Banoffee Cupcakes

Once again I am still in my pajamas at 3pm on a Sunday and the only think I have to show for myself are 50 or so cupcakes and 1000 extra words on my essay. You wouldn't have thought I got up at 8am would you?

So dearest Chris organises his friends together every year to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis New Zealand. As a thank you for everything I offered to make Chris some thank you cupcakes for a wee gathering to be held this evening. I made banoffee cupcakes (since he loves banana cake) and rose cupcakes which tasted a lot like rose Turkish delight as I was itching to try out the new rose water I bought a few days ago.

This post however will be on the banoffee ones. I'll post about the rose ones when I am not feeling so cupcaked out :S

Once again the dear old

Cake Days

book comes into play. It had a recipe for banoffee cupcakes with a caramel-whipped cream thing going on on top of them. To be honest I couldn't really be bothered putting on my face and putting on actual clothes to go down to the supermarket to buy the cream. So I just made a toffee icing like I did in my

sticky date toffee cupcakes

I made last weekend.

Remember that expensive issue I had with the

dulche de leche

? Well Linda at work said to try out Jamie Oliver's method of placing unopened tins of condensed milk in a full pot of simmering water for three hours, topping the water up when it goes down. I tried it out last night and boy did I get a pleasant surprise this morning when I opened up one of the tins! It was delicious! Sure three hours is a long time but I boiled up two tins, one for these cupcakes and one for next time. If you were super efficient you would put like five in at a time and leave them sitting on your shelf - after all you haven't opened them so they are still shelf stable.

Moment of truth!

Sweet mother of goodness!

Uugh I feel so sick. Too much icing has been consumed today and not enough actual food!

Don't let that put you off though, these are delicious. They comprise of a banana cake and caramel sponge with a sneaky dollop of caramel on top piled further with delicious toffee caramel icing :)

Don't kid yourself. The banana in these does not make these things the least bit healthy.

Give them a go, impress your mum and your friends when you show up with the most delicious treats out!

Banoffee Cupcakes

(adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days

 recipe)

Makes 12

40g butter, softened

140g castor sugar

120g plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 large egg

1/2 cup whole milk

100g mashed banana (about 3/4 of a large banana)

50g of dulche de leche  or the tinned condensed milk caramel

Icing:

300g icing sugar

80g butter, softened

25ml whole milk

100g tinned caramel

Splash of vanilla

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees bake (or 170 if your oven is fan forced). Line your muffin tray with cupcake cases.

Beat together your butter and sugar until all the butter lumps have been broken down and the consistency is even. Sieve in your flour and baking powder and beat until a sandy consistency is reached.

Add in your milk and vanilla, beat in. Next add your egg and beat until thick and smooth. 

Pop in your mashed banana and caramel and mix until evenly distributed.

Fill your cupcake cases 3/4 full (they tend to sink quite a bit when they cool) and bake for 20 minutes or until the sponge springs back when lightly pressed. 

Leave your cupcakes to cool a wee bit before transferring them to a cake rack or a clean tea towel. 

Make sure your cupcakes are completely cold before you ice them. 

Icing:

Cream the butter and sugar together with the addition of the milk to loosen it up. You may need more milk or icing sugar if the icing isn't thin or thick enough after you add the caramel. Add in your vanilla and caramel and beat until smooth and fluffy. Make sure your icing is relatively stiff, you don't want it slopping off your cupcake and making a mess.

Take the caramel and place a small blob (about 1/4 teaspoon) on each cupcake before you ice them.

Insert the icing into a piping bag fitted with a 1M nozzle and swirl away! :)

This is what a 1M nozzle looks like

Haha lucky is the person who gets this one :)

I think these are even better than the plain caramel cupcakes I did last week. Give them a go, you won't regret it :)

TTFN!!

Delicious oozing caramel :)

Strawberry Milkshake Cupcakes

Hi there!

So I really should have been writing an essay this morning. I sort of did. Then I got distracted . . .

I know you guys must be sick of me going on about the Hummingbird Bakery. To be honest I am getting embarassed writing about it all the time. The problem is that their cupcake recipes are too good. They always work. Plus they don't use much butter so are really cheap and quick to whip up. Anyway on their website they post their weekly specials. This week they were running their milkshake and frappé inspired range of cupcakes. They listed the ingredients (not in quantities) and the strawberry ones just had some strawberry milkshake powder in addition to their usual ingredients. I assumed that they just added some of the powder to a standard vanilla recipe and some simple vanilla icing.

