2016: Year in Review and Top 10 Posts

Well, it's been quite a year for me - how about you?

2016 had some major highlights - I got married in June, went on honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands and I gained a niece - my sister had a baby in November. On a sadder note we lost my grandfather this year.

From a blogging perspective, I really enjoyed sharing the details of my wedding with my readers - you can see photos from the day here.

 

My sister and I made my wedding cake between us (we didn't know she was pregnant when she offered to do it originally!) and I loved the way it turned out.

 

Mrs Cowe and her cow cake

This mascarpone orange streusel slice from the movie Burnt was probably the most complicated thing I made all year; I won't be doing that again in a hurry!

 

 

I was very proud of these Halloween pumpkins I carved in October:

 

 

I was even more proud that I managed to do sugar-free September!

 

So are you curious to see what my top ten most popular posts were in 2016? I certainly was, so looked back through the stats and these are the ones that had the most hits. Check them out if you didn't see them - and let me know if you had any particular favourites on my blog in 2016!

 

In reverse order:

 

10: Slimming World Cauliflower Rosti Pie. View the post.

I've found that recipes labelled with Slimming World do quite well, even though I am not actually counting Syns or following Slimming World any more.

 



 

9: Eton Mess Cupcakes. View the post.

I made these for a summer barbecue and they were very popular.

 

 

8: Mary Berry's Lemon Drizzle Traybake. View the post.

Mary Berry is always popular these days thanks to the Great British Bake Off, and if memory serves I made these right before the episode of GBBO where the contestants were asked to make a drizzle cake, which I think led to people searching for this recipe.

 

 

7: Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes. View the post.

These mimic the flavour of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and contain a whole Ferrero Rocher baked inside the cupcake!

 

 

6: A review of Provena Gluten-Free products and a giveaway. View the post.

The popularity of this post surprises me a bit but it was retweeted by Provena and everyone likes a giveaway!

 

 

5: Chocolate Easter Cupcakes. View the post.

These were very simple but tasted great and decorated with Mini Eggs which are always popular.

 

 

4: Floating Anti-Gravity Mini Egg White Chocolate and Lemon Cake. View the post.

I used Lakeland's anti-gravity cake kit to make this cake, which was amazing. The cake itself was delicious too.

 

3: Slimming World Creamy Coriander and Minted Chicken. View the post.

As I said before, Slimming World posts are popular. This is a great dinner recipe that's really easy to make.

 

2: The Alphabakes Challenge, April 2016. View the post.

Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker and I ran the Alphabakes challenge for over 4 years, and are currently taking a break. This was one of the final times we ran the challenge and the letter this time was T. It didn't attract that many entries but a lot of people have obviously visited the post and looked at the recipes!

 

And at number one, the most popular post on Caroline Makes in 2016 was....

 

1: my amazing Jaffa cake cupcakes. View the post.

These cupcakes taste just like eating a Jaffa cake - they have a real Jaffa cake at the bottom, then a sponge cake the texture of a Jaffa cake base, an orange marmalade filling, chocolate frosting and a mini Jaffa cake on top. They were so good!

 

 

 

So that in a nutshell was the year for Caroline Makes - I hope 2017 is another good one!

2015: Year in Review

For the past couple of years I've written new year's resolution blog posts but then not really looked at them again, so I've ended up ticking a few things off the list but not many. I thought that this year instead I would look back over some of my favourite recipes and blog posts from 2015. If you didn't see these first time around I'd encourage you to take a look!

As of the end of December, page views on my blog had reached more than 1.16 million. The most popular post ever on my blog is still my pigs in mud cake from 2013, followed by this strawberry and cream fraisier and thirdly jap cakes - which I am being contacted about by people from all over the country even three years after writing this post.

In terms of posts from 2015, here are some of my highlights:

This Konditor & Cook Curly Whirly cake was amazing - and is on the front cover of their cookery book. I also posted this Bertie Basset Liquorice Allsort cake which I made a few months previously for a family birthday.

In February I finally cooked a salmon in the dishwasher which I'd wanted to do for ages, I made this (fake) wedding cake on a cake decorating course, some chocolate hearts for Valentine's day. I also made a memory jar which I plan to open on this new year's eve; and took my fiancé to Cambridge for the first time for dinner at my old college. I hosted Alphabakes this month and the letter was V.

