Crumbs to Crunch

While baking is fun, it can sometimes be an expensive hobby. This was particularly a problem when I was a student so I came up with some nifty ways of saving my pennies. Shop smart Supermarket own brands of ingredients are often so much cheaper than the branded versions. I always use value flour which is always under £1 for 1.5kg and works just as well. You can also grab some bargains in budget supermarkets such as Lidl who have expanded their baking range in recent years. I even found some usually expensive ingredients like ground almonds in the pound shop. It does pay to shop around! Find cheaper ingredients You can often find ingredients at a reduced price if you look outside of the baking aisle. For example, chocolate and cocoa powder is usually cheaper if you pick them up in the confectionary or hot drinks aisle. Instead of chocolate chips, I like to buy an inexpensive bar of chocolate and chop it into chunks. It tastes better and is a fra...

I have spent many hours drooling over Cupcake Jemma's imaginative recipe videos on YouTube. My icing skills are not a patch on hers so I went to see how the professionals do it at her bakery, Crumbs & Doilies in London. Space unicorn cupcake I was not disappointed! Two bright cakes caught my eye, the space unicorn cake and the rainbow cake . Often multicoloured cakes are more style than substance but these enticing creations were delicious. The space unicorn had a wacky swirly icing with a melt-in-the-mouth chocolate sponge with chocoalte chips. The rainbow cake also had an excellent flavour. My favourite was the less visually stunning yet tasty Biscoff rocky road. This was a fun update on a normal rocky road by using white chocolate, marshmallow, Biscoff biscuit spread and biscuit chunks. The contrast between the silky smooth mixture with the crunchy biscuit was a dream. Rainbow cake Crumbs & Doilies is located in the quaint Kingly Court in Soho. The bake...