Yet more cupcakes...

Mum asked me to make some cupcakes for her (male) cousin's birthday.  Cupcakes would not have been my first thought when considering what to bake for a man's birthday, but I went with it and was pretty pleased with the results.  The request was for half chocolate, half vanilla.  The vanilla cuppies were made using the usual Nigella recipe.  I have made chocolate cuppies before by substituting cocoa for some of the flour, but decided instead to make chocolate cherry cupcakes from Nigella's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'.  I haven't made these in quite some time, but they are seriously good.  I found the recipe yielded 18 rather than 12 cupcakes - no matter, more left over for us!  I used Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate, which made them very rich.  I couldn't get the stipulated morello cherry jam, so instead used dark cherry jam.

To decorate, I used Cake Mate frosting (the one that comes in a pressurised can) in chocolate fudge, cloud white and blue.  To decorate the chocolate cherry cupcakes, rather than use the star nozzle that comes with the icing, I decided instead to dispense the icing out of the can and use a piping bag and Wilton 1M tip, which I think makes really nice swirls for topping cupcakes.  Unfortunately, it also uses a lot more icing than a smaller star tip, and I found I was only able to ice 9 cupcakes with one can of icing, which made it a pretty expensive way to decorate.  I had intended to ice all the vanilla ones in blue, but was unable to get more blue icing.  I had enough in the cupboard to ice 6 of the 9 vanilla cupcakes I needed using the small star nozzle that comes with the can, and iced the remaining 3 in cloud white icing (I needed 9 vanilla and 9 chocolate cherry cupcakes to fill my cupcake stand which Mum borrowed for the occasion).  I would have preferred to ice the vanilla ones with the 1M tip too, but was unable to get more icing, so had to economise by utilising the smaller tip.  I do think the chocolate ones that were iced with the 1M tip look better though.   

The iced choc cherry cuppies looked so nice with their choc fudge swirls of icing, that I just left 3 of them as they were.  Another 3 I sprinkled with some tiny silver cachous.  The remaining 3 I sprinkled over Wilton blue sprinkles (blue coloured sugar crystals).  To decorate the blue ones, 3 were sprinkled with the silver cachous, 3 had chocolate sprinkles scattered over.  The 3 white cupcakes were decorated with the Wilton blue sprinkles.  On the whole, I thought it looked a tad classier than my mother's planned decoration of Smarties!

My elder son is having a fundraising day next week, where the year 10 students will be selling donated cupcakes to raise money for the RSPCA, so I foresee more cupcake making in my near future!

the completed cupcakes ready in the Cupcake Courier's trays

Silicone moulds

I recently purchased these TreeParty Design silicone moulds. They look exactly like some NordicWare deigns, but with the flexibility (no pun intended!) of silicone - so they can be used in the oven, the fridge, or the freezer. I decided to try them out using my favourite cupcake recipe - from Nigella's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'. This recipe is incredibly quick and easy, and results in cupcakes which are moist and delicious, and keep well for about 5 days in the fridge - though usually they don't last long! I've been using this recipe for about 5 years now. I did try one of the cupcake recipes from the Crabapple Bakery book, but it was extra work with separating eggs, and the end result wasn't as good as Nigella's much simpler recipe.

The 'blossom flower' pan features miniature versions of some of the popular NordicWare bundt tins - including the cathedral, star and original bundt designs that I own. The silicone of this mould is thinner than the bugs one, but I think as the designs are quite small and delicate, this makes it easier to unmould the cakes without damaging the designs. The bugs are a lot bigger, and so the the thicker silicone gives the shapes more support.

If you haven't cooked with silicone before, then it is important to know you need to put your mould on a tray to support the mould when transferring it into the oven. Silicone has non-stick properties, but I like to spray the moulds lightly with oil to ensure easy release.

I managed to fill all the blossom cavities and all but one of the bug cavities with one quantity of the cupcake mixture. Once baked, the cakes released easily, but needed some minor surgery to cut off the rounded tops so that the cakes could sit flat on a plate (also had the added bonus of yummy offcuts :p!). The cakes from the blossom mould lost a bit of definition, which was really just the result of baking a batter that rises in such small moulds - they didn't come out looking as perfect as I'd hoped, but once trimmed and dusted with icing sugar, they looked quite presentable. The bugs also lost a bit of definition, but you could decorate them with icing to highlight the designs more. I chose just to dust them with icing sugar too.

