Caramel Cupcakes

I've needed to get my fringe cut for about two weeks now and have been unable to find the time. I have no idea why not as it’s a relatively simple procedure and doesn't take long but I just haven't found the time. Now I'm rapidly running out if hair styles which allow my fringe to be pulled back. If I leave it down then it goes to the side and just looks stupid. I may have attempted to trim it myself at the weekend but after the first tiny snip I realised that only madness lay in in that approach and put down the scissors. 

Currently I'm attempting to rock a high bun/top knot thing which saves me tons of time. Just whack damp hair into a high ponytail and swish up with a hair band into something looking relatively neat. If only everything in life was that easy. Although I always panic that tying wet hair up will somehow cause it to rot as it can't fully dry as I'm sure I heard that somewhere (I did Google it and apparently people with thick hair who put it in a ponytail wet and leave it for days can get mildew! Who leaves their hair in a ponytail for days on end?) 

Anyway I can't find time to get my fringe trim but I do find time to bake. I had started prep by taking the butter out if the fridge on Sunday and I urge you to do the same. Normally I just soften butter with the electric whisk but this recipe is so much easier if it’s squishy to begin with. This is a Hummingbird Bakery recipe with my own tweaks to their frosting (mainly halving it as they get you to make so much). Their base for cupcakes is so simple and the addition of milk makes then verge on muffin texture while keeping something fundamentally cupcake there. My sister made these for our Mother's Day afternoon tea this year and they were amazing.

Ingredients 

Cupcakes

80g softened butter

280g sugar

240g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

240ml whole milk (don't scrimp with semi-skimmed - look how much sugar you're putting in)

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

150g caramel (Carnation have finally cottoned in to the fact that it’s fairly dreary boiling a can of condensed milk for 2 hours just to get caramel and now do the boring work for you)

Frosting

80g softened butter

250g sifted icing sugar

50ml whole milk

80g caramel 

1.    Preheat the oven to 190°C/GM 5. Fill two 12 muffin/cupcake tins with cases. The original recipe says this makes 12-16 cupcakes in a muffin tin but I can get about 24 out if you use large cupcake cases.

2.    Put the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and using an electric whisk mix together until it looks like breadcrumbs.

3.    In a jug hand whisk the milk, eggs and vanilla. Add about ¾ of this to the cupcake mixture and mix well. Then add the rest with the caramel. Mix until smooth and then divde the mixture in to the tins. Fill the cases about 2/3’s full (I always end up with a bit more in each).

4.    Bake for about 20 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. I have a gas oven to turn the tin around half way through as otherwise the ones nearest the back get more browned than the ones at the front.

5.    While this is going on make the frosting. Mix the butter and sugar together. It will form lumps of butter and sugar, so don’t panic – you don’t want to cream them. Then add the milk, mix well, and then the caramel. Done.

6.    Once the cupcakes have cooled slather the top in frosting. I use a palette knife and hope for the best as I’m not skilled with anything delicate.

Cup Cake Cases

I love the cup cake cases I found in a shop in Columbia Road Market so thought that I would share them. If you're around Liverpool Street check out Keeping House for some lovely kitchen items. I basically want everything in the shop.

Chocolate, Banana and Walnut Cupcakes

The Thew is flying to Morocco in about 2 ½ weeks to take part in the Marathon des Sables. For anyone not familiar, and why would you be!, it’s a 155 mile run in the Sahara carrying everything you need for the 6 days you’re toiling away in the oppressive heat. They do give you a basic tent and rationed water on the way around so it’s not all bad! He likes to physically challenge himself and it seems to keep him out of trouble. If he’s not around he’s probably midway through a 6 hour run while carrying an 8kg pack and he’ll soon be home needing to be fed and watered. Something I excel at so we’re both playing to our strengths with this one.

To ensure he is at optimum fitness he does regulate what he eats. His diet is one without starchy carbs and is gluten free. He avoids refined sugar, overly sweet fruit (so green bananas are good, but ripe ones are bad) and anything processed. It’s fairly impressive and I have no idea how he does it. He loves bread and is mental for chocolate (although he does indulge in the 85% cocoa one) but over the years he has weaned himself off wanting them. I suppose still consuming alcohol helps, although no beer because of gluten. He is the most self-motivated and determined person that I know and his changes of diet over the years have proved a constant cooking challenge to me which I’ve enjoyed overcoming.  It also means that I eat much better than I naturally would and I’m much fitter as I tend to get scooped along with things he is doing. Although flying over the handle bar of a mountain bike speeding downhill isn’t something I wish to repeat.

