Recipe of the Week - Quick Chocolate Cupcakes {Wheat Free & Dairy Free}

I've got a bit out of the way of sharing recipes over the last few months, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have any to share, or that I didn't want to keep posting them. I have a list of new free from recipes I'd like to share, plus I still want to re-share some of the older recipes from the early days on my old URL and transfer them to this blog. I'm hoping that this year I'll be able to share recipes most week like I used to, so let's get the ball rolling again with a nice quick recipe.

Last year my kitchen calendar was a Bake Off one, which had a different recipe for each month. Early on in the year there was a recipe for making some speedy cupcakes, and so I thought I would adapt it and try a free from version. It was a huge hit with the boys and is now one of my regular bakes.

It's one of those recipes where you throw everything in together and then mix, so not only is it quick to make, it's also quick to tidy up again afterwards!

If you've seen any of the recipes I've shared in the past you may have noticed that I always said that Doves Farm Gluten Free Self Raising flour was my go-to free from flour. That was until last spring/summer, when Sainsbury's brought out their own brand Gluten Free Self Raising and Plain Flours and these are my new absolute favourites for free from baking. They contain similar ingredients to the Doves Farm flours, but the Sainsbury's flours don't contain any Buckwheat. Buckwheat flour has quite a strong flavour and although the taste of baking with the Doves Farm flours was very good, there was still a slightly different flavour to all of the bakes when compared to that of wheat flour. The difference in taste between bakes made using the Sainsbury's free from flours and wheat flours is almost impossible to tell. 

I realise this is not very useful information if you don't have a Sainsbury's near you however! I know that Asda have also brought out their own brand of free from flour, and although I have never baked with it, I have tasted something baked by a friend and I would say it is very similar to the Sainsbury's one. As far as I know, and certainly the last time I checked a couple of months ago, Tesco don't have their own brand free from flour, which I'm surprised about given that the other two big stores do. Anyway, if you can get to a Sainsbury's then I highly recommend trying to stock up on their free from flours, but if not then just stick to the Doves Farm one as it is still an amazing alternative.

Now onto the cupcakes at last.

To make them you will need:
140g wheat free self raising flour 40g cocoa powder 200g caster sugar 125ml vegetable oil 175ml oat milk (or other dairy free alternative if you can't have oats) 1 egg, beaten
~Put the flour, cocoa, and sugar into a food processor and pulse a little to mix it all together. ~Measure the oil, oat milk and egg in a jug together and then add to the dry mixture in the food processor. ~Pulse the food processor just until everything has mixed together. Scrape down the sides of the processor to make sure all of the dry ingredients are mixed and then pulse once more, just for a few seconds. You will have a lovely smooth mixture, and it should be runnier than you would normally expect for a cake recipe. ~Pour the mixture into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 180C for around 20 minutes. ~Transfer the cupcakes to a cooling rack and mix up the icing.
For the simple butter icing you will need:
50g dairy free margarine 150g icing sugar 25g cocoa powder
~Put the margarine in a bowl and beat until soft. You can either do this by hand with a wooden spoon, a handheld mixer, or ideally a free standing mixer so that you can get on with something else at the same time! ~Once the margarine is soft then gradually add the icing sugar and cocoa until you have a nice creamy looking butter icing. ~Once the cupcakes are cool then spread the butter icing on top, or if you are feeling fancy then pipe it on in a nice swirl. 
Now, wasn't that straightforward and quick?

Seventeen

This week our oldest boy turned 17.

Last year I wrote a post that contained photos of him on each of his birthdays since he turned 1, which you can see here, so this year's post will seem rather short in comparison!

We had a bit of a low key celebration this year, not that we tend to do fancy parties anyway, because James is in the middle of his Higher Prelim exams this week and next. He was relieved not to have an exam on the day of his birthday, but he did have one the following day. 

Now that he is legally old enough to drive, he asked for driving lessons as his main present, but he also asked if he can wait until after his exams in May before he starts them so that he can have a good run of lessons without any interruptions. He did get a few other little gifts from us for now, as we couldn't leave him with nothing to open on his birthday! Of course Fraser (3) was very eager to help him unwrap them!

He had asked if he could have a chocolate overload birthday cake, similar to the one he had last year. These are great cakes to make as they involve very little skill whatsoever - just make the chocolate cake, cover in butter icing, surround it with chocolate fingers, and pile high with an assortment of chocolates. The chocolate cake I made was my old faithful recipe, which you can find here, although I didn't make it free from since it was going to be covered in so much non free from stuff! For the free from boys I made some Quick Chocolate Cupcakes. I'll post the recipe for them next week when my Recipe of the Week posts will start again, hopefully with much more regularity, like they used to be! 

Anyway, the birthday cake....