In March I learned how to make marshmallows from scratch, made this amazing floating malteser cake for comic relief - which won the work bake-off and has led to complete strangers knowing who I am because of it! I also launched a new blog challenge, Formula 1 Foods, which never had many people take part but was fun for me to do.

April saw these gooey caramel filled chocolate brownies which I made for my then boyfriend's birthday (he's now my fiancé!) and threw him an Aston Martin themed party complete with car cake. I also made a very light and moist lemon cake for a work colleague's baby shower and various things for Easter including this carrot cake shaped like a carrot! I hosted Alphabakes this month and the letter was B.

In May I took part in a Food n Flix challenge to make something inspired by the movie The Goonies, and my own creation of these Babe Ruth cupcakes were some of the best I have ever eaten. I also made doughnuts for the first time.

In June I finally got a chance to use my ice cream van cupcake stand for these cupcakes; I made this shirt and tie cake for Father's Day and a Louis Vuitton handbag cake which I thought looked a lot like the real thing. I hosted Alphabakes this month and the letter was O.

In July I discovered you can cook pizza on the BBQ, got into spiralizing, celebrated summer with this Pimms cream cake and wrote a long step-by-step blog post on how to make a wired sugar flower.

August stood out because I got engaged! I also threw a strawberry-themed baby shower for a friend, went to a BBQ event with Quorn, I discovered that you can make a vegan meringue and cream without using eggs or dairy; Ros from the More Than Occasional Baker came across this great trick to make a watermelon cocktail; I  also made this family photo word collage which has pride of place in my living room. I hosted Alphabakes this month and the letter was Z.

I love Singapore Sling cocktails and in September recreated the flavours of the drink in cake form! I made a beautiful sugarpaste rose in a cake decorating class and this Sonic the hedgehog bas-relief; I also shared several recipes and ideas from an Italian themed buffet I did earlier in the year and showed my readers the birthday cake that my sister made for me (also much earlier in the year!).

Halloween gave me lots of baking opportunities in October including this haunted gingerbread house and toffee apple cupcakes, while I did some crafting and made my mum and mother-in-law-to-be these decorated notebooks for wedding planning notes. I used some mini Reese's Pieces I got in America to make this amazing chocolate peanut butter bundt, and best of all - easily my baking highlight of the year -I made the wedding cake for my good friend Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker. I finally got around to posting another wedding cake on my blog - actually a fake cake but I did the decoration myself in a cake decorating course earlier in the year. I also spotted the ultimate cheese toastie, wrapped in bacon, on the internet and had a go at making it myself - it's definitely more of an occasional treat and in fact I haven't made it again but it was very good! I hosted Alphabakes this month and the letter was W.

November's blog posts included this Ferrari Formula 1 birthday cake I made for my dad, French toast stuffed with cream cheese inspired by a breakfast I had on holiday in America, and I created a new twist on a Christmas pudding for Waitrose, with a melting caramel middle and salted caramel sauce.

And finally December saw a lot of Christmas baking: this chocolate fondue cake was inspired by The Pink Whisk, and is a great dessert for a party; I made a chocolate gingerbread house, some chocolate Christmas tree cakes filled with homemade mincemeat; a chocolate igloo cake complete with polar bear, and these chocolate santa lollies. It sounds like I ate nothing but chocolate in December but I assure you that wasn't the case - I didn't even try any of the igloo cake myself and everything else was made for sharing! I also hosted the Alphabakes challenge this month and the letter was N.

So that just leaves me to wish all of you a happy new year; thanks for reading, commenting and taking part in the Alphabakes and Formula 1 Foods blog challenges. I wonder what next year will bring?

New Year's Resolutions

I've never really been one for New Year's Resolutions - I don't even bother with generalised ones like "lose weight". But after I came out of a long relationship a few years ago, I made a list of resolutions that was more like things I wanted to do, and steadily worked my way through the list - ranging from taking ice skating lessons to starting a blog. I thought it would be fun this year to make some foodie and blog-related resolutions - or at least, a list of things I want to do. Why not leave a comment in the box below and tell me if you have any similar foodie resolutions?

In 2014 I want to:

- Redesign my blog. I put very little thought into it when I started the blog and was only capable of using the blogspot template, but as my boyfriend is something very senior in IT, I'm sure between us we can work out how to make it look a bit better!

