Cakes

J and I made cupcakes on Sunday afternoon, for our Mothers' Day treat, and ate more today - they will keep us going all week. They are little chocolate fairy cakes, and were made in order to use up some leftover peanut butter frosting from J's birthday cake. This topped almost half the cakes, and was completed with more of the pretty swirled giant buttons which were also bought to decorate the birthday cake. For the rest, I whipped the part tub of cream also bought for the birthday frosting, and flavoured it with some chocolate orange spread. This is rather posh Bonne Maman spread, in its pretty gingham lidded jar, which I bought as a treat for J, largely because it contains far fewer nasty ingredients than the supermarket chocolate spreads she normally enjoys on her waffles. However, it's very dark and intensely flavoured and was not much to her taste (or mine, if I'm honest, though I normally like very dark chocolate), so we are looking for creative ways to use it. The flavoured cream is very nice in chocolate butterfly cakes, and they were a fitting choice for the day as making fairy cakes, especially butterfly ones, always brings me close to memories of my mum. Decorating them was always my job, and I'm still using her cake tins, cooling racks and very bendy blue spatula.

It was a miserable rainy Monday, and I didn't enjoy my pre-lunch walk; it was so nice to have cakes to look forward to!