James' choice for birthday dinner was no surprise, as he has asked for the same thing every birthday for years - homemade steak pie. I must confess to cheating a little this year though, as Wednesdays are such busy days for me between Cròileagan (Gaelic toddler group) in the morning and school pick up followed immediately by piano teaching up until dinner time, and so rather than making the rough puff pastry that I usually do, I used some ready made puff pastry courtesy of Sainsbury's, as well as a free from puff pastry by Genius. The filling was simply thrown into my slow cooker at 7am and left there to do it's own thing until 6pm when I separated it into two dishes for the two different pastries. Where would busy mums be without slow cookers?!

Back to the cake again.

The truffles on the top are the simple coconut/digestive/drinking chocolate/condensed milk truffles that were the first thing I ever learned how to bake when I was about 7 years old. James loves them, and they were also the first thing that he and David learned to make.

Finally, here is the handsome birthday boy with his cake, and his cute little sidekick of course!

Christmas holidays

School has been back for almost a week now and life is back in the old routine after the routine-free and disorientating days of Christmas and New Year, when you genuinely aren't sure which day of the week it is anymore! 
Even after just one week back, Christmas already feels like it was much longer ago than it actually was.
In my last post on here school was out, our shopping was done and we were all ready for the festivities to begin so, as much for my own memories, it's best to pick up from there.
This little man was taking his responsibilities of looking after Santa and his reindeer very seriously. Quite early on on Christmas Eve - as in, before it was even lunchtime - he wanted to look out the carrots for the reindeer. I helped him choose one for Rudolph, which he put out in front of the fire, but then he went back into the kitchen looking for more carrots. I told him we only needed one, but he pointed out that Santa has more than one reindeer and it wasn't fair on all of the others if only one of them got a carrot. I suggested that maybe they would take turns having the carrots from each house, but he wasn't really happy with that suggestion as he wanted to be sure that he treated them all fairly. He really does have such a kind little heart.

One final Christmas Eve activity, after all the prep had been done for the big Christmas dinner, was to assemble the crackers. We had picked up some kits containing everything we needed in Hobbycraft a couple of weeks earlier and they were really straightforward to make.

Then the last thing we had to do of course, was to leave out a little something for Santa.

We always open just one present each on Christmas Eve, and these three were delighted with the ones that they chose to open.

One absolutely final thing to do before bed, was to put the carrots outside for the reindeer. 

All of them.

Once all the younger boys were tucked up in bed, one of the older boys, who shall remain nameless, helped set up the Santa presents, and seemed to really enjoy setting up this little Playmobil farm house and shop!

The boys were told that they couldn't wake us before 8am on Christmas morning, and so at 8am on the dot they came into our room. Our tradition is that they bring their stockings through to our bedroom and everyone sits on our bed opening their stocking presents. This year David (11) had taken one of the spare stockings and put a box of chocolates in it for me, and a box of sweets for dad, and placed it at the bottom of our bed as he came in. I need to remember this sweet side of him the next time I find him playing football in the living room!

Christmas morning was all that you hope it will be with children, and I think is best summed up by these two pictures.

Another Christmas tradition is that my parents in law and sister in law come round to ours late morning on Christmas day to spend the day with us. We don't exchange our gifts with them until they arrive and so it means we have a whole other round of present swapping to look forward to.

We usually eat around 2:30/3pm. Just as long as my father in law can listen to the Queen's speech.

This year for starter we had a whole side of smoked salmon, that I bought in Aldis.

I served it very simply, with some homemade oatcakes.

Main course was, of course, turkey.

And all the trimmings. Including 4kg of roast potatoes, every last one of which was eaten.

And pudding was either my gluten and dairy free Christmas pudding, or the not at all free from Chocolate Brownie and Raspberry Trifle you can just make out at the back of this picture. Made with raspberries the boys and I had picked in the summer holidays.

One of the gifts David received was a photobooth kit and so we had a little fun playing about with that after dinner.

Calum (14) got some lenses that clip onto your phone camera and so these added to the photo fun.

This photo is what I would say depicts my perfect Christmas Day - there is stuff absolutely everywhere, but the mess doesn't matter at all as everything feels so cosy and homely.

But the real entertainment of Christmas Day is when the cards come out for charades. There is usually far too much hilarity for any photos to be taken. These three were working together here to do one of the charades.

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After our busy Christmas Day, we had more guests on Boxing Day, and so we really needed a few quieter days after that. Dad went back to work for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year, and on one of those days I agreed to let the boys tip out a large selection of their Lego in the living room so that they could re-build some of their older broken models. It was a great way for them to spend a dull winter day, and I even got a chance to spend some time on my cross stitch sampler. It was a year long stitch along that I had started 2 years ago and hadn't made it past the first month! I've set myself the goal of finishing it this year though as it's so lovely. Remarkably with all of this Lego on the floor, nobody had any injuries and it was all tidied up again by dinner time!

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At the end of the first week of holiday we took a trip to a farm shop to meet up with some friends. It was a pretty windy day but that didn't stop the boys having a run around the playpark.

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For Hogmanay we went through to spend the night at my in laws'. As we do every year. We really are creatures of habit!

