they probably are - but they love to showcase it. Because it's what they want everyone to see.


I don't have instagram but I do have facebook and I do have this blog. If an unflattering photo of me makes its way onto facebook, I'll remove the tag and remove it from my timeline. If there's a photo in which I'm kind of on the edge of the group of people or I'm not talking to anyone in it, I'll get rid of that too. Because I feel like it makes me look like an outsider and that's not how I want to present myself to people. A photo which highlights my non-flat stomach? Goodbye photo. Double chin alert? Bad lighting? Straggly hair? Gone gone gone. I have the option to moderate what appears on my facebook, what my 561 friends see, so I do.


And I also have the option to moderate what you, you lovely readers, see on this blog. I'll only post photos of myself which I like (and perhaps there have been seventeen disgusting-looking ones before the one which ends up on here - you'll never know!). This also goes for my posts. Most of what I write on here is about places I've been to, photos of great parties, book reviews, haul posts, and the like. That's not fake - I have done all those things and read all those books and been to all those places.


But I don't write about how friendships with people I used to really care about are falling apart. That my BMI is veering towards the slightly overweight end of the average bar. That I have problems with my big toe and every step today was agony. That I can't ever find bras which fit, or that I feel stupid because I'm always so clumsy. I know, everyone has their issues and problems and that's kind of what this is about. We all have things that we're not happy with but the majority of us choose not to display that to the rest of the world. We show each other the good bits because that's what keeps us all happy.


I'm definitely not criticising that, or slating anyone, because I'm guilty of it too. And even if I wasn't, there's nothing shameful about not sharing everything with everyone. We show everyone the life we want to see, and that's fine. That really is absolutely fine.

Frank Turner tshirt!

As I've already mentioned close to a million times, I went to a Frank Turner show last week. I really wanted to buy a tshirt while I was there but they were £25 which is absolutely mad so I popped on eBay when I got home and found one for £13 which is an absolute steal! It arrived today as I was rushing out to meet Jess (more on that later). I've been wearing it since I got back home and have been taking shameless selfies to capture my joy over having such a beautiful piece of attire in my possession. I am mildly embarrassed to be posting selfies but I don't have Instagram so I feel this is equivalent to that which seems to be acceptable! ;) 

Song of the day (oh so appropriate):