Red velvet cupcakes

 

I have never really been a fan of red velvet cupcakes; I would look at the recipes and think what is the point of just adding loads of food colouring to a normal vanilla sponge with a little bit of cocoa powder? And they never tasted better than a vanilla cupcake when I have bought them. But recently I had some cream cheese to use up and I bought this book, “Making cupcakes with Lola” and I liked the look of the recipe. I was intrigued by the additions of single cream and melted chocolate, and the amount of food colouring was not too excessive compared to some recipes. The actual cake batter tasted and smelled great. I could tell they were going tasted good. They were really good, moist and with a good chocolate hit topped with a tangy cream cheese frosting.

Recipe: makes 12

200g/1.5 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

100g/7 tablespoons soft butter cubed

175g/3/4 cup castor sugar

1 egg beaten

2 teaspoons red food colouring

25g/1 oz. dark chocolate melted

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

120 ml/1/2 cup single cream/light cream

cream cheese frosting

65g soft butter

250g cream cheese

185 g icing sugar

preheat oven to 180 degrees, sift together all dry ingredients. Put butter and sugar in a

bowl and beat until pale and fluffy. slowly beat in egg mixing well. slowly mix in food colouring. Beat in melted chocolate, oil, vinegar and vanilla. Gently fold in half the sifted dry ingrediantes,then half the cream.Repeat with the remaining dry ingrediants and cream. Bake for 20-25 mins. let cool completely before decorating.

to make the frosting beat butter until soft and smooth,add cream cheese and beat on slow speed then add sugar and beat until smooth and glossy. Refrigerate until firm enough to pipe. slice a sliver of the tops of a few cakes to make crumbs to sprinkle on  top.

Tres Leches Cupcakes

These cupcakes are again from Martha Stewarts Cupcakes. They are based on a Latin American cake and are doused with a mixture of three milks- condensed, evaporated and fresh cream. They are rich sticky and very moist and topped with fresh cream they are almost pudding like. The cake mixture is very light and frothy because of all the whipped egg whites and it has very little fat in it, because of these two factors the cakes do not taste as rich as you might think they would. 

The amount of liquid that you have to douse them in seems like a lot but it does get absorbed. The cakes do not get as soggy as you might think, though you do have to use paper-lined foil liners.

 

The recipe in the book is for about 20 cupcakes, I made half that amount and it made 14 cupcakes.

Recipe for 12-14 cupcakes:

3 large eggs separated

Small pinch bicarb and small pinch coarse salt

½ cup sugar

1oz unsalted butter,melted and cooled

½ cup flour

1 can evaporated milk (6 oz,small can)

14 oz condensed milk

1/3 cup fresh double cream

1.5 cups fresh double cream plus two teaspoons icing sugar for the topping

1. Preheat oven to 160◦C. Line cupcake tins with paper-lined foil liners. With an electric mixer on medium speed whisk the egg white with the bicarb and salt until you get soft peaks. Reduce speed to low. Add yolks and sugar, whisk until completely combined. Fold in melted butter with a flexible spatula.  Add flour in 2 batches, folding until just combined after each addition.

2. Divide batter evenly between lined cups, filling each half way. Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating tins halfway through or until golden brown and a skewer comes out clean

3. Whisk together the three milks, when the cupcakes come out of the oven make holes in them using a skewer  and brush with the cakes with the milk mixture, repeating until all the liquid has been absorbed. Allow cupcakes to absorb mixture for 30 mins atleast

4. To finish whip the double cream with the icing sugar and dollop or pipe on top. You can also sprinkle with cinnamon if you like.  

Butterscotch cookies

Firstly apologies for the long delay for the long break between posts (I see quite a few of you have been checking in!:) ). I have been away on holiday and have started full time work so it’s probably going to be a bit slow on the blogging (and baking) front until I adapt to my new more demanding schedule. But for now here are some yummy cookies. These cookies are from Sainsbury’s baking book collection. They only require a few ingredients and are very easy and quick to make. They are very buttery and very sweet. Crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle and dotted with chewy bits of butterscotch pieces. They are easy to over bake so best to check on them early. Also use really good quality parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet to stop the butterscotch from sticking to the paper…..

