Recipe of the Week - Cupcakes {Gluten Free and Dairy Free}

Since today is National Cupcake Day there was only one recipe I could really share for this week's Recipe of the Week.

Cupcakes are so simple to make and I make a batch of these almost every single week. They are so handy for an after school treat.

When we want them to be a bit fancier I will make them into Butterfly Cakes, like the picture below, by slicing a little circle out of the middle and adding some jam and butter icing to the middle before adding the centre, sliced in half, back on top.

But mostly we will just have them as normal cupcakes, finished with either a swirl of butter icing, or more often than not just a layer of white water icing and some sprinkles.

Fraser (4) loves to help add the icing to the cupcakes when I make them. Just look at that concentration!

These are the cupcakes we made today and we added a little yellow colouring to the icing since that is Fraser's favourite colour.

Now for the recipe.

You will need:

5oz gluten free self raising flour

5oz sugar

5oz dairy free margarine

2 eggs

2 tbsp soya milk

- Simply add all the ingredients to a bowl and then mix thoroughly, either in a stand mixer or with a handheld mixer, until the cake mix is smooth and creamy.

- Add spoonfuls of the mixture into cupcake cases in a cupcake tin, until the cases are about 2/3 full.

- Bake at 200C for between 15 and 20 minutes, until they are golden and firm to touch on the top.

- Allow the cakes to cool before icing.

- Either mix icing sugar with water to make a smooth paste for icing or beat together about 9oz icing sugar and 3oz dairy free margarine until smooth and then pipe onto the cupcakes.

If you're looking for a variation from the simple cupcakes then how about trying either my quick chocolate cupcakes

Or perhaps the more fancy looking, but no harder to make, Camo Cupcakes.

Happy National Cupcake Day!

Big Birthday Celebrations

 A little over three weeks ago it was my birthday. It was a milestone one this year as I turned 40.

I've never been one to be bothered about turning another year older. It is a blessing that some are not fortunate to see and so I think it's wrong to be concerned about entering a new decade. In a similar way, I'm embracing the grey hairs that are appearing more regularly too. I'm far from being a feminist, but why do we as a society accept it when men go grey naturally, yet when a woman does, especially a younger one, she is accused of having 'let herself go'? I'm choosing to view mine as a reminder of all the years of sleepless nights with little ones, and of the many years that I have been blessed to spend with my husband and family.

It does also help that one day one of the boys told me that he didn't think there was anything wrong with going grey, 'especially since you don't have any wrinkles. I think going wrinkly would be worse'!

Anyway, back to the day of my birthday.

As is tradition, I was banned from the kitchen while the boys made dinner and baked a cake.

Calum (14) baked the cake and James (17) decorated it. He was eagerly watched by Fraser (3), who I think may have been more interested in the chance of getting some leftover icing!

David always likes to have the job of setting the table nice, and he takes it very seriously. I don't remember why I bought these cocktail umbrellas but he found them in a drawer and used them to decorate the table.

Dinner was slow cooked Chicken Tarragon.

And the cake was understated and beautiful in it's simplicity.

The boys knew that I had recently thrown out my wellies as they had holes in them, and so chose to buy me these lovely ones for my birthday, as well as a couple of pretty scarves and a little rabbit keyring that Fraser insisted they buy for me.

My parents. my brother and sister in law, and my mum's side of the family all bought me this thing of beauty. I already had a stand mixer and didn't think that I really needed a Kitchen Aid. Now that I have tried it out though, I realise how wrong I was. 

My husband was in some top secret negotiations with a friend of mine who makes tweed bags. He had commissioned her to make this beautiful handmade tweed bag which I love. The colours are amazing and the size is perfect. When you have to carry an emergency allergy kit around with you everywhere you need a decent sized handbag.

My husband knows that I would absolutely hate to be the centre of attention, and so took this into consideration when planning the main celebration for my birthday, which took place two weeks later. The reason we had it later on was that months ago my parents had booked a holiday that involved them passing by this way for a few days. If we held the birthday do later on then it meant that they could be there too.

The only tiny snag was that when he booked the venue back in the summer we didn't know that James wouldn't be returning from a school trip to Italy until the day after. Still, I didn't mind James missing it, and neither did he, and I wouldn't have wanted him to miss out on a trip like that just for a birthday dinner. His trip to Italy was with his Gaelic class and they went there to take part in a conference on minority languages. He loved the whole experience.