- Improve my ranking in the Foodies 100. I was almost in the top 100, at 108, when they changed the way the metrics were calculated, and at the same time I changed my web address from carolinemakesblogspot.co.uk to carolinemakes.net and I fell several hundred positions.

- Figure out and start using the likes of Kred, Klout etc - I probably need to do this to achieve the above resolution, though so far it's been hard to find the time.

- Reach 400,000 blog hits. I am at 290,000 at the moment, so I think 300,000 is a far too easily achievable target, and I may as well aim for the next big one!

- Make better use of Facebook to promote my blog and start using Google Plus. I think I do OK with using Twitter to promote blog posts but I could definitely be better at replying to tweets.

- Work out how to get on more company/PR mailing lists for product reviews and so on - if anyone has any advice please let me know!

- On which note, make more of an effort to reply to comments on my blog. I do appreciate them everyone, honestly!

- Take a cooking or cake decorating class - I've already signed up to an 8-week evening class in royal icing and piping, starting in January, and before the end of the year I'd like to do something else as well.

- Sort out my cake decorating cupboard that has gotten into a complete mess again!

In 2014, I want to eat at:

- Hawksmoor
- Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium - which is hopefully opening soon! I've got a voucher for afternoon tea for two already as I contributed to the crowdfunding scheme to help the place open - I am a little bit feline-obsessed!
- Bubbledogs - I wanted to go here in 2013 but never managed it
- The Lazy Cow in Salisbury (my home town)
- Bubba Gump's, if and when it finally opens in the UK (there was meant to be one opening in London in November but it has all gone quiet)
- Anywhere in Cambridge - I've wanted to take my boyfriend there for a long weekend for a while and so far we haven't found the time. He's never visited Cambridge, and it's where I went to university and where a lot of my friends still live, so it means a lot to me.
I realise none of these are particularly high-brow and most people would have places like the Fat Duck on their list, but I am a fussy eater and don't think I would enjoy it!

In 2014, I want to cook:

- Salmon in a dishwasher - apparently it's a good method of cooking fish, and other things!
- Bread: I've never made bread (apart from the bread sticks I made at Christmas) other than using my breadmaker so want to try out some proper Paul Hollywood recipes
- Heath bar pie 
- something to use up a lot of the ingredients that are nearing their use-by date, including candy I brought back from America
- something to try out some pieces of baking and cake decorating equipment I have bought but never used. That's a fairly generalised comment but for instance I've got the Wilton heart-shaped tasty fill pan which was quite expensive and I've never used (though it doesn't help that the recipe leaflet with it calls for some ingredients I don't think you can get in this country), and some ice shot glass moulds I want to use for a chocolate dessert.
- Giant cupcake - I've tried a couple of times but it's never turned out that well so I really want to get to grips with it this year.
- Something using the Lakeland R-evolution Cuisine kit I got for my birthday and haven't used yet
- a proper cream pie like the one I had in Wyoming
- a really good approximation of a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake; the recipes I've tried before haven't quite tasted right.
- Something from my Artusi cookbook even though it is in German so will take me longer to figure out
- Homemade mozzarella sticks, as my boyfriend loves the ones you get in TGI Friday's
- Try out a couple of the Great British Bake Off technical challenges that I haven't already made - perhaps angel food cake or doughnuts.
- More "food from fiction" - often when I read a novel I am transported by the description of food and there are some books in which food and meals play a large part. I am occasionally inspired to make something based on the book but haven't done so for several months so I want to get back into it, as I have several books in mind! I do regularly take part in Food n Flix, which has a similar idea of making food based on a movie, but the films are chosen by someone each month and I want to make some of my own ideas.
- I want to try out some meals with 'hidden veg' as my boyfriend and I are very fussy eaters, but there are plenty of recipes I could try - like a pasta sauce - where I can add things we wouldn't normally eat and hopefully not notice! I think I will also need to make some more freeze-ahead meals too.

That's all I can think of for now, but I might add to this list as other things occur to me. Do you have any suggestions for things I should try to cook or bake this year?

2013 - the year that was

Happy new year!
How was your 2013? This is how it went for me....

