Isolation Baking

Full disclaimer here, I am not a baker or professional in this field but I am an artist and lover of all things creative. I love cake decorating and little by little I’m getting better at baking. I’m spending my Covid 19 isolation time trying to remain productive & learn new things. One of which is baking.. yum! I started of trying to perfect scones then cupcakes, pancakes and Victoria sponge. Maybe I’ll jump on the banana bread bandwagon next who knows, we’ll go wild sure!! Like most people I google a recipe for something I want to make and go with the easiest one I find.

I watch a lot of Great British Bake Off and Zumbo’s Just Desserts on Netflix to get me in the mood. I started sketching what I had baked that day and thought it would be fun to make it into an illustrative recipe. I’m the type of person that responds best to visuals and things looking pretty or creative on the page engages me even more.

This may be the start of a cool personal collection or practice towards portfolio pieces. One of my career goals is to illustrate a cookbook, I’d LOVE to do this!
 I hope you get your creativeness going too and maybe bake a little something for yourself or family. Drop some baked goods to your neighbours door, nice gestures and generosity will help us through this time. Or just enjoy the artwork!

All of the referenced recipes will be linked to the source I found and used so you can always refer back to the original site. This is just a little project of mine to get through isolation.

Cupcakes: For Easter

My Illustrated Recipe 

First up, your classic cupcakes. I used a recipe from BBC Good Foods which you will find Here. 

I like to have a drink now and then. I picked up some Caramel Vodka in an airport a few months ago, it’s quite strong I don’t particularly drink it often. But, I found a recipe for buttercream icing which included it so it was worth a shot. Pun intended. How I made it is explained in the recipe illustration. Just normal buttercream icing. I did not add milk as I knew I was adding alcohol and no kids would be getting their hands on them so all was good. 

Now, is where ‘you do you, honey’ drop in a little at a time and mix together. I added small amounts of icing sugar to balance the consistency, we don’t want it too runny. It is a bit of trial and error but a tasty process! Be sure to taste test while making and once you’ve hit the perfect measurement for you that’s when you can pop it into the fridge. Wait for your cupcakes to cool down before adding your icing. 

I bought my icing decorations in Lidl, they have very cute ones at the minute. Can we all pretend the irregular shapes and sizes was intentional! lol, I’m learning. 

Hope you enjoy!