I knew that there was a celebration booked, and that we were going out to dinner with family, but didn't know until the day itself where it was we were going.

So on the day of the do we all dressed up fancy.

The venue was the Dalmahoy Hotel, just outside of Edinburgh, and we had a room to ourselves.

The room had a balcony on the far side.

The balcony had steps leading down to the golf course.

And the view from the room and the balcony was this idyllic view of the golf course.

The long table had been set with personalised menus.

And my parents had printed out some old photos of me to decorate the table too.

This amazing birthday cake was made by my brother's wife. She had made it gluten and dairy free so that everyone could have some. I hadn't clicked why she was taking such an interest in where James had bought the edible ink pens for my cake on my actual birthday a week earlier!

The guests at the dinner were: ourselves and the boys (minus James); my mum and dad; my brother, sister in law, their three boys and their daughter; my youngest brother; my husband's parents; and my husband's sister.

Everyone was dressed in their finery for the dinner, but I think these two were the best dressed of the lot.

The rest of these photos were taken by my dad with his fancy new camera.

This was the awesome free from pudding - dairy free ice cream with a dairy free magnum style lolly.

This is me and my two brothers, as well as our youngest two little ones.

And in this one we are joined by my mum and dad. I don't actually know when we last had a photo taken of just the five of us.

We were soon joined by my littlest man!

And of course a chance for a photo of myself and the Mr in our finery.

The room we had was a perfect size, as it was big enough to allow the little ones space to play on the floor, but not so big as to encourage them to charge around!

After dinner and cake we were entertained by some of the boys playing music.

David started things of by playing Lament for Iain Ruaidh on guitar.

My oldest nephew played us a few tunes on his pipes.

Calum played some accordion for us, and led us in a little sing song.

And the two littlest sang The Wheels on the Bus for us as a finale.

It really was a perfect way for me to celebrate a milestone birthday.

Next year it's the turn of  my brothers to have the celebrations. One of them will turn 40 and the other one will be 21!

Recipe of the Week - Strawberry Cake {Gluten Free & Dairy Free}

A couple of weeks ago I shared a photo on the Housefulofboys Facebook page of a cake I had made to bring along to a pot-luck supper. I also promised to share the recipe soon, and so here it is at last.

This is essentially just a sort of all in one Victoria Sponge, with some chopped up strawberries added into the mixture and isn't very challenging to make at all, but it looks impressive! The fruit in the cake mixture gives it an extra bit of moistness - if moistness is even a word? If you've ever been concerned about gluten-free cakes being dry then you have no need to worry about that with this one.

{I also use this recipe to make Strawberry Cupcakes. This mix will make about a dozen cupcakes.}

For this cake you will need:

125g strawberries

225g sugar

210g gluten free self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

25g cornflour

225g dairy free margarine

4 eggs

And for the icing you will need:

100g dairy free margarine

300g icing sugar

Method:

~ Blitz the strawberries in a food processor until they are small pieces. Don't overdo it though, you don't want them completely liquidised, but also don't make them too big as you don't want big chunks of strawberry in your cake either!

~ Add the rest of the cake ingredients to a bowl and beat well together with either a handheld or freestanding mixer. Beat it until you have a smooth and creamy looking batter, then add in the chopped strawberries and mix them in.

~ Divide the mixture evenly between two greased and base lined 8 inch sandwich tins and bake in a preheated oven at 180C for around 20-25 minutes.

~ Transfer the cakes to a cooling rack while you mix the icing together. 

~ For the icing just beat the dairy free margarine and the icing sugar together. To get a really fluffy textured icing, continue beating it for a few more minutes after it has all come together. 

~ Once the cakes are cool, sandwich them together with the icing. If you want to make the cake look fancy then use about 2/3 of the icing for sandwiching it together and then pipe the rest of the icing around the top of the cake, finishing it off with some sliced strawberries and a dusting of icing sugar. I don't always do this though, and it looks (and tastes) just as good with just a dusting of icing sugar on the top. 

Birthday Fun Day

At the weekend we celebrated Ally's 8th birthday.

The presents above weren't just from us, but from other family members too!

