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

Cupcakes for my grandmother's 90th birthday!

My lovely grandmother, Sal, celebrated her 90th birthday on Friday 25th June.  My mum asked if I would make some cupcakes to celebrate the occasion, and I gladly complied.  I used the usual recipe (Nigella's from How to be a Domestic Goddess), and again cheated by using the Cake Mate icing that comes in a pressurised can in white and pink.  For some reason the icing didn't come out looking quite as nice as it did when I did the cuppies for DS2's 2nd birthday. 

Mum was going to make roses to decorate the tops, so all I did was load the iced cupcakes into my Cupcake Courier (the first opportunity I have had to use it!), along with some sprinkles in case we needed them.  At first Mum intended to do piped roses with royal icing because her plastic icing and gone a little dry, but she ended up only making one plastic icing rose plus some leaves, and bought some roses.  I have icing tips - I really should have a go at making some piped roses one of these days.  We didn't have enough flowers for the 18 cupcakes that my stand holds, so some cupcakes had just sprinkles on them (I used some pearlescent sprinkles in pink, white and yellow).  The overall effect looked pretty, and they tasted good too!  Thank you, Nigella! 

My little boy turns 2!

My little boy turned 2yo today! My sister-in-law and her partner were visiting from the other side of the country, and were here in time for his birthday, so I decided to have a little family party for him at home.

Here is the menu I settled on... (mostly a repeat of the menu I did in December for visiting friends with a few extras).

Starters

• Turkish bread
• red kidney bean dip
• fried halloumi with lemon juice and pepper
• cucumber and pomegranate salad
• herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad
• olives

Main

• lamb and apricot tagine
• couscous
• steamed green beans
• roasted beetroot (courtesy of my brother)
  
• carrots (again, courtesy of my brother) - they had some yummy dressing on them
• potato bake (courtesy of my mother, who seems to think potato bakes goes with any menu)

Dessert

• cupcakes
  
• butterfly cakes with lemon curd (made by my mum)
• birthday cake (white chocolate mud cake)
• baked mango cheesecake

It may seem a strange menu for a 2yo's birthday, but he was the only little kid there, and he eats most of that stuff anyway :)

Fried halloumi dressed with lemon juice and black pepper - I love this stuff!


Red kidney bean dip - I was debating making hummus, but this is more yummy in my opinion. People could spread it on their Turkish bread. Recipe below.


Herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad - this turned out nicer than last time, so I had to get a new photo. Recipe is here (along with the recipe for cucumber and pomegranate salad).


The carrot and beetroot dishes provided by my brother :)

Red kidney bean dip

This recipe is from Nigella's Feast, which along with the herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad and cucumber and pomegranate salad form part of the 'mezze feast' menu. Nigella says to think of it as a 'terracotta, sweet and grainy version of hummus' - as much as I love hummus, it is quite bland compared to this. I love the spices in it. I've made this dip a few times before, and each time think I will put less garlic in next time, but I always forget and as I have a thing about not writing in books, so I don't make a note of it - argh!).

• 1 large onion
• 3 fat cloves of garlic (I actually think half this amount would be plenty - I keep forgetting to cut the amount down. It does pack a garlicky punch with this quantity!)
• 45 ml of olive oil
• 410g can of red kidney beans, liquid reserved
• 15ml tomato paste
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• ½ ground coriander
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon (I upped this to ½ tsp)
• juice and zest of 1 lime

Peel the onion and garlic and process them until finely chopped. Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic until soft and golden. Add the kidney beans plus their 'gloop' (liquid) and stir in the tomato paste and spices and cook for a few minutes.

Zest the lime and reserve in a bowl for later, then juice the lime, adding it to the kidney bean mixture. Take the pan off the heat, and when it has cooled somewhat, process until it forms a bumpy puree. When it is cool, serve in bowls, sprinkled with lime zest.

Dessert is served... From front to back: butterfly cakes with lemon curd made by my mum, cupcakes, white chocolate mudcake (birthday cake - tractor has been removed), and baked mango cheesecake. (You can see the new tagine I used for serving the lamb and apricot tagine in the background - it is made by Emile Henry and the colour is fig).

Cupcakes

These were made using the same Nigella recipe as in this post. It comes from How To Be A Domestic Goddess and it is my favourite cupcake recipe - really simple, tastes beautiful, and will keep well in the fridge for several days if needed.

I cheated with the icing and bought Cake Mate icing - the pressurised stuff in a can that comes with different nozzles, already coloured blue. It just saved worrying about how buttercream would hold up on a hot day, no worries about ending up with aqua not blue icing because of the butter, and coped better with heat than the Betty Crocker icing I sometimes use (which colours well but gets very soft in the heat, and if you want to pipe it, you need to add a lot of icing sugar to the mixture first to get it stiff enough).

Fresh cuppies


Cupcakes iced using CakeMate frosting in a can using the star tip provided



The cupcakes with their 'little star' collars (from Robert Gordon)

Mango cheesecake

I love this recipe. The mango puree gives it a more mousse-like texture, and baking it in a water bath helps to keep the texture silky. It is a Nigella recipe which appeared in Australian Delicious magazine (Dec 2004 / Jan 2005 issue).

Base

• 250g digestive biscuits
• 110g unsalted butter, softened
• 40g soft dark brown sugar

Filling

• 4 small mangoes (to make about 2 cups of puree), plus extra thinly sliced mango flesh to garnish
• 680g full-fat cream cheese
• 1 cup (220g) caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• juice of half a lime

Preheat oven to 170C.

Blitz the bicuits in a food processor until they are almost fine crumbs, then cut the butter into pieces and add with the brown sugar. Process again until the mixture starts to clump together. Press the mixture into the base of a 24cm springform tin (I don't own this size, so I use a 22cm tin). Refrigerate.

Peel and cut the flesh from the mangoes (over the processor bowl to catch the juices), then puree until smooth. Add the cream cheese and blend. Add the caster sugar, and with the motor running, break the eggs one at a time down the tube of the processor. Lastly, add the lime juice and blitz again until smooth.

Wrap the pan in a double-layered piece of extra-wide foil; sit in a roasting pan. Spread the filling over the base and smooth. Pour boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the pan.

Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until filling is set with only a msall amount of wobble in the centre (it will keep cooking as it cools). Remove from bath and foil and cool on a wire rack. When cool, cover loosely and refrigerate overnight.

Garnish with the extra sliced mango to serve.

The birthday cake
For my little one's 1st birthday, I baked two white chocolate cakes and layered them on top of each other to get extra height (see pics of that cake in this post). This year I just did a single layer, again using the white chocolate mud cake recipe from Exclusively Food. Rather than ice it with buttercream again as I did last year, this year I decided to follow the recipe for white chocolate and sour cream ganache. When I tried to ice the sides with the ganache, I found it a little too translucent for my liking, though it probably would have become more opaque as it set. I wasn't feeling very creative this year, so I'd opted for a toy tractor to decorate the cake, and wanted to create a ploughed field. So as I wanted a brown colour for the top for the soil, I added one square of 70% cocoa Lindt chocolate to the ganache, and iced the top and sides. Unfortunately it took on a slightly marbled appearance where there had already been some white chocolate ganache (not in a good way). I let the chocolate start to set, then ran one edge of my Wilton decorating triangle over most of the surface to get the ploughed look. I then coloured some coconut green for grass and sprinkled that at the side of the field, and when it was completely set, I added the tractor. I also iced my son's name on the cake using Queen white chocolate fudge icing (comes in a tube with a fine nozzle for writing).

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the candles alight, but I used 'Angel Flames' candles - the flame is the same colour as the candle.

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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!