South Kensington Art and Design

A couple of weekends ago I rugged up for a trip to South Kensington to visit one of the excellent museums in that area. I’d been wanting to go to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum since I’d returned so that was high on the list. The fact it was the last weekend of a small story themed design exhibition named Telling Tales just helped propel me there (as did a quick look at the queues outside the beautiful Natural History Museum).

Before I rushed into the crowded world of weekend gallery attendance I made a worthwhile stop at the South Ken outpost of the Hummingbird Bakery. I sat for a while with a coffee and red velvet cupcake and I highly recommend it. The South Ken branch is marginally quieter than the Notting Hill branch on a Sunday which means you can sit and enjoy your purchases without having queued out the door and down the street beforehand (which I noticed people doing in Notting Hill as that branch is in the market area).

The cake tasted delicious....

Just to really rub it in

I had a wander around as I used to live about 15-20 minutes walk away and spent a bit of time in the area many moons ago. There have been a few changes and Old Brompton Road now consists almost entirely of cafes and restaurants whereas I remember a few more outlet luggage stores. The area around the tube station does seem to be a good place to head if looking for places to eat. I also came across this lovely bookstore in Thurloe St.

Piles of excellent books

Although it’s a discount bookstore, the items they have in stock are top notch and it was quite an effort to leave without weighing myself down with some purchases. And finally I made it to my destination – the actual museum. The V&A is a great place to go if you’re interested in art, design, costuming, textiles, sculpture and pretty much anything else decorative that you could imagine. It’s also free – which is even better.

One of the better entrance shots - still not quite sure what I was aiming for

One of the dining rooms - fancy huh?

entrance to the dining rooms from the internal courtyard

marble initials

light sculpture in the entrance hall

Although I spent a good amount of time wandering around looking at the displays, the V&A is a huge place and I need to make a return visit when the medieval galleries reopen later this year.

Coffee and donut cupcakes

It’s like morning tea all rolled into one baked good.  Delicious and efficient.

Party with the Wild Things

I was sent this link to a blog where they had a Where the Wild Things are themed party for their little boy.  The cupcakes were very cute, but the wolf suit was better.  I loved the crown and furry tail.

Why didn’t I get one of these?  Have I not demonstrated my love for this story too?

More rainbow cupcakes

These ones aren’t so blindingly colourful as the last lot but they are quite cute.

Blueberry and lemon cupcakes

I finally got back to baking items that were decent enough to be photographed by my little point and shoot.  This week’s outing was blueberry cupcakes with lemon icing.  I’ve made a similar recipe before and it is really easy.  The cupcakes are also delicious. 

To the recipe (which can found through the link) I added 125 g fresh blueberries.  I cooked them for twenty minutes. When they were completely cooled I iced them with a lemon icing made from 1 cup icing sugar and the juice of half a lemon – which was delicious.  This time my yield was sixteen reasonable sized cupcakes.  This cake recipe is definitely a keeper.

mmmmm delicious icing

I can sing a rainbow…

Well maybe not, but continuing in the tradition of glorifying other peoples’ cupcake experiments – check out out these lurid rainbow cupcakes.  Rainbow Brite would be proud.

Mmmm cupcakes…

Continuing in my quest to test out my new and improved oven functions I cooked up some cupcakes the other night.  I had to search a while on the internet to find a cake recipe I was happy with.  Most of them had extraordinary amounts of egg or sugar in them.  The one I ended up using had moderate amounts of each and produced lovely sweet cakey cupcakes.

I used a basic butter cake recipe from Best Recipes.  Ingredients and directions as below.

• 185 grams butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tspn vanilla essence
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups SR flour
• 1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Cream butter, sugar and vanilla.  Add eggs to butter mixture one at a time, mixing well between additions.  Add flour and milk, mix well.  Divide evenly between patty cases or muffin pans.  Cook for 15 – 20 minutes until cooked through and golden brown.

I found this made between 12 and 14 cupcakes.  In addition to the plain cake mixture I added a dollop of the Strawberry and Rhubarb jam (that I bought at the Tamborine markets) to the centre of each cupcake before baking.  I didn’t ice them at all because the jam made them sweet enough, but they turned out beautifully.  Although there weren’t a dozen left by the next morning, the remaining few were snapped up quickly at work.

Best baking idea ever?

I have only three words – Froot Loop Cupcakes.  Best baking ever? Or devil’s cupcakes?  You decide.