He didn't want to do anything fancy for his birthday. Just to have his cousin round for a birthday tea and sleepover. We decided it would be best to have his birthday tea and cake on the day before his actual birthday, as on his birthday there was a big family fun day organised by the charity dad works for and we were all helping out at that. I thought that we would all be tired after the fun day and might not be able to enjoy the celebrations so much if we left it until afterwards. It also meant that he would have longer to play with his cousin if we did things that way round, even though the cousins were all coming to the fun day too.

Anyway, Ally agreed with my suggestion, and so on Friday afternoon he and his cousin Matthew spent the afternoon playing together while James and I finished off making the birthday cake, which was a surprise for Ally this year. In previous years he has requested the design (see here and here for his 7th and 6th birthdays) but this year he wanted a surprise. Ally has recently got into Pokemon and a few weeks ago I found the perfect cake on Red Ted Art here.

It was a simple Pokeball shaped cake, nice and easy to decorate, but with the hidden surprise of being filled with little Pokemon figures. I found the figures really cheaply on EBay, about £5 for nearly 50 of them. They were the perfect size to go inside the cake.

Ally's request for his birthday tea was super simple this year too - fish fingers and mashed potatoes! So we had a tray of free from fish fingers, a tray of far cheaper 'normal' ones, and a steak each for me and daddy. I didn't think he would appreciate fish fingers for tea!

Here are most of the boys waiting for the cake to come in. One of many, many out-takes whenever I try and get a good photo of everyone.

And after several more silly photos, and including James in this one too, with the request, 'please can we just take one proper one to send to Granny?'

Here's that simply decorated cake then.

I used my free from Victoria Sponge recipe, but made one and a half times the amount that I usually make (6 eggs, 12oz sugar, free from SR flour and dairy free marg)

Ally loved the cake when he saw it, and was probably wondering why I said he should cut the first slice rather than me. At first he thought it was going to be a rainbow cake inside, but then he was so excited to find Pikachu and his friends inside!

You can find the full instructions of how to assemble and decorate the cake by following the link to Red Ted Art above.

After cake, and once jammies were on, we all snuggled up to watch the movie 'Sing'.

Despite a late night after watching the movie, Ally came through to our room to ask me if it was time to open his presents at 5am the following morning, which is very unlike him as he is always last up in the mornings! I told him that it was far too early, and thankfully he went back to sleep again before coming back through again at about 8am. Much more reasonable.

As he did last year, his main request for a present was Lego Nexo Knights, which he was delighted to get.

After breakfast James made up a Pokemon treasure hunt in the garden. Ally, Fraser and cousin Matthew had to find where all the little figures were hidden in the garden.

We were all delighted to see that the weather carried on the tradition of sunshine on Ally's birthday. He was born on a hot sunny day, and every year since then the sun has shone on his birthday.

At lunchtime we all headed off to Midlothian, to the beautiful Arniston House, where the Family Fun Day was taking place.

The Fun Day was organised by the charity that my husband works for, Safe Families for Children Scotland. They help families in crisis and hope to reduce the number of children who are taken into local authority care. You can read more about the charity and how they help on their own website here.

One of the ways they help families out is by having Volunteer Families help out other families who are facing a crisis. The Fun Day was a way to thank these volunteer families, as well as to give the families they work with the chance for a fun day out together.

There was a bit of a Pirate theme going on, and the main helpers on the day dressed accordingly.

James helped his dad out on car park duty, as well as being the first aider. I was the face painter for the afternoon and the two of them were my first customers!

An old friend of my husband's is a magician, and he kept the kids entertained all afternoon with his tricks.

Also inside the empty building above was a band playing some lovely live music.

And sitting just outside it, enjoying the warm sunshine all afternoon, were me and the face paints - which actually began to melt in the sunshine! Ally chose to be his favourite super hero, Captain America.

I was thankful that my sister in law was able to jump in and help me with the face painting as it proved very popular. The only time we got a break was during the main magic show below.

There were also some parachute games for the children, a BBQ for everyone, and then to finish off there was a visit from an animal encounters experience. I didn't see any of the animals or get any photos as I was busy painting faces the whole time, but the boys all loved seeing all the animals and told me all about it. Ally had a snake around his neck, as did Calum! There were also lizards, insects, a tarantula, a chicken, a rabbit and a tortoise. 

It was a great afternoon. Every single one of the children there behaved impeccably and Ally declared it the best birthday ever.

I just hope he doesn't think that every birthday has to include a Fun Day from now on!