I think I would like to try moulding chocolate in the blossom mould. With the size of the cavities, I think it would be perfect for that, and it would highlight the designs more. But I was pretty happy with the end results, and they were certainly tasty. The cupcakes have such a nice vanilla flavour, and are so moist, you don't really miss having no icing.

The recipe

125g butter
125g caster sugar
125g SR flour
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 tbs milk

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Line a 12 cavity muffin tin with cupcake cases.
Add all ingredients except for the milk into the bowl of a food processor and blitz to combine. Pulse while adding the milk down the funnel. (You can also do this the more traditional way of creaming the butter sugar, beating in the eggs, and then folding through the flour and milk).
Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases.
Bake for 15-20 mins, or until golden and firm.

NB I baked the blossom mould cakes for about 13 mins, and the bugs for about 20 mins.

Lightly oiled moulds; filled moulds
(I tapped the moulds once filled quite firmly on the bench to try to get rid of any air pockets that would spoil the detail of the designs)


the cooked blossoms and bugs


The cakes cooling - you can see the bases of the designs would need to be trimmed if they were to sit flat on a plate.


performing surgery to allow the cakes to sit nicely


the trimmed cakes

Although my intial reaction after turning the cakes out was that I might not use the blossom mould again for baking cakes (but would use it for chocolate instead), I think I was being overly critical. After I went back and looked again, the little cakes really did look quite pretty once they were trimmed and dusted (and for very little effort), and they tasted so delicious with their eggy vanilla flavour. Plus they are a very appealing size being just bite-sized - I can imagine them being quite popular at a party when people often just want small nibbles so they can try a bit of everything or so that they feel they're not over-indulging.

I love the shapes left in the icing sugar!

Banana muffins

Over-ripe bananas - doesn't happen often at our place with my 2 boys, but today there were a couple. I am watching my weight, and so have sworn off baking, but the oven is now fixed, and we can't let a couple of bananas go to waste, so out came How To Be a Domestic Goddess...

This recipe, like almost all muffin recipes, is very easy (it is even in the children's section of the book - aimed at cooking with your children). And I have even myself convinced they are quite healthy! They contain fruit, no sugar - but honey instead (and honey's a health food, right?!), plus I used iodised salt (lots of publicity lately about how low in iodine our diets are), so that clinches it - they are a health food :p. The recipe said it would make 10 muffins, I got 7¾. For anyone that is concerned about their waistlines, I used normal butter and the muffins worked out at 2.5 points each (Weight Watchers) for 8 muffins. I'm sure you could lower the saturated fat and therefore the overall damage by using a reduced fat spread instead of butter, but that would affect the taste and I don't like to compromise on taste with these things.

This is the first time I've used the oven since it has been repaired. I was happy to note that it is heating up pretty much to the temperature I set on the dial (before I always had to reduce the temperature by 50°C).

The recipe...

Place 30g of butter, 60g of clear runny honey and ½ tsp vanilla extract in a saucepan over low heat and leave to melt. Set aside for a few minutes to cool slightly.

Combine 150g of plain flour, 1 heaped tsp of baking powder, ½ tsp of bicarbonate of soda, ½ tsp ground cinnamon and a pinch of salt in a bowl. (I was too lazy to sift this, and Nigella will virtually never suggest sifting unless absolutely necessary as she hates it too - I just combined it with a wire whisk. I came up with this method myself and thought I was the only lazy person who would do such a thing, but was happy to read Belinda Jeffery confessing to the exact same method to avoid sifting in her book 'Mix & Bake'. So seeing I am in such good company, I will now happily 'fess up.)

Mash 2 large ripe bananas. Add the melted butter and honey mixture to the mash. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.

Mix just enough to combine, ignoring the inevitable lumps. Otherwise the gluten in the flour will be overworked = tough muffins.


Got this idea from Nigella, and I love it - use an old-fashioned spring-loaded icecream scoop to dole out the mixture into the pans. I find this works wonderfully with the thick mixtures you tend to get with muffin batters which can't be poured in. It gives a much neater portion of batter in each muffin case and makes it quick, easy and even. The recipe said the yield is about 10 muffins; I got 7¾.

Bake for 25 mins at 190°C. I baked mine for 20 mins at about 185°C - I probably should have dropped the temperature a bit more than I did to allow for the fan-forced oven. Smelt sooo good while they baked!