Special Toffee Cupcakes and obsessive baking

I've been meaning to put this recipe up for a week now but it's been a bit of a crazy week so again I'm blogging later than expected.

Anyways a few weeks ago I was asked by my friend Alex to make some cupcakes for her Grandma's Birthday and they had to include Thornton's special toffee as that was her Grandmas favorite. I did play with the idea of somehow melting the toffee into the cake but the toffee is so hard it just wouldn't make for good texture. So I decided to make a toffee flavoured sponge with caramel icing and then I smashed up toffee into tiny pieces to sprinkle over the top and topped with one large chunk before drizzling the icing in toffee sauce. They went down very well! The cake was very soft and light and the icing sweet and topped with plenty of toffee to add a hit of toffee flavour.

Here they are:

If i was making these to have with little or no icing I would use dark rather than light brown sugar to give the cake a darker, richer taste however with a big swirl of icing the cake is sweet enough.

Here's how they're made:

80g Unsalted Butter, softened
150g Soft light brown sugar
180g Plain flour
1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 tsp Vanilla essence
2 large eggs
100ml Milk

Makes 12 - 16

Preheat the oven to 190deg C and line a muffin tin with cases.
Beat the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Mix in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Beat together the eggs, vanilla essence and  milk and add this to the dry mix. Mixing until you have a smooth batter.

Fill each paper case 2/3 full and bake for 18- 20 mins until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool before icing.

(For an alternative to make sticky toffee cupcakes add 180g pitted and chopped dates and replace the milk with 180ml boiling water. Soak the dates in the water for 20 minutes and add these to the dry ingredients after adding the egg and vanilla.)

For the Icing

160g Unsalted butter
500g Icing sugar
50ml Milk
100g Dulce de leche
Toffee to decorate

Mix together the butter and icing sugar gradually add the milk and mix well add the tinned caramel and beat until light and fluffy.

Spoon or pipe the icing onto the cakes and top with crushed toffee and drizzle with toffee sauce or dulce de leche.

and all packed up and ready to go

And that's it!

Ok well that's nearly all for today but before I go I'd like to confess that I think my baking addiction has gone to far! I've been trying to not eat as much naughty foods recently but I am still itching to bake so last week I found a silly, bargain of a cook book and before I knew it I actually found myself baking. Not for me or boyfriend but I was baking healthy, tasty treats for my dog! Yep my baking addiction has officially gone to far!

The book was a bargain (99p) and as well as loving to bake I do like my doggy to eat well so I suppose that doesn't make me too crazy (does it?) but here they are, the banana and carrot oaty dog biscuits I made:

They actually smell damn good! although there's no sugar in them so they taste pretty bland (yes I tried a nibble!)
Clyro on the other hand loves them and starts wagging his tail whenever I bring him one. I also wrapped a few up for my friends dogs who also approved. (Although my friends might think I'm a bit mad)

Any way that's it for today

off to decide what to bake next

bye for now

Cupcake Kris xxx

Linked up to sweets for a saturday

Cake poppin for a worthy cause : Chocolate cake pops.

I have a confession: I was meant to write this blog about 3 hours ago but I got distracted by pretty dresses online (To Nickie, if your reading this it's all your fault) and I even ended up buying dresses that I don't know if they will even suit me. But they are pretty so forgive my lateness.

Last week in work there was another Charity bake sale, (They just can't get enough of the cake in my office!)
and I was asked to make some sweet treats to contribute to it. I was also very flattered as the girl who asked me also mentioned how she had been passed my blog address and really likes my blog. (blushes) So as flattery gets you everywhere I went home and shut myself in the kitchen ready to make some cakes. I made 6 chocolate cupcakes as well as 12 chocolate cake pops as I had a bar of chocolate cake covering spare.
Lots of people at the sale commented on how great they looked and tasted (cue more blushing).

But the most important part was that we raised lots of pennies for a very worthy charity: the Samantha Dickinson Brain Tumour Trust . Lots of people made cakes to sell and as usual it was a great success as people just cant resist home baked goodies!

Any way as I've previously posted how to make cake pops, here's the link to how to make them. The only difference being this time I used Milk chocolate cake covering (a much easier to source in the UK and cheaper option than candy melts). Here they are:

As you can see I decorated them with pink and lavender sugar crystals. I found it a lot easier when decorating to wait until the chocolate had dried then re dip or coat the part of the pop I wanted to decorate and sprinkle on the crystals. This made for much neater decorating when just decorating the top or sides. And it also made the pops look like they were wearing little hats hehehe.

Any way since there is no recipe I'm just going to fill the rest of this post with more pics of the pops! (hehe)

I definitely need to get better at fixing little cosmetic mistakes on my cakes before taking pictures.

Right that's enough poppin for today

Till next time

Cupcake Kris xxx

Cherry Coconut Cupcakes, Easter Cupcakes and Cake Pops.

I hope you all had a lovely Easter break and bank holiday weekend. I have absolutely loved the weather we have had during the break and I've filled my time with a camping trip in the beautiful lakes with walking and kayaking, indoor rock climbing, my little brothers birthday and lots and lots of cocktails with friends. I think I need another week off!

I have also done allot of baking over the break I had to make 30 Easter themed cupcakes for a friends work, 12 cake pops for a friends mother in law as well as hot cross buns (previous blog)  and mini Creme egg cupcakes.

Here are the cupcakes I made for my friends work, I went with 12 chocolate (Recipe on a earlier blog) decorated with micro eggs:

Forgot to take the pics until after I'd packed the cakes away. I also made 12 Lemon cupcakes with sugar paste flowers (recipe on earlier blog)

And then I made 6 Cherry Coconut cupcakes with bright cherry coloured icing and dipped in dessicated coconut:

And here's the recipe for the Cherry Coconut cakes: Recipe via Next: Cupcakes


Cherry Coconut Cupcakes

115g Butter, softened
115g Caster Sugar
2 tbsp Milk
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
85g Self raising flour
1/2 tsp Baking powder
85g Desiccated Coconut
115g Glace Cherries, quartered
Handful of Desiccated coconut to decorate.

For the Icing I used vanilla butter cream dyed with red food colouring. recipe here.

Preheat oven to 180degC and line a bun tray with 12 cases.

Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and cream together until light and fluffy. Stir in the milk. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold them in with the coconut. Toss the quartered cherries in flour and then stir them into the mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 20- 25 minutes until well risen and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Once cool spread over a spoonful of icing and roll the top of the cake in desiccated coconut.

enjoy!

As i said earlier I also made some mini Creme egg cupcakes and cake pops but just before I went camping I accidentally deleted all the pics of these from my camera and I was gutted.

The Creme egg cupcakes were a chocolate cupcake with a min creme egg baked inside and then iced with vanilla icing and drizzled with orange coloured icing to look like egg yolk and topped with a mini creme egg cut in half. It was definitely a calorie fest! But as there are no pic here's a cute one from my camping trip instead:

I do have a couple of pics of the cake pops, one a  very bad camera pic and the other taken by a friend after handing them over you cant see them very well but here they are:

They were chocolate inside dipped in white chocolate cake covering and decorated with pink sugar crystals.
Here's how to make cake pops. Link!

These ones turned out much better than the last I think too (which is why I was so gutted about the loss of pictures) Cake pops are definitely something that take practice.

Any way that's it for today. Tomorrow is my first day back at work after the break and I also have to fit in a zumba class as well as lots of baking for a charity bake sale so it's an early night for me tonight!

Till next time,

Cupcake Kris

xxx