The Beat That My Heart Skipped – A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations. By Rohini Wahi.

I am delighted to introduce our final and eagerly anticipated contributor of the week – Louise Gorrod! Louise runs the highly successful and much loved design focused PR company PR Girl with her husband David. Our paths have always crossed at design shows and industry events, and David and Louise are noted as some of the friendliest PR’s to work with. Maybe it’s their vested interest or genuine love for their clients, or the fact that they are husband and wife – whatever it is – all these feel good factors have worked to make them a much loved part of the industry.

However, it wasn’t until Louise went on maternity leave with her and David’s second child Arthur that I discovered another side to her [and a warm and fuzzy peek into their family life]. While browsing one day I stumbled upon Louise’s new hobby – Louise’s Kitchen – a food blog that instantly enveloped me into the heart of David and Louise’s sunny Brighton home. I knew I had found my Food Editor!

Louise will be contributing every Friday, sometimes with her own recipes and other times introducing other notable foodie contributors. She begins with one of her simplest but most delicious recipes for ‘Everyday Cupcakes.’ – Rohini

The saying goes that ’some people eat to live and others live to eat’ – I, without any doubt, fall into the latter category. I’ve loved food and cooking it from an early age. To me food is the backbone of family life. But it’s more than simply the food itself – it’s the various aspects that support the meal that create such comfort and familiarity; from the occasion, the company and the season right down to the dinnerware the food is served on. Home cooking is the tastiest, most satisfying way to cook and eat.

I grew up on my mum’s home cooking and it rubbed off on me. Many of my warmest childhood memories have a ‘taste’ and a comforting aroma – molten macaroni cheese bubbling away in orange enamel dishes from Habitat circa 1970, roast dinners with all the trimmings on blue and white ‘English Scenic’ plates. Regular baked treats such as bread pudding, flapjack, dark rich fruitcakes, Grantham gingerbread biscuits and coconut loaf cake with pink icing were always well received come teatime.

I now have a beautiful family of my own and find myself creating such food memories often subconsciously. I hope to pass on my passion and knowledge for cooking to my children – it’s a gift for life.  My daughter, Lily, who is 4, loves to help in the kitchen especially when I’m baking cakes, and I hope that our latest addition to the family, Arthur, just 4 and a half months, will follow suit – he certainly has a great appetite for milk!

It’s hard to say what my style of cooking is … I haven’t eaten meat for nearly 20 years, but that’s not to say I don’t salivate at the smell of bacon cooking. I like family food, I like my carbs, I like seasonal produce and I have a sweet tooth. I’m certainly no authority when it comes to cooking, but I love nothing better than cooking for loved-ones, friends and family – I will spend an age trawling through recipe books old and new creating a menu to suit the season and occasion.

My kitchen, is for me, the heart of my home. My kitchen sold my house to me. It’s not huge, but a good size. It doesn’t boast any mod cons, but it has a cosy family feel about it that I love. I’ve been told that my kitchen units had a previous life in an old Brighton school. It’s quite a personal room filled with old and new well-thumbed cookbooks, practical and useful cookware, a family dining table that belonged to my grandparents coupled with Panton Chairs from my days working at the Conran Shop. My kitchen shelves are crammed with all sorts of kitchen-alia, from my prize Biba food jars to a treasured felt cottage egg cosy that Lily bought me one birthday.

My real passion is baking – it’s a chance to be creative and I relish that. Cakes always make people smile which is nice! I often bake birthday gifts, trying to find the perfect recipe to suit the receiver.  September and October are busy ‘birthday’ months for me so the kitchen is frequently filled with the scent of vanilla, spice and cocoa. Lately for a change to the traditional round birthday cake, I’ve been making boxes of cupcakes. I found some inexpensive boxes that come with an insert that holds the cupcakes steady. The last cupcake batch I made was a trio of designs for a trio of dear friends, Phil, Lucy and their 10-year-old daughter Martha. For Phil I went for a more masculine cupcake topped with a chocolate frosting and dipped in chocolate sprinkles and studded with silver sugar balls. Lucy needed something feminine and delicate, so a vanilla frosting was adorned with mini strawberries, currants and a small mint leaf from the garden and for Martha they just had to be pink with rainbow coloured sprinkles! Needless to say my trio were very content with their boxes of bespoke bakes.

I’ve several recipes for a basic vanilla sponge, but more often than not use this fail safe recipe that I got from a book I borrowed from the library a few years back when making fairy cakes for one of Lily’s birthday parties. For the butter icing I’ve recently been following the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook as it has just the right consistency.

- Louise

Everyday Cupcakes

Makes 10 – 12 depending on the size of your cakes cases.

Ingredients

1 tbsp milk
3 eggs lightly beaten
110g caster sugar
115g self raising flour
85g butter, softened

…. and for the vanilla frosting

80g of unsalted butter, softened
250g icing sugar, sifted
2 drops of vanilla extract
25ml milk

…. and for the chocolate frosting

100g unsalted butter, softened
300g icing sugar, sifted
40g cocoa powder, sifted
40ml milk

Method

1. Heat oven to 190C. Fill a bun tin with 10 – 12 cake cases.

2. Using an electric whisk, beat the milk, eggs + sugar until thick and glossy and doubled in bulk – it should leave a trail when lifted. Add half the flour and half the butter and fold in. Then fold in the remaining flour and butter.

3. Fill the cases almost to the top with the mixture and bake for approx 10mins or until risen and golden.

4. Now for the frostings. For the vanilla frosting start by beating the icing sugar and butter together in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk). Beat on a medium-slow speed until the mixture comes together and is well mixed. Turn the mixer down to a slow speed. Combine the milk with the vanilla in a separate bowl, then add to the butter mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time. Once all the milk has been incorporated, turn the mixer up to high speed. Continue beating until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least five minutes. The longer the frosting is beaten, the fluffier and lighter it becomes. For the chocolate frosting following the same instructions for the vanilla frosting adding the sifted cocoa powder along with the icing sugar and omitting the vanilla.

5 When completely cool ice with the butter icing, then all that’s left is to let your inner ‘artist’ go wild with your decorations of choice!