Double Glazed Doughnut Muffins and a cupcakey Birthday.

Hi there,

Seems like it was only yesterday I blogged last as the last week or so has flew by, It has been great though I've been celebrating my birthday with family, friends and a lot of cocktails and I've been preparing for my upcoming holiday, as well as baking and cooking of course. 

I really enjoyed my Birthday this year and even though I refuse to accept that I'm hurtling towards 30 at a rate I do not like I still love Birthdays, especially the presents, hehehe. And of course true to form I received loads of baking and cupcake related gifts and cars from a wonderful selection of books on French desserts to super cute cupcake cases! And pretty much every Birthday card I received had a cupcake on it! Now I never usually post pictures of myself on my blog (In fact I never have) but I have to show you how adorable my cupcake Birthday badge was, I'm even keeping it in the cupboard to bring out again next year (really)

 You can also see a small selection of my cupcake cards, yes we put them up in the pub, hehehe.

Any way enough of my cupcakey birthday gifts for today, onto the recent baking endeavors. I don't know what it was about last week but I saw so many recipes on my favorite blogs that I felt the urge to bake so I have quite a few printed off recipes ready for a blog steal and today's was one of those.

I saw this recipe for Double Glazed Doughnut Muffins on the fantastic blog Goddess of Baking and I craved them so much I made them that very night. They looked so tasty and I figured with the cinnamon and the muffin element it was something I could get away with eating for breakfast. (well sort of.) Any way they tasted so good! I added a bit more cinnamon than advised as I love my cinnamon and I used sunflower oil instead of vegetable (as that's what I had in) and I also made my glaze a lot thicker (accidental) but that was OK as it meant that I just didn't dip them twice. I really enjoyed these and they were all eaten so fast (not all by me I promise)

Mine by far didn't look as good as the ones on Goddess of Baking blog and I definitely used cases that were far to big and I think that's why they rose a little funny but they tasted perfect and were so soft so I was happy. Next time I'll be making them in smaller cases though. Any way here they are:

I always find it a little confusing measuring things in cups as I'm so used to using grams or ounces and I don't have measuring cups so I trawled the Internet for conversions and roughly converted the recipe into grams, and as the cakes came out fine I expect the conversions were pretty right, any way here's how I made them.

Double Glazed Doughnut Muffins: adapted from Goddess of Baking 

Makes 12 - 18 (depending on if you use extremely large cases like me)

55g Unsalted butter at room temperature
4 tbsp Sunflower oil 
100g Caster sugar
75g Soft brown Sugar
2 Eggs
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp Ground nutmeg
2 tsp Cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 tsp Vanilla extract
280g Plain flour
240ml Milk

Glaze Ingredients:

3 tbsp Unsalted butter, melted
110g Icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp Vanilla extract
2 tbsp Hot water

Preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Line a muffin tin with papers and brush the cups with a little sunflower oil to ensure they peel off the muffins nicely.
With and electric whisk or mixer, cream together the butter, sunflower oil and sugars until smooth. Add the eggs, beating to combine.
Stir in the baking powder, Bicarbonate, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and vanilla.
Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is fully combined.
Spoon the batter evenly into the cases, filling the cases to nearly full.
Bake for 14-16 minutes or until pale golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Prepare the glaze by mixing together the melted butter, icing sugar, vanilla and water. Whisk until smooth. When the muffins have cooled slightly, dip the top of the muffin into the glaze and leave to harden, they can then be dipped again. I wasn't paying attention so made my glaze way to thick and didn't need to double dip.

These are great served warm.

And that's it. Hmmm thinking about it I wish I had one of these now as a pre bedtime treat, I will definitely be making more very soon.

Any way that's enough for today but I'll be back soon with another blog steal, a recipe re-visited and to show you a special cupcake present I got!

Until then keep baking

xxx

Classic Strawberry Victoria Sponge

I didn't plan to bake a lot this weekend, I had a small order of cakes for my friends mum but I definitely wasn't baking any cakes for myself, as this weekend it was my Birthday! and surely that's an occasion when other people should give me cakes and treats! I did end up making a couple of treats though but nothing too taxing, just covering some pretzels in chocolate, and making a version of a rice crispie cake but using ammareti biscuits and marshmellow instead (which was odd but tasty).

