welcome to holland cupcakes

The other day I went to pick up someone from the airport who was coming over to Holland for the first time, and as a little welcome present (I also met him for the first time that day) I decided to make cupcakes (though really and truly I use any excuse to try out new baking stuff of course!). This time my eye fell on red velvet cupcakes with strawberry finishing, a combination of 2 recipes I fancied.

So first of all, a big splash of red food colouring mixed in with some cocoa powder and vanilla extract added to a simple cupcake mix gives you these beautiful red velvet cupcakes. Fancy as they are already, I pimped them with the following: cream cheese icing and strawberries.



The cream cheese icing was a simple cream cheese/icing sugar/bit of butter combination, but the strawberries I actually 'marinated' in strawberry liqueur. I added a bit of icing sugar to thicken the liqueur then dropped 6 nice look strawberries in. I spooned over the liqueur a couple of times, and then just let them soak.




So, dollop on some cream cheese icing and then I halved the strawberries and placed them on top. So pretty!!! I just have to share some more purrtyyy pictures!!



For my birthday I also got some lovely gift boxes especially for cupcakes. I hadn't had a chance to use them yet, but this occasion seemed fitting, so this is how this little cupcake travelled to the airport!



I think they were a success ;)

xoxo Jennifer

ps. for those of you who didn't know already, you can click on the pictures to see a larger version ;) ;)

dee-licious choc chip (chunk!) cookies

The other day I needed to fix up a quick desert, and except for the 5 minute microwave cake I don't know anything quicker than a batch of cookies. So that's exactly what I made, with thanks to Martha Day for the best cookie recipe I've tried so far.

So the recipe was for chocolate chip cookies, but due to a lack of chocolate chips, I cut up a bar of chocolate, into nice big chunks (taste better!). Next I added some chopped up walnuts to the better as well.



When all mixed and done, I dollopped the cookie mix onto a baking tray. I could have used 2 trays to space them out better and not have it turn into one big cookie, but I like it this way! And they really didn't stick together that much anyway.



The result? Yummy slightly chewy (the way I like them!) chocolate chunk/walnut cookies.



xoxo Jennifer