So this week’s recipe owes much to the rejection of some bananas for being too ripe for him. I’ve let them continue to ripen as the browner the skin the better the fruit is inside for baking. It’s hard to do banana recipes on the spur of the moment because you need them ripe and everywhere sells green ones. Therefore I’ve taken advantage of the ones I have to do this and paired it with the blonde icing I did for the birthday cake I made last week (as I had left over white chocolate and crème fraiche). These are so simple to make, with the walnuts dampening down the sweetness from the chocolate, letting the bananas shine through.

If you’re feeling generous check out The Thew’s Just Giving page as he’s raising money for a great cause.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

125g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 ripe bananas

4 tbsp sour cream

2 large eggs

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

300g plain flour (if you discover you only have s-r, like I did last night, then just half the bicarb and baking powder. It seemed to work!)

50g walnuts, chopped

80g milk chocolate, chopped (you can use dark if you prefer)

 

Frosting

100g white chocolate (good quality)

25g butter

100ml crème fraiche

100g icing sugar

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM4.

2.    Get a largest saucepan as you can do everything in on. Melt the butter and then take off the heat.

3.    Add the sugar, vanilla and bananas mushing the bananas in with a fork. You can do all the mixing with a fork.

4.    Stir in the sour cream and eggs and beat to a mix. Then add the bicarb, baking powder and flour. Mix well.

5.    Then add the milk chocolate and walnuts and mix again.

6.    Put into cupcake cases and cook for about 20/25 minutes. I made small cupcakes (filling the cases about 2/3rds) as I wanted to frost them but if you fill to the top then you’ll get more muffin sized ones. Either way works just test that a skewer comes out clean.

7.    Then to make the frosting melt the butter and white chocolate together. Beat in the crème fraiche off the heat and then stir in sifted icing sugar.

8.    Once cupcakes are cooled simple frost and serve!

Makes 24 cupcake sized ones and about 18 big muffins sized ones.

(Brown) Red Velvet Cupcakes

Sometimes I get the impression that some people don’t actually try and make the recipes that they publish. I have made so many things over the years that come out completely wrong/different/taste odd that I have a set amount of times someone’s recipes can go wrong before I ditch them from my life. Normally I’d blame myself when things go wrong but I know I can bake so after two duff recipes I never let people darken my doors again.

One of my issues is with Dr Oetker red food colouring. I made Red Velvet Cupcakes a couple of years ago and they were beautiful. It takes a serious bit of baking to beat red velvet cake and these were immense. I then went around to a friend’s house to make them with her daughters but couldn’t find my usual food colouring – Langsdale. I’d read in the Hummingbird Bakery book that Dr Oetker made a good one so bought that. Now I should have been alerted to potential issues when I saw that it was syrupy and not watery and that it smelt of strawberries. Odd. Anyway they didn’t turn out well as the food colouring made the tops pink and that was about it. Seriously, why would anyone recommend it? It doesn’t work and makes the cakes smell disturbingly of strawberry! I’m sure that the Hummingbird Bakery probably use some professional brand so just say that. Anyway, I abandoned all hope of making them again, as everywhere stocks Dr Oetker and nothing else, until this weekend I saw that Waitrose were selling their own brand. Yay!

Now I had lost my previous recipe so went to a trusted source – Recipe Rifle. It’s an amazing blog so check it out. (I may also have a slight girl crush on the woman who writes it). It’s obvious that she cooks everything she writes about and I’ve had tons of success with her recipes in the past. She has a recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes but I ignored her warning that it didn’t work out for her. On I ploughed, happily making the cupcakes until disaster struck. They were brown. So there is either too much cocoa powder, the food colouring is weird or a mixture of both. I think it's the food colouring as I'm guessing my old trusted brand has probably been banned by the EU for some reason or other. It's probably made from horse.