Anyway the other weekend I went to visit my friend at her brand new house as she recently hopped on the property ladder, so taking along a house warming cake seemed like the right thing to do, and as the fridge was packed full of Strawberries and double cream I decided to go for a classic Victoria sponge, something that strangely I had never made before, which is odd because as a cake I love it, so simple yet fresh, light and tasty. I then dressed it up a little using sponge fingers, ribbon and piles of strawberries just to make it look more like a gift. and here it is:

 And here's the cake before I dressed it all up:

I actually prefer it this way, just dusted with a little icing sugar as I'm not to keen on sponge fingers, but they do make it look pretty.

This cake takes me a little longer to make as I only have 1 round cake tin so I have to make it in two batches, I should really buy more tins. 

Anyway the recipe I used was from the BBC good food cake app for the IPhone and it was simple but tasted perfect, with a really light consistency so definitely a recipe I will use again. all I did was substitute jam for fresh strawberries and I used icing sugar in the filling rather than caster sugar.

here it is:

Classic Victoria Sponge


200g Unsalted butter, softened
200g Self raising flour
1tsp Baking powder
200g Golden caster sugar
4 eggs
2 tbsp milk


For the filling:
150ml Double cream
50g Icing sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
punnet of fresh strawberries
Icing sugar for dusting

Heat the oven to 180degC and grease and line 2 x 20cm round sandwich tins.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl, then tip in all the other sponge ingredients. Using an electric whisk, beat everything together until smooth.
Divide the mix between the cake tins then bake for 20 - 25 minutes until cooked and golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean. When cool enough to handle, remove the cakes from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.


To make the filling whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla using an electric whisk until the cream holds its shape. Spread one half of the cakes with the cream (saving some for the top of the cake if required) and then layer slices of strawberry on top like so:

Then gently sandwich the cakes together. If using jam instead of strawberries simply spread one half of the cake with cream and the other with jam and sandwich together.


I then decorated my cake by spreading a tiny bit of cream on each sponge finger and positioning them around the cake and tying a ribbon around to hold them in place, I then spread the rest of the cream on top of the cake and topped with chopped strawberries and dusted with icing sugar.

As I said before, I personally prefer the cake simple without the sponge fingers but either way this cake is tasty and fresh and went down very well with my friend and her parents and we got to enjoy it after the boyfriend got roped in to assembling her new pretty black glass dining table. (Well we needed somewhere to put the cake!)

Finally I wanted to show you the cute little cake mould I bought, It was a bargain at 69p and was really only bought of the novelty. Its a cake in the shape of a cupcake, not one of those huge cupcake pans you get (but I do want one of them) But a small mini cake that make the perfect size cake for 2 to share (or 1 to scoff by themselves)  any way its a small silicone mound and seems to produce a cute little cake. Boyfriend actually tried it out the first time and made this vanilla sponge.

Isn't it cute? And it would look even cuter iced in pretty colours. It cracked a little coming out the mould but I think that was more down to impatience to plate and eat the cake.

Any way that's all for today I'm off to look through my new cake book birthday presents and drool over the pictures.

Bye for now

xxx

Linked up to Sweets for Saturday

Tuck Shop Cupcakes.

Howdy!

I havn't been able to blog in a while as the naughty USB ports on the laptop broke and it's been driving me mad, but off to the shop it went and now it's back and all fixed and shiny.  I've missed blogging but I have been busy baking, alot for orders though including 28 cake pops and 20 ice cream cone cakes, which unfortunatley because I was so rushed in making and delivering that I forgot to take any pictures.

A few weeks ago I also made some suprise cupcakes for a friend of mine. It was a friends birthday and they were having a bbq. A friend of mine asked if I'd bring cucpakes (it wasn't even the friend who was having the bbq who asked, it was my cheeky cupcake feind friend Alex) So needless to say my friends (apart from Alex) were pleasantly suprised when I turned up with 24 cupcakes! I made 12 Mojito Cupcakes as these are just perfect for a sunny BBQ and then I made 12 surprise Tuck shop cupcakes. 