January

• I joined a choir, as I loved singing in the choir at school and thought it would be fun to do again. I sing soprano in Barts choir, London's largest amateur choir; we rehearse on Monday nights and one Saturday a month and performed three concerts over the year.
• While January is often a time for healthy eating it didn't stop me making this awesome deep-dish pizza, though I have also made plenty of Slimming World recipes over the year.
• I also posted this dog basket cake on my blog, which I had made the year before in a cake decorating class.

February

• I arranged a surprise afternoon tea at the Langham hotel in London for a friend's birthday. She only knew that I had invited her and her daughter to lunch and was given the hotel address at the last minute; when she arrived she found two of our other friends who had travelled up from Cheltenham and Hampshire as well. I chose the Langham because the birthday girl is vegan and the hotel offered an entire vegan afternoon tea menu, which was amazing, though I had the regular afternoon tea menu.

•  I spent Valentine's Day at home with my boyfriend and cooked us dinner, including this lovely dessert - chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup with an edible spoon!

•  I also made these Elvis cupcakes with banana, peanut butter and bacon, which tasted a lot better than you might think!

 March

•  My boyfriend and I had a wonderful few days in Lapland, husky sledding, snow mobiling and staying in a glass igloo, though unfortunately we didn't get to see the northern lights (which had been the main aim of the trip!). The food in the half board lodge where we were staying left a lot to be desired but it was a fabulous holiday, albeit a short one.

• I made this pistachio, strawberry and rosewater cake for Mothers' Day which tasted delicious.

•  I also made this "pigs in mud" cake which went down very well at work and was featured on our company intranet, and has also proved my most popular blog post to date, with over 23,300 hits, which is amazing!

 Easter saw me cook and bake quite a few things but I was particularly pleased with these surprise Easter egg cakes, and everyone I gave one to loved them. 

April

•  The month began with my boyfriend's birthday; we went to the top of the Shard which had only just opened, and I made him a giant hamburger birthday cake.

•  My own birthday was later in the month and I turned 34; I had a Russian doll themed party and made a cake, cupcakes, cookies and savoury food around that theme.

•  I spent my birthday mucking out the animals at London Zoo! My boyfriend got me the "be a zookeeper for a day" experience at London Zoo for Christmas and as I wanted to wait until the weather was nicer, I decided to do it on my birthday. I shovelled straw in the giraffe enclosure, scrubbed down the penguin pool and hand-fed several animals including giraffes, anteaters and lemurs!

•  My choir performed its first concert of the year; we sang Faure's Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

May

• My boyfriend and I took a cookery class at the Atelier des Chefs in London and made burgers, potato wedges and onion rings and ate the meal we had prepared afterwards. By chance nobody else had booked the same class so we had a private lesson, which was brilliant!
• For her birthday my sister wanted to see the Rocky Horror Show so as well as going along in fancy dress as Magenta, I made her this themed birthday cake.

• My boyfriend's cousin got married and asked me to make some cupcakes for her wedding reception. I tried out a few techniques including making a cupcake bouquet and different types of sugar flowers, and was really pleased with the way they turned out.

 


June

• I'd struggled with making cake pops for a while so in June I took a class at the Make Lounge and finally got the hang of how to make them. We decorated them in different styles - I particularly liked the animal ones.

•  I was sent a book to review called Cooking with Flowers, and made this wonderful cardamom layer cake with raspberry and rose mascarpone from the book for my mum's birthday.

•  I met Ms Cupcake, author and proprietor of a successful vegan bakery in Brixton, at an event in June. It was a vegan potluck so we were all asked to make a sweet or savoury dish. I made the chocolate mint cupcakes from Ms Cupcake (Melissa Morgan)'s book, which had just been released. I was very nervous when she said it was the first time she had ever eaten a cake someone else (other than her staff) had made from her recipe - but luckily she thought it was very good!
• I felt like I'd finally mastered macarons, albeit with a little help from a packet mix!

•  I was also quite pleased with these cake pops that I decorated to look like characters from the Chronicles of Narnia:

July

• I'm interested in photography and love animals so the zoo photography lesson that my boyfriend and I took together was brilliant. We had professional tuition and got up close to lots of the animals.
• My choir gave its second concert of the year; we performed Bach's Magnificat and Vivaldi's Gloria in Cadogan Hall in London's Sloane Square.
• I attended my first Clandestine Cake Club. The theme was vintage so I made a retro Battenburg cake as I remembered eating it as a child.

• I was also invited to my first blogger event, and celebrated Christmas in July with the Dot Com Gift Shop.