So no recipe this week as I just covered the brown cakes in chocolate frosting, gave them to my work colleagues and had a sulk in the corner. If you want to do as I did check the recipe out on Recipe Rifle, completely ignore her advice and make them anyway. I'll continue my hunt for red food colouring and revisit these again soon.

A Birthday Cake for Lucy

I'm cheating here as I made this a few weeks ago. However I'm writing this before I go holiday, for me to publish on holiday, so that I have a nice steady stream of posts. Dedication!

I always get excited when making a cake for someone's birthday. I think it's because I associate it with the amazing cakes my parents made for me and I really got into the swing while I was at university. When I started university my mum gave me a '1000 Recipes' book that covered everything - I still have it and do refer to it when I get faced with something random - and it had a whole 'Celebration Cake' section.

I gave this book to my friend Neil and said he could pick any cake he wanted for his birthday. Now they were pretty much all round or square and I figured I could get through any icing requirements with minimal fuss. However Neil chose the 'Hedgehog' cake which not only required the cake being cooked in two different sized pudding bowls but the cutting and constructing of the hedgehog shape from these. I think marzipan was also involved which just goes to show how random this cake was. Anyway, it all worked out and a successful birthday party was rounded off by a hedgehog aflame with candles.

Since then I do love a random cake mould but there is so little call for them in everyday life. I can never really justify it for a one off cake but a couple of years ago I invested in a giant cupcake mould. Since then it has brought nothing but joy into my life and so when Lucy on my team had her birthday coming up I decided that nothing but a giant cupcake would do for her.

It's really all in the preparation of the mould and the bravery of extraction. Everything else is just literally frosting and baubles!

This is basically Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe but in a different shape.

Ingredients

Cake
400g plain flour
250g caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar (soft brown will do)
50g cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (I kind of heap it up a bit)
1 tsp salt
3 large eggs
Small tub of sour cream (they come in 142ml and 150ml)
1 tbsp vanilla extract (I think it’s worth investing in a good one so about £5 a bottle)
175g butter melted and cooled (use a large saucepan – see below)
125ml corn oil
300ml cold water

Fudge icing
200g dark chocolate (I go for the 72% one as any higher gets a bit powdery in taste)
250g butter softened
275g sieved icing sugar (if you can do this outside all the better as icing sugar gets everywhere)
1 tbsp vanilla extract

      Cake

1.   Preheat the oven to GM4 or 180°.

2.   Put the flour, both sugars, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a large bowl and mix together.

3.   Add the oil to the butter in the large saucepan – this then becomes the main mixing bowl and minimises washing up. Whisk together – an electric whisk is going to be your friend here. Add the water and whisk again.

4.   Add the dry ingredients and mix well.

5.   In another bowl, or the measuring jug you had the oil in (washing up again), put the eggs, sour cream and vanilla extract. Add this to the other ingredients and mix well.

6.   Make sure your mould is well greased with loads of butter and put a small round of baking paper at the bottom of the mould. Fill it with cake mixture - go easy on the deeper side as it does rise -and bake for about an hour but you’re going to need to test it by shoving a skewer in and checking it comes out clean.

Fudge icing

1.   Melt the chocolate and leave to cool slightly.

2.   Sieve the icing into the butter (if you can do this outside all the better as icing sugar gets everywhere). Then cream together.

3.   Add the melted chocolate and vanilla and mix well.

4.   (Or buy a tub of Betty Crocker Fudge Frosting. Don't be proud as it's actually doesn't taste that different!)

Construction

1.   Cut off any cake that is excess and over the top of the mould. Eat this.

2.   Get the cake out of the mould! Leave it to cool and then just be very careful. I can't give much more instruction but just wish you luck. If the top sticks you don't need to worry as you're going to be covering it in fudge icing. If part of the bottom sticks then just make sure that's not facing front and on show!

3.   Use about a 1/3 of the icing to sandwich the two parts together and cover the top with the rest.

4.   Cover with as much decoration as you can get on there. I used silver balls, sugar butterflies and edible gold spray (possibly my favourite decoration ever). You're going to have to throw the decorations at it as it's not a flat surface but this is lots of fun. If there are children around get them to help.