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The next time you get the urge to bake, don't panic! You don't have to wait many hours for your butter to get up to room temperature, oh no.

Simply grate your butter, the be on your marks.....get set.....BAKE!

Credit goes to Noor for this useful spoon to cup conversion table

Salam Alaikum (Peace be upon you)/ Hello my readers,

It's been a while since I posted, I have been searching for my blogging voice, mojo whatever you want to call it but that doesn't been I haven't been baking oh no! I have made a number of muffins, bread, cupcakes, etc they have either not turned out as pretty as I wanted or I have simply just been off mood for spending time snapping pics and now to top it off my oven broke, yes really!

For a while now the door handles have been falling off and then two days ago the fan stopped working and I smelled a terrible burning when I was about to bake my first attempt at a 8 strand braided loaf! I immediately switched the oven off whipped out my halogen oven gave it the once over (cleaned it) and transferred unsucessfully the braided loaf to a smaller tray and baked, let's just sayit was edible but not pretty lol I was thankful alhamduillah that the stove part of my cooker was still working but then that stopped working yesterday too! Well, I have always wanted a conventional electric oven anyway, ever since my baking has become a daily habit, (it seems i can't go a day without feeling the urge even if i dont give in) as i have heard there better than electric fan ovens for baking, so when we have enough £ saved or a bargain comes our way that is what I hope to buy, inshaAllah (God willing)

I have experimented with halogen oven baking but hardly any of my tins/pans fit and I have noticed with cakes and bread especially, the top bakes while the bottom remains soft/pasty. I read online somewhere to treat cooking/baking in a halogen oven like a fan oven i.e lower temperature for less time but then I've had personal advice suggesting to bake at a higher temperature for longer which seems the right advice according to my experience so far... If any of you have specific halogen oven baking recipes feel free to share, thank you and until my next post, peace / Salam 

Well today is tuesday and my top tip is....always go with your gut instinct when adapting a recipe not his!

I must say it's the best looking Qalb El Louz i've made yet but it wasn't Qalb El Louz as dh knows and loves it!

It all started when my dh (dear husband) mentioned the qalb el louz here was tasty, the right texture but too thick! mmmm i was upset but kind of understand why he had said that because i used a smaller baking dish as my old 'special' qalb el louz tin i kind of scrapped earlier this year, it now sits at the bottom of my oven as a steamer for whenever i bake bread i fill it with water, needless to say it's not in the best of states and i was in no mood for scrubbing it whilst fasting. I ended up using my silicone bakeware which is soooo easy to clean but results were too thick!

Sooo while my other specialised baking tray was winging it's way in the post, dh couldn't wait a day or two and i had to make Qalb El Louz again, only this time he said use this tray pulling out of the kitchen cupboard my one and only HUGE non stick roasting tin....yeh errm this isn't going to work i said it will be too thin but the man gets what the man wants lol needless to say my qalb el louz pictured above, not only was super thin but it was well and truly roasted, tasting nice alot like algerian tamina which is delicious in it's own right, but not what I was aiming for.

I wonder next time inshAllah i can finally get it right, me wants to wait while next Ramadan to find out but i wonder is dh going to let me off the hook for a whole year, me thinks not!

Yesterday we had another confession, he is not so keen on cupcakes lol we were watching cupcake wars at the time, "not yours" he said (digging his way out of the hole) "but in general they are not all that" What do you think?

(photo taken from the daily meal)

I found this short little video how to frost a cake like a pro, hope it will be of use to you and me, once I get a cake decorating turntable that is, do you have one?

Check out Lizzy's video, learn how to decorate your cupcakes like a pro / student baker! Also, i recommend you check out Lizzy's your cup of cake blog for regular baking inspiration.

• Always add citric acid / lemon juice (the Inverter) along with your sugar and water at the beginning of making your syrup,  it speeds up the whole process of creating your syrup, for the science bit look here
• Once the syrup has been brought up to boiling point, if you notice any sugar crystals forming around the sides of the pot, use a pastry brush dipped in water to remove them. This will prevent burning and ensure the consistency of the mixture remains smooth.
• When you have finished reducing down your simple syrup to your desired thickness (remember it will become thicker as it cools) turn off the heat, then always place the lid on top of the pot/saucepan and leave to cool to room temperature, this also prevents crystallization occurring. Transfer to a clean container/jar then place in the fridge if you don't plan to use within say, a week.
• If all else fails and you forget the above, strain your syrup through a fine sieve to remove sugar crystals, sadly you will loose alot of sugar/syrup and flavour i.e. the vanilla seeds you see in the first photo.

All the above i learned  relearned over the last day and half.... now who said simple syrup was simple lol I've made many a syrup before for Ramadan sweets like basboosa, baklava, i must have been having a forgetful day!

If you want to know how you make an inverted syrup, head on over to LiveStrong