                                     

Recipe:

makes 14:

100g unsalted butter

100g Sainsbury's Fairtrade light brown sugar

1 tablesppon golden syrup

150g plain flour,sifted

50g mini butterscotch chips

1.preheat oven to 180 degrees , 

line a baking tray with parchment

2.using an electric hand mixer beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.Add golden syrup and beat for one minute. Add the flour and butterscotch chips and beat with wooden spoon until soft dough forms

3.lightly dust your hands with flour  and divide dough into 14 balls.flatten only slightly with palm of your hand. place on baking tray leaving space inbetween for them to spread out. Bake for 12-15 mins until lightly golden at edges (check around 8 minutes though)

4. remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

Devil's Food Cake (and a bit of chocolate cake history)

I always have a favourite chocolate cake recipe of the moment. Years ago it was Nigellas cloud cake, then it was her chocolate fudge cake, I have also worked my way through her wonderfully titled “chocolate cake hall of fame” from the book Feast and the chocolate chapter in How to be a domestic goddess. The quadruple chocolate loaf cake is probably one of my favourites from Feast. I made the torta alla giandua or nutella cake for my husband birthday earlier in the year as he loves the chocolate-hazelnut combo (you cannot leave him unattended with a jar of nutella, ok I admit I'm not so great left to my own devices with a jar either...). It was nice but I found it a bit too dark and rich.Here is a pic:

Nutella cake

Anyway the favourite this year has been the Devils food cake from Kitchen.  I have made it loads of times. It’s super easy to  make and I don’t have to go and buy any special ingredients like fresh cream or sour cream as I would have to for the other cakes mentioned above. It’s a super soft cake with a very gooey icing, I mean what’s not to like? The first time I made it I found it too dark so I used 200g milk chocolate and 100g milk chocolate for the icing the next time I made it-I still found that quite dark so now I use 200g milk choc and 100g dark choc for the icing. You can find the recipe here.

Coffee and chocolate loaf

I never realised just how many chocolate things I make until I started this blog…hmmm I may have been in denial about just how much of a chocolate addiction I have. This is no-brainer kind of chocolate loaf.  You don’t have to think much-the ingredients are likely to be on hand, it’s simple to make and it’s most definitely going to taste great. It’s dense, rich and damp, one slice goes a long way and it’s perfect with a latte. It’s the kind of loaf that is very reassuring to have sitting in a cake tin on the kitchen table. It could however have been improved upon by a bag or half of chocolate chips and it definitely needs more than the stipulated 1 tbsp of coffee as you could hardly taste the coffee. Also one hour was slightly too long in my oven, I reckon it’s more like 50 minutes. It is again from the Hummingbird bakery’s cake days book.Recipe below.

Recipe:

Serves 8-10

190g softened unsalted butter

130g plain flour

190g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs

60g cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

20ml whole milk

1tbsp strong coffee (brewed and cooled)

1 8.5x17.5cm (3.5x7in) loaf tin

Preheat oven to 170◦C(325◦F),grease loaf tin with butter and dust with flour

Cream butter and sugar ,add eggs one at a time, mix well after each addition scraping down sides of bowl as needed

Sift together flour, cocoa powder and baking powder , then pour the milk into a jug,add the coffee and mix together. Add the dry ingredients to the cake batter in two batches alternating with the coffee-flavoured milk. Mix well on low speed after each addition.

When finished mix on medium-high to get a smooth batter, place in oven for approx. one hour or until skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool for a while in the tin before turning it out on to a cooling rack.

Chocolate whoopie pies

I have been meaning to make whoopie pies for years or that’s what it feels like anyway…I think I purchased this whoopee pie bookabout a year a go, its written by the the owner of the violet bakery in broadway market (I can’t believe I haven’t visited it considering I don’t live very far from it and that the lovely Spitafileds just down the road is a fairly regular jaunt. Anyhow following purchase of the book I then ordered a whoopee pie tin from Lakeland  when I was ordering other more necessary stuff ( it was cheap and I needed to get to the total that you have to get to to get  free delivery, well that’s my excuse at least and I’m sticking to it!).So finally a year later I got around to using it…turns out a sheet of parchment paper on a baking tray actually works better than the tin for making flat round discs …but hey you live and learn…..