My friend Alex was in fact the inspiration for these cupcakes as the week before at the pub she had ordered a dessert favorite of hers called Tuck shop ice cream cake. It was pretty much a basic ice cream cake but on top was a variety of different chopped up sweets, chocolate bars and biscuits. With the fun being in the fact it's different every time. (Alex was very disappointed that time as she didn't get a piece of mini roll and another friend did) So I decided to surprise her and incorporate this idea of a Tuck shop and variety into some extra special cupcakes with enough that she could look at them all and decide which cake had her favorite treats on.

And here they are:

 The cakes themselves are this recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes and Vanilla frosting, however I didn't just wan't treats topping the cakes so I also baked some into them. So you never knew which treats you would get inside your cake!

I started with this lot: 

A big selection of the kind of treats you could buy at a school Tuck shop. I then resisted temptation to scoff the lot and once I had filled 12 cupcake cases with the chocolate batter I dropped a peice of a few treats into each cupcake. I left the jelly sweets and jelly beans out of the batter as I felt the other treats would work better.

Once they were baked with the treats inside they looked like this:

 Then I simply piped them with Vanilla frosting and topped each with different peices of treats!

These cupcakes are definitley for the sweet tooth! My choice would be one topped with things like Fudge and caramel like this one in the front:

Apparently these cakes were very tasty, fun and definitely for someone with a sweet tooth! I would like to say I know this from personal experience but I didn't get one myself! They were all snatched up and eaten, I managed to save one and take one home but then boyfriend ate that one too! I managed to eat some of the Mojito cakes though and also a rather large slice of my friends scrummy Malteaser cheesecake! (I'll have to steal and post the recipe for that one!)

Any way that's all for today I cant look at the picture of the bowls of sweets any longer as I'm having serious cravings hehehe!

Bye for now!

Cupcake Kris

Cornbread muffins

Last week I had watched way to much Diners, Drive ins and Dives on the Food Network and one thing that programme always makes me crave is BBQ sauce smothered, red meat loaded American BBQ food. In this case I was craving ribs in particular. So off I went to the butchers and bought a sheet of ribs.

With them I was planning to have home made paprika potato wedges and BBQ beans but I also wanted something else, something which gave me the excuse to bake ...  Cornbread! I first had Cornbread in Bodeans in London which is just the best BBQ restaurant where you can really pig out, and now I'm not in London I miss it often. since then I have tried making a variety of different cornbread recipes, and whilst I thought they were good nothing has yet matched the sweet, soft muffins from Bodeans. Although I think these are pretty good served warm with butter or my favorite, with a big bowl of BBQ beans.

here they are:

I also made some with grated Cheddar on top of the batter although I only made a couple for me as boyfriend has a rather odd dislike for recipes with cheese (how can you not like cheese?)

Really disappointed I didn't think to take a picture of the whole package, BBQ sauce smothered ribs, beans, wedges and muffins.

Here's how they're made:

200g Fine yellow cornmeal (Polenta)
170g Plain flour
1tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp Cumin
dash of Paprika
2 large eggs
300ml  Milk
45g Butter, melted
3 heaped tbsp soft brown sugar (I add a little caster sugar also but I like mine sweet)
300g Grated cheddar (Optional) 

Preheat the oven to 190degC and line a tin with muffin cases.
In a large bowl mix together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, Bicarbonate of soda, salt, cumin and paprika.. Melt the butter and stir in the brown sugar. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add slowly to the dry mixture whilst stirring. Mix the eggs and milk in a jug and slowly add this to the mixture beating until the batter is smooth. If the batter looks a little thick ad a couple more tablespoons on milk.

If desired stir in 2/3 of the grated cheese and then spoon the mixture into cases. top with the remainder of the cheese (if using cheese) and bake for approx 25mins. Leave to cool.

Just before serving they can easily be re-warmed in the oven for a minute or two.

and that's it, there you go a savoury treat for a change. Back to cake next week!

Cupcake Kris xxx 

Double Chocolate Raspberry cupcakes with Chocolate Ganche

I have to apologise it feels like I've neglected my Blog of late! I've still been baking away though, as well as meeting up with friends, going climbing, visiting family, going on a road trip to see the Foo Fighters (who rocked), burning myself through falling asleep in the sun, getting ill, getting better, lots of shopping and attending and BBQ filled weekends with 2 BBQ's in the space of 24 hours. 

