The Hummingbird Bakery

I recently made the trip to Portobello Road in the famous Notting Hill in London with my Mum as I'd never been before and had always wanted to go there since watching the movie 'Notting Hill'. Walking up to the famous road, I immediately decided "I want to live here some day", the area is so lovely with amazing houses, shops and cafes/restaurants. I was pleasantly surprised by the village feel the area had. Another reason as to why I love London!

We hadn't really planned the day before going, however we knew we wanted to visit the famous Hummingbird Bakery. Tarek Malouf opened the first Hummingbird Bakery on Portobello Road in 2004. Since then, five more bakeries have opened - four of them in London. From the look of the amazing cakes in the cookbooks, the bakery was a definite must-see. I took some photos to share with you... (again, sorry for the photo quality, I forgot to take my camera so had to use an iPhone).

After visiting the bakery, we headed to a cafe for a drink...

One of the many gorgeous antique shops along Portobello Road.

Bye for now! xx

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

It was my Nannie's Birthday on Monday (29th July) and she was coming to visit us the day after to celebrate. A few hours before she was due to arrive, I decided I wanted to make some cupcakes for her as an added Birthday treat - plus I normally make her a cake for her Birthday!

Before choosing a recipe, I decided I wanted to make something a bit different to the classic Victoria sponge or iced cupcakes therefore I pulled out one of my favourite cookbooks - The Hummingbird Bakery Home Sweet Home.

The lovely thing about this cookbook is that there is such a variety of different recipes that there is bound to be something that everyone loves. I looked for a recipe that was reasonably basic and didn't require having to go out and buy lots of ingredients we didn't already have in the cupboards. This, therefore was why I plumped for the cookies and cream cupcakes as the only ingredient I needed to pick up were the double chocolate cookies.

What surprised me when making the cupcakes was how easy they were to bake. I didn't expect them to be so simple as usually The Hummingbird Bakery cookbooks can have some more complicated recipes in them. Although they're called cupcakes, they are actually muffin sized...

After what didn't seem like long .... and a lot of mess later ... the cupcakes were ready to go in the oven. The recipe instructed to break the double chocolate cookies (I used Maryland's) into quarters and place them in the filled muffin cases. This is how they looked before going in the oven for 20 minutes at 170 degrees...

20 minutes later, the cupcakes came out of the oven looking rather large. I popped them onto a cooling rack and cracked on with making the icing. Again, this was a very easy process which didn't take long at all however required an awful lot of icing sugar (500g!) therefore certainly isn't the healthiest. After spreading the icing messily onto the muffins with a palette knife, the only thing left to do was crumble some cookies on top of the cakes and pop them on a cake stand.

To make them look more like Birthday cakes, I added three candles to the three cupcakes on the top tier.

Overall, I was pleased with how they turned out and by the looks of the empty plates everyone seemed to enjoy them! I would highly recommend buying The Hummingbird Bakery Home Sweet Home and attempting this recipe as it was simple yet the result was delicious.

Bye for now! xx