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How To Make Your Own Cup Cakes – Recipe

Food & Drink, , ,

Cup cakes have become all of the rage in recent years and they are no longer the simple and plain small sponge cake that they used to be but instead have become elaborately decorated treats for adults and children alike.

In the UK cupcakes used to be known as fairy cakes and there is really not much difference between a traditional fairy cake recipe and cup cakes.

So if you are looking for a recipe for how to make cup cakes then they are really pretty simple in terms of the ingredients although the execution of the baking of cup cakes is a bit of a master art.

There are a lot of different cup cake recipes out there and the quantities of the ingredients varies between bakers – some will have equal quantities of butter, flour and sugar but others will have mixed quantities. For a simple cup cake recipe you will need:

4oz self raising flour
3oz castor sugar
2 eggs
3oz butter

To really get the best cup cakes you need to experiment with relative quantities so that you get a mix that works well for you and the flavour of cup cake that you are making.

For some cup cakes you will also add vanilla essence and for chocolate cup cakes you can substitute cocoa powder for some of the flour, etc. So use this base to work out what works best for you in making your own cup cake recipe.

You can use the all in one method which involves just basically adding all the ingredients together and mixing, or you can use the traditional method of creaming the butter and the sugar together, adding the eggs slowly and then folding in the flour. Spoon the cup cake mixture into small cake cases and cook in a medium oven (180 C)  for 12-15 minutes.

The main art of making cup cakes these days seems to be the frosting – this can be a cream cheese frosting or a butter icing – there are many recipes and you just need to google cup cake recipes or cup cake icing and you will get a wealth of choices.  Personally I cream together butter and icing sugar and add colouring as necessary (or maybe some flavouring if required).

Many people have turned their love for baking into a cup cake business in their spare time and are making some extra income at home by doing this.

Warren Buffett and Bank of America

Finance & Insurance,

Warren Buffett is someone that a lot of people look up to when trying to decide where to invest their money. In fact some people believe that Warren Buffett has far too much control and influence over the financial health of the US and beyond, too much for any one person anyway.

But last month he came to the rescue of Bank of America by investing $5bn pounds in the company. The fact that so much confidence was shown in Bank of America can only help it’s position and give investors the impetus to also show their confidence in the bank.

Warren Buffett is generally regarded as one of the most successful investors in the world and is the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Anything that Warren Buffett invests in therefore comes under huge scrutiny and there are always scores of people ready to follow suit and invest in a similar fashion.

However, the deal to invest in Bank of America was said to be more of a long term thing and perhaps would not be the same as buying Bank of America shares for the short term.  In any investment it is worthwhile looking at your own situation with regards to the possibilities and to get advice to see if a perticular investment will suit your portfolio.

So just following the investments of Warren Buffett as they occur may not reap you exactly the rewards that you are looking for!

Money – Gold Prices

Finance & Insurance,

If you are looking to invest in gold right now then you need to keep a close eye on gold prices. A lot of money has gone into gold in recent years and this investment has paid off as gold prices reached a peak. While the rest of the financial world struggled, the benefit of investing in gold was the fact that you actually had a physical commodity rather than the theoretical paper property of money that could be wiped out in a very short amount of time.

Gold prices now are still at an all time high. The rise in gold prices started about 5 years ago and and has escalated to a level not seen before. Prior to the 5 year rise seen recently the prices were pretty static for the 20 years before that.

The reason for the increase in gold prices in the last 5 years has been debated a lot in the press. Generally it is understood that people buy gold for it’s value as a tradable commodity and the fact that it is a good thing to invest in in times of uncertain inflation. Gold will always have value and be tradable so may be considered a safer investment than other things.

So the question you need to ask if you are planning on investing in gold is, are prices going to rise any higher and are you looking for long term or short term gains? What you need to decide is what you think the ceiling for gold prices might be. At the end of the day prices depend on supply and demand and what people are willing to buy and sell for and gold prices are no different.

Music – Lady Gaga

Entertainment,

Lady Gaga has never been one to shy away from the shock factor. Although her music is probably considered quite mainstream, her personality and shock appearances at many music awards and the like have made her into a well known figure.

Not content with dressing up as a piece of meat at the MTV music awards in 2010 and also appearing hatching from an egg at a performance at the grammys, she added another string to her strange bow of outfits by dressing up as her alter ego – a man called Jo Calderone.

The question is, is Lady Gaga doing this all to seek extra publicity for her music? And if so, firstly does she actually need to do this as her music seems to stand up for itself, having won many awards and sold in large quantities, and secondly, if she is doing this to publicise her music then how is she going to keep up with the wacky things she has done so far?

Not only this, I think we need to ask, that if she does not exhibit all of this bizarre behaviour in the future, then will her future sales be affected? How much of her personality is rubbing off on the reason why people by her music? Is it cool to buy music by Lady Gaga because she is a wacky personality and would people still buy it if she was just the everyday girl on the street?

There is no doubt that her music is good, and usually original (although I do believe that some songs show a distinct similarity to Madonna in my opinion) but how long will she last? Only as long as she can think up the next wacky outfit or publicity stunt?

Beyonce on YouTube

Entertainment, ,

So recently Beyonce announced that she was pregnant by her husband Jay-Z at the VMA awards. As I did not get to see these awards I tried to check out the announcement on YouTube. However, one annoying thing about youtube is that people often load up their videos with misleading titles and so you don’t really know what you are going to get until you load the YouTube video.

I searched for Beyonce and the VMA awards on YouTube and I must have looked through about 20 videos before giving up and deciding that the announcement of Beyonce’s pregnancy was not on there. Maybe it was but I found it impossible to find. All that I got were people sitting in front of their computer and commenting on the fact that Beyonce had announced her pregnancy. Maybe the proceedings were protected by some sort of copyright but I just couldn’t find  the YouTube video that showed what she said.

I was interested in seeing the recording of the VMAs thenselves as some people I know had not been very complimentary about the way that she announced it and how that might impact other people who were trying to get pregnant but were struggling.

Anyway, I might keep checking YouTube to see if I can find the real Beyonce video but in the meantime if anyone finds it I would be interested to know and would appreciate a link here in the comments, thanks.