The long Easter weekend is finally here! I have been baking lots lately and have loads to share with you over the next few days. I have also been experimenting with my new DSLR camera so hopefully you'll like the new photography (but remember I'm still learning!)

In the meantime I thought I'd share some quick iPhone snaps of this morning's family Easter activity - cornflake cake making! We melted Casbury Dairy Milk chocolate and added a few teaspoons of honey (you could use golden syrup) to make the chocolate a little thinner and to provide a glue element. Once cool we poured over the cornflakes and mixed until thoroughly coated. Eloise had her own mixture, bowl and spoon but most of her cornflakes ended up in her mouth rather than the cupcake cases!

Once we had finished mixing we popped them into bright butterfly cases and added a couple of mini eggs to match the Easter theme. A few hours in the fridge should set the mixture... and off to an Easter hunt we go!

Pancake day! Not usually a big deal in our household but now we have a 2 year old it seemed a great time to start a tradition.

Possibly I was a little overenthusiastic allowing Eloise free reign during the mixing process... Despite the chaos they taste good and after I had spent an hour cleaning the kitchen post apocalypse I made savoury pancakes for the grown ups (me and Chris) filled with peppers, onions, ham and cheese. Topped with fresh tomato and cheese and baked in the oven they were delish.

I've been off work illl for a few weeks hence my lack of blog posts.Unfortunately this has resulted in a freeze on my baking. All my Christmas plans out the window!

But now things are looking up I am hoping to make some Christmas cake pops this weekend and have been searching the net for inspiration. Here are a selection of my favourites:

Keeping in the festive spirit I just saw these adorable gingerbread houses which perch on the side of a mug. How adorable!

The tutorial looks quite fiddle, probably not the easiest intriduction to gingerbread for a novice like me but they are very impressive and the perfect complement to Christmas lattes! Next year perhaps...

I just saw this idea on The Great British Bake Off finalist Holly Bell's blog www.recipesfromanormalmum.com and had to share.

How simple but effective. Any flavour cupcakes you fancy (cinammon spiced or orange zest would be nice) in red and green paper cases topped with a swirl of buttercream (brandy buttercream anyone?) and decorated with a chocolate coin! Loving it.

I had 2 Halloween parties to go to this year. The first was my friend Laura's 30th do and the second was my in-laws halloween party.

Not wanting to disappoint i decided to make some cupcakes. I decided to go for vanilla cupcakes with a blood (aka jam) core.

I found these really cute cupcake cases and cutout decorations in Waitrose but nearly passed out when i got home and realised they had cost me £15.00! Luckily there was 2 dozen so enough for both parties.

For the first party i went for orange vanilla icing and black sparkly glitter. They looked really fun.

For the second party i decided to add another colour to the mix and opted for a lurid luminous green picking up on the green edging stripe on the cupcake cases.

The green cupcakes were iced lemon flavoured and the orange ones were  iced vanilla flavour

The black glitter really popped off the green and added an extra dimension to the overall effect.

Next year i think i'll try some royal icing cobwebs - if i ever get round to learning how to do royal icing!!!