August

• To celebrate the 100th birthday of Aston Martin my boyfriend and I took part in the centenary rally, with 100 cars driving 100 miles. It was great to be a part of it and see vintage vehicles and modern Aston Martins all driving along in a line. We started at Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire, and ended by coincidence at Wilton House, the stately home in the village I grew up in. We had afternoon tea there, then stayed with my parents who came to the Wilton House car show the next day.
• I also did a llama trek - a walk through the woods with a llama on a lead!
• In the spirit of summer I made these sex on the beach cocktail cupcakes:

• I guest hosted the Food 'n' Flix blog challenge for the first time and chose When Harry Met Sally as the movie.
• The best thing that happened this month though was the fact that my boyfriend finally moved in with me :-)  We are living in my house at the moment and planning to buy a much bigger place together next year.

September

• My boyfriend had just started a new job so couldn't take any time off work, but I had a lot of annual leave to use up. I decided to make the most of the fact that I was going on holiday without him by going somewhere he didn't want to visit, so I spent a week in Cambodia, seeing the Angkor Wat temples, and on the way home stopped off in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, where I went up the Petronas towers.

• I also went back to Cambridge for my 15 year university reunion. It was great catching up with old friends and revisiting our old haunts, and we had a black tie dinner in the formal dining hall.

• Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker asked me to make a cake for her pink princess themed birthday party and this is what I came up with - what's more, it's vegan:

 
October

• I was thrilled to discover that a recipe for toffee popcorn cupcakes that I had submitted to a competition earlier in the year had been chosen for inclusion in a charity cookbook. My recipe was published in Macmillan's Little Book of Treats, alongside recipes from Mary Berry, Rachel Khoo, Gizzi Erskine, Antonio Carluccio and others.

•  Caroline Makes was also chosen as best food blog for October in a monthly competition run by Capricorn. My prize was a year's supply of goat's cheese! It was almost Christmas before I received the vouchers - it turns out that a year's supply equates to 100g every two weeks, which is pretty good. I've yet to find somewhere that stocks Capricorn goat's cheese where I can use the vouchers, though as soon as I do, I'm looking forward to trying out some recipes!

• I sent this gift box of get well cookies to a friend who had an operation on her foot

November

• I finally had the chance to visit my company's head office in Baltimore, USA. I spent an enjoyable but busy week meeting colleagues, then took the following week as holiday. My boyfriend flew out to join me and we did some sightseeing in Baltimore, including a visit to Charm City Cakes from the TV show Ace of Cakes, and then hired a car and drove to Richmond in Virginia, followed by North Carolina. There we had a behind the scenes tour of a Nascar racetrack and visited one of the locations from the Hunger Games film as well as America's largest house, the Biltmore estate. Finally we spent a few days in Washington DC visiting lots of monuments and museums and of course a lot of restaurants!

 

• My choir gave its final concert of the year, Brahms' German Requiem, in the Royal Albert Hall. It was a fantastic venue and an amazing experience to sing there in front of thousands of people, including my parents, my boyfriend and his mum.
• I went to my second Clandestine Cake Club meeting, which had a bonfire night theme, so I made this toffee apple bonfire cake.

•  This opera gateau is worth highlighting as it tasted absolutely gorgeous, though it was a bit fiddly to make!

•  I threw a Doctor Who themed party when we gathered to watch the 50th anniversary episode. My menu included K9 hot dogs, fishfingers in "custard", adipose made of marshmallows, dalek cupcakes, cybermen cookies and sonic screwdriver cocktails.

  

  
  

December

• It's been an eventful month at work for one reason and another; I was the co-organiser of the children's Christmas party and also helped organise the main staff Christmas party, and there have been a few other things happening as well that I will talk more about in the new year.
• I did a lot of baking for Christmas, including chocolate chip biscotti, Hershey's kisses thumbprint cookies,a chocolate yule log, reindeer cake pops, and a Baileys chocolate cheesecake.

 

I also made some bath fizzers for my boyfriend's Secret Santa at work; they were surprisingly easy to make and worked really well!

Finally I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, who is my co-host of Alphabakes, and of course to thank everyone who has taken part this year. Hosting the challenge has been great fun and it's been fascinating seeing what you have all come up with. There are a few more letters of the alphabet to come, which include U, Y and Z, so that should be interesting!