Hummingbird bakery cake days

On Friday the new Hummingbird Bakery book arrived through my letterbox and I was so excited to make some cakes from it. Yes, there are lots of cupcakes in it, but there are also many more layer cake, loaf cake, muffin and tray bake recipes to try. Oh and cheesecakes, so many delicious cheesecake recipes! Scott is very eager for me to make the chocolate lime cheesecake. It was my Grandad's birthday so it gave me the perfect excuse to make a layer cake AND cupcakes. I chose the maple & pecan cake and the beetroot chocolate cupcakes. I've made a beetroot chocolate cake before and it was delicious but this recipe had an added teaspoon of cinnamon which just brought out the flavour of the beetroot perfectly. So moist and delicious! I loved the maple & pecan layer cake too although some people said it was too sweet and not flavourful enough. Perhaps a teaspoon of vanilla extract next time will improve it. My only niggle with the recipes is that the quantities for the cupcake recipes seem slightly OTT. It says the recipes make 12-16 cupcakes but I ended up with 18 rather large cupcakes. The icing was even more off! I iced the 18 cupcakes (very generously) and still had enough left to ice about 8 more I bet. It seemed very wasteful to me to waste so much. Next time I may just halve the recipe and skimp slightly on the icing on the cupcakes (better for the waistline and your teeth). Have you bought the new Hummingbird Recipe book yet or tried any recipes out of it?

Oh and yesterday I did a guest post for the amazing collaborative blog, Where are my knees? 5 of my fave bloggers have got together in a bid to motivate and inspire each other to lose weight, tone up and generally get healthier. I was honoured to be asked to be their first guest poster about running and how to start it. The response has been hugely flattering too! It motivated me on a very hard 6k run this morning and now I am aching slightly but I know it's all worth it.