But now I'm back with a recipe I tried out a couple of weekends ago when meeting up with a few friends down the pub.

It's not very often that I want to make a particular kind of cake just so as I can use a certain cake case however a while back my lovely friend Jenny bought me a present (I love how my friends buy me cupcake related gifts) of the prettiest cake cases they were dark red with purple patterns and I thought Id have to make a cupcake that fitted perfectly with the case. And when I first saw the cake raspberry's came to mind.

I looked around for a few ideas before deciding that the cakes should be really chocolatey with a gooey raspberry centre. I filled the cakes with a good raspberry conserve and I made a chocolate ganche topping instead of my usual butter frosting and then finished them off with a fresh raspberry.

here they are:

The cakes turned out really nice, they kind of had a brownie texture to them with a slightly crispy top but soft almost gooey inside with a raspberry centre. And the chocolate ganache worked perfectly not as sweet as allot of frosting but gave the cakes a really chocolatey kick.

Here's how they're made:

Chocolate Raspberry cupcakes

110g Plain Flour
20g Cocoa Powder
150g Caster Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt 
40g Unsalted butter at room temp
120ml Whole milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp Vanilla extract
50g Plain Chocolate, Melted
Raspberry conserve (About 6 tbsps)

Preheat the oven to 170deg C
Put the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and beat together with an electric whisk or rub between your fingertips until you have a sandy consistency.

Whisk the milk, egg and vanilla in a jug and slowly pour about half into the dry mixture, beat to combine then beat in the remaining liquid until the batter is smooth. Add the melted chocolate and stir in gently.

Spoon the mixture into paper cases until 2/3 full and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes until risen and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave to cool on a wire rack. 

Once cool poke a small hole in the centre of each cake (I used the tip of a piping nozzle) and pipe in some raspberry conserve until it fills the hole.

Leave to rest while you make the Ganache.

Chocolate Ganache

100g Plain Chocolate
100ml Double Cream
Icing Sugar (Optional)

Break the chocolate into a saucepan and add the cream. Heat gently sirring all the time, until the chocolate has melted. Pour into a large heat proof bowl and using an electric hand whisk, beat the mixture for 10 minutes or until thick glossy and cool.

I wanted to sweeten (as the chocolate I had was rather bitter) and thicken my Ganache slightly so whilst beating I also added a little icing sugar to taste. Pipe or spoon the ganache over the centre of the cupcakes and top with a fresh raspberry.

And that's it!

Till next time

Cupcake Kris xxx

Coconut Pineapple Upside down cake

Hey! So in the last blog I mentioned I had a giant pineapple that I wanted to bake something using it. I didn't really feel like anything loaded with sugar or icing, I was more in the mood for something fresh and light that would go perfect with a cup of tea.

So I decided on a pineapple upside down cake as I'd never made one before however all the recipes I had had the sticky pineapple top however the cake part was just pretty plain. So I altered a little, I had some desiccated coconut and thought that that would go perfectly creating a Caribbean style flavour with a hint of spice.

And here it is:

The first slice, just for me!

I really liked this cake, it wasn't to overwhelming or to sickly which meant I could eat even more of it, nomnomnom.

Here's how it's made:

basic technique from the big book of baking:

Coconut Pineapple upside down cake

4 Eggs, beaten

185g Golden caster sugar or light brown soft sugar

1tsp Vanilla extract

170g Plain flour

55g Desiccated coconut

2tsp Baking powder

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Nutmeg freshly grated

125g Unsalted butter, melted.

Topping

40g Unsalted butter

4tbsp Golden Syrup (On baking I realised I didn't have any in so used 4tbsp brown sugar instead)

Canned pineapple rings or fresh pineapple cut into rings

Glace Cherries

Preheat the oven to 160degC and grease and line a cake tin. (I used a 10" round but 9 would have been better)

For the topping, place the butter and syrup into a pan and heat until gently melted. Bring to the boil and boil for 2-3 minutes until slightly thickened and toffee like.