All but the littlest boy managed to stay up until the bells.

Every New Year's Day, before we enjoy a big meal at granny and grandad's, we go for a cold walk - it's always bitterly cold on New Year's Day - with my sister in law and her dog, and every year she gets one of the rare photos of all of us together. This year she managed to take quite a few good ones at different points of our walk, but this is one of my favourites.

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On an even more cold 2nd of January, the boys' shinty team had organised a new tradition of a New Year shinty match.

The younger boys and I started out watching them, but at the point when we could no longer feel our toes we decided to wait for them in the car instead.

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Before dad headed back to work again he took the older boys on an 8 mile off road cycle. It was the first time David had been able to properly test out the bike he got for his birthday in November.

I would consider that well and truly tested now, wouldn't you? The bike AND my washing machine.

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We had one or two chilly walks to the park in the remainder of the holidays...

.... but what I'll really remember the last week of these holidays for is lots of cosy, and guilt free lazing about like this.

Which was perfect.

Christmas Countdown

Last Friday started a run of a very busy few days, packed full of Christmas events.

It started off on Friday morning with the very lovely Gaelic Christmas service at Greyfriar's Kirk in Edinburgh. The service is held every year for all the pupils at the Gaelic school, all the Gaelic pupils in the High School, their families, and other Gaelic speakers who want to attend. It's so nice having all ages of the Gaelic school community together, from Primary 1 to S6.

Friday afternoon was spent in the kitchen, preparing for the Sunday School party the following day, and making my mum's birthday cake for that evening.

My mum and dad were down visiting for a few days and so we all got together at my brother's house on Friday evening to celebrate her birthday. Here she is with all of her Grandchildren.

I covered her cake in white icing and then Calum suggested that we use some of our metallic food spray because Granny likes a bit of sparkle and bling. So we covered it in gold spray and then finished it off with a few simple white snowflakes. I was finding a subtle gold shimmer on things near where I had made it in my kitchen for a couple of days afterwards!

Inside it I had aimed to make a checker-board effect.

On Saturday the morning was spent preparing cakes and games for the afternoon party, including these little holly cupcakes.

Then it was onto the excitement of the party and lots of shouting out instructions while organising the games.

The party ended with a visit from Santa!

Another tick on my to-do list that busy Saturday morning was to put the icing on my Christmas cake. I don't put marzipan on ours so that James, who has a nut allergy, can eat some.

On Sunday we enjoyed a little break in the busy-ness.

Although, it wasn't as bliss-fully quiet as it looks in this photo!

On Monday morning Ally (7) was singing some Gaelic Christmas Carols with his class at a shopping centre near the school, so Fraser and I went along to watch them and cheer them on.

I used my school run train time on Monday to put the finishing touches to this little guy.

He's called Jingles and Ally and Fraser are delighted with him. Maybe next year I'll make another one so that they can have one each.

On Tuesday morning we had out church Toddler Group party.

Then on Tuesday evening we all, including Granny & Shen and other Granny, went to watch the high school Christmas concert in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh.

Before the concert I took the younger three boys for a well needed haircut, and Fraser was delighted when the barber put some gel on his hair just like the big boys.

After the haircuts, and still before the show, we went out for some dinner with Granny & Shen.

We don't eat out for dinner as a family very often as it's so hard to do so with all the boys' allergies. They often end up with just a bowl of chips, or some plain baked potatoes. We wanted to go to the Beer Kitchen on Lothian Road, Edinburgh as it is so near the Usher hall and so had emailed them in advance about the allergies. 

I saw on their online menu that they served Macsween's Haggis, which the boys can eat and love to do so, and so asked if it would be possible to serve it with mash that had no butter in it. The restaurant replied that as it's Christmas they have a different menu and so didn't currently have haggis on it, but that they always have it in stock and so would be happy to cook some for the boys along with some butter free mash.

Not only were they really helpful about the allergies, but the restaurant was lovely and the rest of the food was also delicious.

The concert was amazing, as it is every year. It was only the younger two boys sitting with us as James & Calum were both playing in the wind band, and David was taking part in the assembled choir made up of all the P7s from the feeder Primary schools. 

Yesterday school finished at lunchtime for the holidays, and while Fraser and I waited for them to come home he suddenly noticed that someone had put Kevin the Carrot at the top of the tree, which he found hilarious!

In the afternoon yesterday we had some heavy snow showers, which got Fraser really excited as he is convinced that it has to snow for it to be Christmas, so when he saw the snow coming down he began jumping up and down shouting that it was Christmas at last!

It was far too wet for the snow to lie though, and he was fine with that too.

Then last night, while Storm Barbara started outside, we all watched a Christmas Movie we haven't seen before -Elf - to kick off the school holidays. I don't know how we have never got round to watching it before but we all found it really funny and it might just join Home Alone as one of our must watch movies of Christmas.

Today we braved the shops, and the storm, and finished off the food shopping so now it really feels like we can finally slow down, relax and enjoy the season.