There were loads that I wanted to try, now that my peanut butter addiction is out in the open , I can say obviously peanut butter whoopies with peanut butter cream in  the middle looked tempting as did the carrot cake whoopie with orange-mascarpone cream. However I have been wanting to make homemade marshmallow fluff for a while (the hummingbird book uses it for quite a lot of their fillings in their whoopee pies ), so I went with the chocolate whoopee pies with marshamallow fluff filling. (Also I always seem to have batches of three frozen egg whites in the freezer  left over  from the frequent bread and butter pudding making that goes on around these parts when winter hits). The first batch I made were too thick so I used less batter in the next round which worked better. It’s actually quite easy to use a tablespoon to spread a circle on the baking tray.

The discs of sponge were light and moist and melt in your mouth and the marshmallow filling was very soft  and gooey and sticky and sweet. You need quite a big dollop of it in the middle-I think I didn’t put enough in in mine. I think also next time I will try the marshammallow filing in the hummingbird book which mixes the fluff with other ingrediants  There is a tutorial on you tube that I just found as I was searching to see if the recipe is online. It isn’t so here it is below:

Recipe from The Whoopie pie book text copyright © Claire Patak

Chocolate whoopee pies

Makes 9 large or 24 mini

175g Plain flour

100g cocoa powder

1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

0.5 tsp baking powder

o.5 tsp salt

125g unsalted butter

200g sugar

1 large egg

225mlbuttermilk (or half yoghurt, half milk)

1tsp vanilla extract

Prehat oven to 180◦C.

Line a couple of trays with baking parchment

In a bowl sift together flour, cocoa powder,bicarb,baking powder.

In another bowl cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy

Add egg and mix well

Add buttermilk and vanilla  and then dry ingredients in two batches, mixing until just incorporated (don’t overmix)

Drop onto trays with a tablespoon about 5 cm apart. Bake for 8-10 mins for small pies or 10-12 for large (don’t overbake). Remove from oven and cool completely.

Fluffy marshmallow filling

3 egg whites

150g sugar

2 tbspn golden syrup

Pinch of salt

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Weigh all the ingredients into a heat proof bowl (I use the steel bowl of my kitchen aid) and place over a saucepan of simmering water. Whisk for about 10-15 minutes until all sugar has dissolved and the mixture is frothy. Remove from the heat and whip the mixture at high speed until it is white and thick and holds its shape (this doesn’t take long at all-a couple of minutes at the most)

Sandwich the discs together with a generous tablespoon

Cookies and cream (Oreo) cheesecakes

These little beauties are from a great little cupcake book Martha Stewarts cupcakes. I have been working my way through it since my son was born, the tiramisu cupcakes and brown sugar pound cupcakes with brown butter icing cupcakes were lovely (made in early post-baby days thus no energy to take pictures). Checkout out her website for some great recipes. I love American baking recipes.

Anyhoo I really really loved these little cheesecakes, they were great straight out of the oven and fridge-cold-ony thing I would say is when fridge cold the Oreo biscuit was a bit hard to break through so next time I will break the biscuit up into four or soak in milk before placing in the case. The cheesecake part tastes deceptively light, it’s smooth creamy and sweet but not too sweet and it goes perfectly with the Oreo…  

It’s not often these days that I make the same thing twice (well apart from cupcakes and tiramisu which I can kind of make in my sleep now) but I will definitely make these again. They are super easy to make too, none of the usual crushing of biscuit and lining and refrigerating of the base as with usual cheesecakes. Having said that I am dying to try mini raspberry marble cheesecakes from the book….

Thanks also to my friend N who helped me to make them late in the evening after baby had gone to bed-it really is fun doing late night baking with a friend…and thanks to her for some of the lovely pictures too.

Recipe:

Recipe from  Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone’s Favorite Treat.

Oreos, 30 left whole & and 12 coarsely chopped        2 pounds (approx 900g) cream cheese, softened &   1 cup sugar & - 1 teaspoon vanilla extract &   4 large eggs, lightly beaten &   1 cup sour cream (240mls) &    pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 275°. Line standard muffin pans with liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each liner.

Beat cream cheese at medium speed using an electric mixer (dont overbeat). Gradually sugar, beating until combined. Beat in vanilla.
Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies.
Divide batter among pans. Bake for about 22 minutes or until filling is set.
Cool completely on wire racks. Refrigerate (in tins)4 hours or overnight. Remove from pans just before serving.
Makes 30 cheesecakes.