Pour the syrup into the base of the tin and arrange pineapple rings in one layer over the syrup (My pineapple was to large so I had to use 1 ring surrounded by 1/2 rings.) Then place half a glace cherry in the centre of each ring (You will notice I only used one in the centre down to the fact I ate all the cherries and there was only 1 left, ooops)

Place the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk with an electric mixer for approx 10-15 mins until thick enough to leave a trail when the whisk is lifted. (I was far to impatient for this so whisked for about 5 - 7 minutes and all was still fine)

Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold these in with the dessicated coconut, nutmeg and cinnamon. Fold the melted butter in until evenly mixed. Spoon into the tin over the pineapple and bake in the oven for 1 hour - 1hour 1/5 mins or until well risen, firm and golden.

Leave to cool in the pan for 10 mins then carefully turn out onto a plate.

And that's it! I really enjoyed this cake but didn't get to eat an awful lot of it as it all magically disappeared in a day!

Ok I've decided it really wasn't a good idea to write this blog when I'm hungry, I've had a lovely dinner but now all I want is cake! and there's none in the house I'm wondering if half 9 at night is to late to start baking? It's like torture I tell you.

Well on that note I'm off to raid the cupboards fora sweet treat and think of what to bake next.

Cupcake Kris xxx

Linked up to sweets for saturday



Cookie dough day! peanut butter cookie dough balls, cupcakes and a classic cookie.

Last week I had no occasion to bake for! No parties, no birthdays, no visiting friends so I had the chance to just bake anything I felt like baking.......at which point, as it always does when I don't have a plan, my mind went blank!

I looked on the board I write all my to do cakes on and I didn't really feel like any of it, and then I remembered what I'd been craving just a few days before... Cookie dough! not just cookies but raw cookie dough, in all its sweet, gooey, chocolate chippy unadulterated naughtiness. And don't try to pretend when making cookies you don't just love to eat the cookie dough. I often have to get the cookies in the oven super fast otherwise boyfriend will eat all the cookie dough.

So I made a really simple super sweet treat of cookie dough balls, of which I didn't get many because boyfriend scoffed loads. These are perfect if you have a really sweet tooth and can't resist eating raw cookie dough, here they are:

and inside:

Mmmm full of cookie dough and tiny chocolate chips. And don't worry for those of you worried about raw egg there's none in this recipe (not that that usually stops me eating the cookie dough)

And here's how they're made:

For the cookie dough  - this recipe makes around 12 cookies or 24 - 30 cookie dough balls depending on size

110g Unsalted butter
175g soft light brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200g Plain flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
125g plain chocolate chips or chocolate, chopped into small chunks.
2 tbsp peanut butter
50ml Milk
200g of chocolate, melted

Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract and stir in the flour, milk, salt and bicarbonate, mix in the peanut butter until you have a smooth dough, If the dough is to dry add a little more peanut butter, or more flour if the dough is to sticky.

Stir in the chocolate chips until evenly dispensed.

Roll the cookie dough into small balls and arrange on a plate (I found it better to butter the plate to save the dough from sticking) and place these in the freezer to chill.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of water and then set this aside to cool slightly. Once the cookie dough balls are chilled take them from the freezer and dip the cookie dough in the chocolate, I find this easiest by using 2 teaspoons and swapping the ball between the two. Then chill these until the chocolate has set. And that's it!

These can also be made into cookie dough pops by dipping the end of a lolly stick into chocolate and inserting it into a cookie dough ball and leaving to set before dipping in the chocolate then using a piece of polystyrene or foam to hold the pops up. This I feel makes the dipping process a whole lot less messier.

But I didn't stop there I had left over cookie dough, I wanted more cookie dough so I also used this eggless dough to make some ordinary peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, using bigger chunks of chocolate:

I didn't like them as much as my usual peanut butter cookie recipe but they were still very yummy.

Oh no and I didn't stop there either I also baked some vanilla cupcakes and dropped a ball of the cookie dough into each cupcake batter before baking to leave a cookie treat at the bottom of the cake:

cut in half without icing.

And here they all are together in all their super sugary cookie dough glory!

Enough to make any ones dentist cry!

Any way that's all for today I'm off to rack my brains for something to bake to use the ridiculously large pineapple that's sitting in my kitchen.

Bye for now

Cupcake Kris xxx