Coffee and Walnut Fudge Cupcakes

Om nom nom, can't stop thinking about those coffee cakes. Deeeelicious. Want a recipe?

Coffee and Walnut Fudge Cupcakes
4oz marg/butter
4oz caster sugar 4oz self raising flour, sifted
2 eggs, beaten pinch salt 1tsp coffee dissolved in 1 tsp boiling water
50g walnut pieces 4oz butter 2tbsp milk Icing sugar to taste


Makes 8 cupcakes

For the cakes

Cream butter and sugar
Beat in eggs and flour in thirds alternatively until smooth
Beat in 3/4 coffee syrup and half the walnut pieces
Bake for 14 minutes at 170'C
Leave in the baking tray for 5 minutes to cool slightly and then remove to a wire rack.

For the fudge

Melt butter on a low heat with the milk and remainder of the coffee syrup (or a bit more to taste)
At this point I measure the icing sugar by eye, but you're looking for it to be thick and smooth, but not solid (as it is still warm and should solidify as it cools)
Pipe on fudge while still lukewarm (should be warm enough to be pipeable but cool enough to hold its shape as you pipe) and top with a walnut half.


Enjoy!

Jam and Custard Cupcakes

Well, it's been three days now. You should've had time to absorb the magnificence of those banoffee cupcakes (please let me know if you try them, I delight in sharing yummy things). Which means that it's probably okay to do another post. Not that there's anything particularly special about these cupcakes. They were another experiment that semi worked and were yummy enough, but I'm not sure I'd do these again unless I needed to use up ingredients.



Jam and Custard Cupcakes

Your regular batch of vanilla cupcake batter
Your favourite jam, heated and strained to get rid of pips and to turn it into that wonderful pouring consistancy
The custard topping from the Rhubarb and Custard cupcakes of yore.

Put batter into cupcake cases, drizzle liberally with the strained jam and bake. When cool, spread another layer of jam on top before topping with the custard. In the words of Alexander the Meerkat, simples!

Banoffee Cupcakes

I'm going to share with you one of the loves of my life. For too long, I feel, have I kept this to myself. I have been selfish and arrogant. So today, I'm going to share with you the wonderful banoffee cupcakes. I even coloured the lettering in a sad attempt to impress on you all how wonderful these are.


I got the idea for these while wondering which of my favourite desserts would make good cupcakes. I've since learned that banoffee cupcakes and lemon meringue cupcakes are already popular and that pastry does not work well as a cupcake base, regardless of whether you blind bake it first or not. Although I will get back to you when I've perfected my bakewell tart cupcake.

However, I have thrown together my own recipe for these, pieced together from various other recipes that I've found along the way.

You can put a biscuit base on these - as I did for the first four or five batches - but I've found that this is a bit messy, a bit unnecessary and that people tend to complain about getting crumbs down their clothes. So I now leave out the biscuit base. It's up to you guys and your personal preference.

Banoffee Cupcakes

For the banana cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
3tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarb of soda
pinch of salt
punch of freshly ground nutmeg
2 medium bananas, mashed
1/2 cup butter or marg, melted
2 eggs, whisked till frothy
1tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk

For the toffee:
Use this stuff. It will change your toffee eating life. You'll never go back. Unless you, like me, have a rubbish co-op near you that doesn't stock it. In which case, you'll need
1/3 cup brown sugar
50g butter
1 395g tin of sweetened condensed milk

For the toppings:
Whipped cream
A flake. Or some other crushed chocolate. You could use chocolate shavings if you wanted to be extra fancy :)

Make the toffee by putting all the ingredients in a pan and cook over a low heat, stirring continuously, until thick. This should take about 10 minutes. Don't let it boil and don't let it stand for any amount of time without stirring or it will stick to the pan and you won't be able to clean it. Ask me how I know this. Go on. Set the toffee aside to cool (don't taste it unless you've cooled it down beforehand. You don't want to skin your tongue or anything) and make the cupcake batter.

Sift all dry ingredients together and add the wet ones in the following order: butter, milk, vanilla, egg, banana. Mix well after each addition. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for about 15 minutes on about 180'C. A medium heat anyway.

When cakes are done, leave to cool and then cut a cone out of the top of each. Fill this cone shape with toffee. About 10 minutes before you want to serve them, whip the cream until stiff and pipe on top (or if you can't find your beloved 1M piping nozzle like me, just spoon the cream on, spreading it out gently to look pretty). Sprinkle with crushed flake.

And watch as your friends propose, fall at your feet and declare their undying devotion.

You think I'm joking.


I'm not.

I'd make them for the bake swap I'm joining, but I don't think fresh cream travels well *le sigh*

Which reminds me, this is wicked cool. Basically, you sign up and get assigned a partner. You then send your partner a care package containing some homemade baked goods, a recipe card and a little gift. They return the favour. I'm honestly not sure which I'm looking forward to the most - making cakes or cookies and sending them to a stranger or receiving a random package in the mail with yummy treats in. It's only in effect in the UK, but if you live here, get involved! Or set up an American/French/Australian/insert-country-here bake swap. I'm crazy excited about it. And I just can't hide it. :-D

Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes

The May challenge for the Livejournal community bakebakebake is 'custard'. You have to incorporate this into some form of baking. So, as I adore cupcakes, I made Rhubarb and Custard cupcakes. I had a quick look on the internet, but there aren't any recipes for this (although there are a couple for Rhubarb and Custard muffins, which I didn't like the look of) so I was able to make it up happily, without fear of plagiarism.

So this is my own recipe, thrown together from a number of pre-existing recipes no doubt. The confectioner's custard isn't my own recipe though, that can be credited to the Rick Stein Cookbook that I got for my 18th birthday. But even that I changed a little bit.

Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes

For the cake:
40z butter
40z caster sugar
40z plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1/4 bicarb of soda
2 eggs, beaten

For the Rhubarb:
2tsp sugar
enough rhubarb to make about 5oz when stewed
2 tsp water

For the custard:
2 Egg yolks,
2oz caster sugar
3/4 oz (20g) cornflour
3/4 oz (20g) plain flour
10fl oz (300ml) milk
1tsp vanilla extract
150ml double/whipping cream.


First, peel, chop and stew the rhubarb (by combining water, rhubarb and the 2tsp sugar and cooking over a low heat until almost mushy. I didn't stew down completely, leaving quite a few small lumps in. I would probably stew it even less next time to have even more lumps as these gave quite a nice texture to the cake. It's a personal preference thing). I forgot to weigh the rhubarb before I cooked it, which means that I can't tell you how much is it takes to make 5 1/2 oz stewed, sorry. I wouldn't worry too much though, as the amount of rhubarb in these cupcakes is determined by how much I had. So guess.


Set this aside and let it cool. Then make the confectioners custard. You'll need to put the egg yolks, sugar, two flours and 2 tbsps of the milk into a bowl and mix together until smooth. I used a whisk, just to make sure there were no lumps at all. Put the remaining milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Keep watching it, because when it starts to boil it will triple in size and boil over if you're not careful. Pour the boiling milk into the egg mixture slowly, whisking constantly as you do until you have a smooth mixture. Pour this back into the saucepan and cook on a low heat, stirring (or whisking) constantly until you have a nice thick custard. Take off the heat and pour into a bowl. Cover the custard with a layer of cling film (cling wrap/ plastic wrap for Americans) pressed gently onto the surface of the custard to stop a skin forming.


Transfer this to the fridge and allow to cool completely. Preheat oven to 180'C. Now for the actual cake. Cream together the butter and the sugar and gradually add beaten eggs (adding a tablespoon of flour if the mixture starts to separate). Sift together flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt and fold into the butter, sugar and eggs. Once combined, add in the stewed rhubarb and mix in well.


Half fill muffin cases with mixture. As this was a first time cake recipe, I experimented a bit with different combinations. The first six I filled 2/3 full with the rhubarb mixture, the middle three I filled 2/3 with rhubarb mixture and put a dollop on custard on top, and the last three I half filled with rhubarb, put a dollop of custard in and then covered the custard with more rhubarb. Bake for 14 minutes, or until golden brown and firm to the touch and take out and leave to cool. These photos are a bit rushed and not as clear as I'd like, primarily because I had to rush to collect my mum from work and I wanted to take them as taste testers (nothing brings people out of the woodwork faster than cakes. I turned up to see two people and within 3 minutes of bringing these out there was an entire crowd!)


The cakes without custard baked into them had the confectioners custard as topping. To make it into a topping, I whipped 150 ml of cream (I used double as they didn't have whipping, but either will do) and folded it in to make a lighter topping. Next time I think I will do double the cream as the end result was not stiff enough to pipe or even hold its shape. It was amazingly yummy though.


I also didn't have my muffin pan with me (I was baking at my parent's house) so the cupcakes came out all sorts of funny shapes. And because the cake was weighed down with the rhubarb, it didn't rise. Which, normally would irritate me, but the texture of the cake was so beautiful that I couldn't complain.

I'm definitely making this again (I'll have to, I have an order for a rhubarb and custard cake for a birthday - apparently my mum liked them so much that she was recommending them to her friends at church and I got an order out of it!) as I'd like to sort out a pipable custard topping and maybe have a few more chunks of rhubarb in the cake itself. I also want to experiment with the sugar levels, although I have to admit, the sugar that I used made the cakes tart enough to taste properly, but sweet enough not to be unpleasant, so I was pretty happy with that :-)

All in all, a bloomin' good success I'd say!

Practice Cupcakes

Here is my exciting news for the decade: I've been commissioned to make a cake and accompanying cupcakes for the UK Supernatural convention Asylum (I really wish I was going). Now, Supernatural may just be my favourite TV show and I have a soft spot for Jensen, Jared and Mischa (and Jim Beaver, but in an aw-I-want-to-cuddle-him way. And I kind of wish he was my uncle or something). And there is a fairly big chance that the boys will be eating my cake! I'm actually making them personalised cupcakes as well, so hopefully they'll get those even if they don't get a piece of cake!

Anyway, I'm super excited about it, as this is my first big commission (as the wedding cake was friend of the family and I didn't charge for anything other than ingredients I'm not counting it) and is hopefully the start of many more. So I have to make it perfect. But enough about the cake, here are my practice cupcakes!


The cupcake itself is chocolate with chocolate chips, whilst the butter cream topping is chocolate and vanilla marbled. The scrolls are made from coloured gumpaste and written on with my (adored) edible pen.

My photography is not great (and probably won't be for the foreseeable future, just to warn you) but you get the gist :)

They tasted amazing as well, if you were wondering. Best ever, according to some trusty taste testers.

Double Choc Chip Cupcakes

8oz butter (or half butter, half Crisco)
8oz caster sugar
6oz plain flour
2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp bicarb soda
2oz good quality cocoa
4 eggs, beaten
100g chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar, gradually beat in eggs adding a tablespoons of flour mix if the batter starts to separate. Fold in flour mixture (flour, cocoa, baking soda and bicarb) and then mix in chocolate chips. Make about 20 big cupcakes, more if you use smaller cupcake cases.

180'C for 13-18 minutes.

Let cool and then add your favourite topping!