It has been almost exactly a year since I last wrote on my blog. Since then I had a baby boy and it has been quite busy (but fun!) with two little trolls at home.
My son was baptised last Sunday and as the Greek tradition is to give a little sweet to the guests after the ceremony I decided I had to make a boy version of the cupcakes I made for my daughter's baptism three years ago.
As spring is finally getting closer I opted for some fresh lemon cupcakes with lemon buttercream and coloured the icing blue. For decoration I made the cute little baby booties I made last time from homemade chocolate paste. As I had to make 100 pairs of boots it took some time, but was fun to do. I decorated the boots with tiny hearts made of marzipan. The baby booties are surprisingly easy to make - I used the excellent photos and tutorial from Not Quite Nigella's fab food blog
As my little boy has some food allergies and I am still breast feeding I have had to cut out all diary and egg products in my diet so couldn't try the cupcakes myself, but I was told they were very tasty. No wonder, as you can rarely go wrong with lemon!
Although not cupcakes I also wanted to make sugar cookies for the guests, and this was my very first time in trying to make them. I chose a recipe from Cake Journal and it was probably one of the easiest doughs I have ever worked with. It was so easy to roll out and I hardly needed any flour for it as there is quite a lot of butter in the dough. My daughter had a go in making some cookies too and she loved it, so I will definitely make these cookies again - particularly when I can eat dairy again!
I made over 100 cookies - half of them were heart shaped with my son's initials and half as elephants since we had a cute elephant on the invites. The invites were made by my son's godmother and my good friend at The Wishing Tree Designs .
Come Sunday I was quite exhausted having spent a whole week making the decorations and baking cookies and cupcakes so it was fantastic that the ceremony went so well - my little boy was a real champion and hardly cried at all (which is unexpected when you are undressed in front of lots and people and dipped in the baptismal font three times!) - I was so proud of him!
Now that the baptism is over and I have managed to find time to bake 100 cupcakes and 100 sugar cookies and make 100 pairs of baby booties with a 10-month old and 3.5 year old at home I should be able to find the time to bake and blog a bit more! I have baked since last year, but haven't found the time to blog about it, so expect some posts with the cupcakes I made in the interim in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime I hope you enjoyed the photos of my son's baptism cupcakes!
