THE THING ABOUT GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF-ITIS

So I woke up this morning and had an epiphany: What if I am an incredibly talented baker and just don’t know it?  Granted until now my forays into the world of cake and bread preparation have been few and even those ended in some rather ridiculous results.  For instance, my family have still not forgotten about the time I dropped a surprisingly beautiful creation on the floor and they were forced to pick out pieces of Denby plate from each slice to save my feelings.  It was still quite tasty though, even with the unanticipated crunch.  However, far be it from the odd china tragedy to stymie my life-long (day old) dream of becoming the next confectionery virtuoso!

And so once more into the breach (kitchen) I go!  With the help of the wonderful Mrs Mary Berry and her Great British Bake Off inspiration, I shall attempt to unlock my possibly dormant culinary genius.

8 hours later...

Well, most of them were edible at least.  I ended up doing three batches: The first suffered from a sad misreading of the recipe and failed to rise due to lack of baking powder, the second and most successful batch stuck to what I am now suspecting were Yorkshire pudding trays, not cupcake trays hmmm…, and the third were quite significantly over-baked as my friend came over and distracted me with cups of tea and gossip.

By far the best facet of my cupcakes was the vanilla icing on top.  Although I was a bit heavy handed with the food colouring and my tasteful pastels somehow ended up at the more radioactive end of the scale, if that vanilla icing was a man, I would already be married and having his babies.  It was also extremely useful in covering up unwanted lumps and bumps on the sponge.

And so, having disposed of the first batch and over half of the third, my cupcake success rate ended up hovering somewhere around the 40% mark.  These were systematically devoured by my family and none of them have been ill so far...