Maple pecan cupcakes

I should really start off with a warning or invitation whichever way you see it-this is the first of many cupcake posts to come. Reasons are multiple-the main one at the minute is that I have been at a lot of wedding parties and cupcakes are perfect party fare. That and the fact that I have always loved them and have been making them ever since I got introduced to them in home economics at school (by a very lovely teacher Mrs McMahon I think she was called-if anyone knows of her-pass the link on!), they were known as fairy cakes then. 

I am pointing this out I suppose just to clarify that all the cupcake making is not much to do with the fact that they are all the rage now. Though I am glad they are, I mean if they were not we would not have all the lovely array of gorgeous cupcake stands that are out now. In fact as I typed this it occurred to me it would be nice to line up all of mine and take a photo! They were well used throughout the wedding period, making me feel very justified in all the cake stand purchasing, ahem.

I made these awhile back actually and not for the weddings but have been meaning to post on them for a while. These are adapted from that seemingly ubiquitous book Cupcakes by Susannah Blake. It isn’t one I would purchase myself-there are better cupcake books out there; it was bought for me by my husband from one of the The Book People fares at his work place at the bargain price of £3. 

Anyhow to get to the point-the recipe in the book uses far too much maple syrup, making the cupcakes sickly sweet and I have a very sweet tooth. The recipe stipulated 160ml – I would start off with about 60ml and taste before you add anymore. If you feel the mixture is too stiff just loosen with some milk. I also thought just some loosely drizzled maple syrup on top of the buttercream worked fine, I didn’t make the caramelized pecans I  used some almond praline that I had in the fridge leftover from when I last made  Rachel Allen’s Ballymaloe Almond praline cake. You can just place a pecan on top of some maple syrup too.

A note also on the silicone cupcake cases used here - of course they are not practical when baking for large numbers or parties but even for at-home use I found them quite difficult to clean and they did not come out of the dishwasher clean either, so I’m not sure that I will be using them that much. 

See below for Recipe.

115g butter,softened

50g soft brown sugar

60-100mls maple syrup

2eggs

115g self-raising flour

60g Peacn nuts, roughly chopped

To decorate:

Caramelized pecans:

60g castor sugar

12pecans

Buttercream icing:

50g butter, softened

3 tablespoons maple syrup

145g icing sugar sifted

Preheat oven to 180◦C and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases

Cream butter and sugar together, then beat in maple syrup. Beat in eggs one at a time.Sift in flour and fold in. fold in nuts. Sppon mixture into cases and bake for approx. 17 minutes until risen and golden or an inserted skewer comes out clean.

To make the caramelized pecans: put castor sugar in a bowl ith 2 Tbs water and heat gently to dissolve sugar,increase heat and boil for about 6 minutes until sugar  turns a pale golden colour. Spread pecans on greaseproof paper and spoon a little caramel over each pecan.leave to cool

Buttercream: beat butter,syrup and icing sugar together in a bowl until fluffy.

Mixed Berry Pavlova

I am sticking with the mixed berry theme  which I am very fond of this summer. Amazingly it does feel like we had some summer already this year! Which is quite rare for this part of the world….

This Pavlova comes from the delightful Barefoot Contessa whose recipes I love. Strangely enough I do not have any of her recipe books (and I have lots of those), I just watch her shows on the food network and get the recipes from the food network website. Which is the case with this recipe.

This is deceptively light-tasting, the meringue is very thinly crisp on the outside and wonderfully soft and chewy in the middle and if you turn the meringue upside down when you take it out of the oven, and pile the cream on the flat side the soft cream melds with the chewy meringue.

The great thing about pavlovas is that they are very easy to make, minimum effort, a great dinner party dessert in my opinion. My husband found it very easy to put multiple slices away though so I wouldn’t necessarily follow the guidelines on how many it serves….

I usually adapt recipes and it was no different with this one….I used Nigella Lawsons' instruction on temperature and timing in How to Eat as I was originally thinking of making her passion fruit pavlova.  I reconsidered as I was not sure about the whole passion fruit pulp with seeds-I felt the crunch of the seeds would interfere with all the soft gooey chewy-ness. I may be wrong. Has anyone tried this pavlova? Besides I had some berries in the fridge that needed using. However I felt her cooking instructions would produce a more gooey center, so I preheated the oven to 180◦C and then turned it down to 150◦C as soon as I put the meringue in and then cooked it for 1 hour and 15 minutes and then turned the oven off and left the pavlova in the oven until it had cooled. I suspect Barefoot Contessas instruction produces a thicker crisper crust. I also used 300ml of cream as that is the size the tub comes in and it worked fine.  For the sauce I just mixed a couple of tablespoons of seedless raspberry jam with water and some strawberry syrup I had with a handful of crushed raspberries, this also worked fine but in truth I think you could do without the sauce altogether.

Apologies for the not so great pictures-they were taken hastily with my old camera as we were in a hurry to eat!

Birthday Cake!

So here we go. Welcome to the beginning. I thought I would start with something pretty, though this cake has plenty of substance too.

It’s the aptly titled “I can’t believe you made that cake” from Lorraine Pascales’ Baking Made Easy. A book which I think is great-excellent value for money with a wide range of baking ideas.

I made this for a dear friends birthday and it went down very well. It’s definitely one for the chocoholics and sweet-toothed! The interior is a basic chocolate sponge and it is encased in layers of very sweet chocolate buttercream. It’s definitely one I’ll be making again for the up and coming wedding party season.