So I gave them a go. I used Hansells strawberry milkshake powder (it was the only one there apart from Nesquik) and put one tablespoon in with the milk then added that to the mix just as I usually would. I added one teaspoon to the icing.

The powder gave the cupcakes a pretty pink colour. Overall these are dead simple to make. I wish I had some candy straws to pop on the top though.

I think they turned out rather well, not that I actually got a whole one, only a wee nibble, I gave them all away :) From the nibble I did had they tasted really yummy and milky, just like strawberry milk funnily enough.

I used a 1M nozzle to ruffle the icing on like a frothy milkshake top :)


Strawberry Milkshake Cupcakes (adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla cupcake recipe)
Makes 12

40g butter, softened
140g castor sugar
120g flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
120ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon strawberry milkshake powder

Icing:
60g butter, softened
300g icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 teaspoons strawberry milkshake powder
3 tablespoons whole milk
A few drops of pink food colouring

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees on bake. Line a muffin tray with cupcake cases.

Beat with an electric beater the butter, sugar, sieved flour and baking powder until a fine sandy consistency is reached.

Add the milkshake powder, vanilla essence and egg to the milk, whisk until combined. Add this to the dry mixture, beat for a few minutes until smooth and slightly fluffy.

Fill each cupcake case two thirds full.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the sponge springs back when lightly pressed.

Leave cupcakes to cool completely before icing.

Trying to multi-task . . . failing

To make the icing, sieve the dry ingredients then beat everything together until smooth and fluffy. You want it so the icing forms fairly stiff pipe-able peaks that won't flip down when applied to the cupcake.

Put the icing in a piping bag with a 1M nozzle attached and swirl inwards starting from the outer edge. Sprinkle over whatever you fancy :)

All ready to go :)

I hope you enjoy these, super easy to make and a fun twist on the usual vanilla and strawberry :)

Byee!

My First Attempt at Whoopie Pies: Peanut butter and chocolate

Hello there.

Whoopie pies. Only recently have I heard of such a baked good. They are apparently comprised of two cakey blobs sandwiched together with fluffy frosting. They are commonly the size of small cheese burgers. Typical Americans continuously coming up with new ideas to become obese.

To celebrate my 10 00th view on my blog I decided to try something new. These whoopie pies in my Hummingbird Cake Days book looked delicious, almost comical in their perfectness. Unfortunately mine turned out a big more knobbly that they should have. Maybe I should have squished them down a bit, who knows?

I also found the mixture to be quite sticky, gummy and chewy, like the flour had been over mixed, like my overcooked mug brownies that stick to the roof of my mouth (not ideal). Oh well there is a first time for everything.

Once cooked (and popped in the fridge for a bit) they become quite fudgy. An unusual texture but I wouldn't say a bad one. I am actually rather enjoying this late night fat snack. Without the icing they wouldn't be so great though.

Whoopie pies are like really dense cakes, they use plain yoghurt and a wee bit of milk rather than mostly milk (like cupcakes). You also start off by beating the egg and sugar together, rather than the butter and sugar. What else is strange is that you add the butter melted, rather than softened. Quite a peculiar method to follow, but an easy one.

Cake Days says to use marshmallow fluff in the icing between the two pie pieces. Unfortunately I don't know where to get that in Dunedin and there is something about buying a can of marshmallow fluff that creeps me out a bit. Maybe its the thought of all the processing and additives that must be in it. I'm a food sci student, for additives to freak me out it must be pretty bad. Usually those sorts of products taste no where near as good as freshly made alternatives.

To compensate for my lack of fluff, I added a good hunk of butter as well as a nice heaped dessert spoon of crunchy peanut butter to the icing. The icing reminded me of the new Whittaker's peanut butter chocolate. That can't be a bad thing right?

I have not given up completely. Far from it. I shall try again! probably with a different flavour though. These will work for me! They will! For the mean time I shall use my food class to dispose of them tomorrow morning, hide all evidence that I failed!


Peanut Butter and Chocolate Whoopie Pies (adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days)
Makes 8-10 sandwiches

1 large egg
150g castor sugar
125g plain yoghurt (I just bought a single serve pottle from the supermarket for like $1)
25ml whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
75g melted butter
275g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
60g crunchy peanut butter

Icing:
40g softened butter
2 ish cups icing sugar
25ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 dessert spoon peanut butter


Beat the egg and sugar together until thick and a very pale yellow colour.

In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, yoghurt and vanilla together. Pour this into the egg and sugar mix and beat well.

Pour in the melted butter then mix well again.

Sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa together. Add half of the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, beat well on a low speed until smooth then add the rest of the dry mix and beat again until smooth.

Add the peanut butter then mix through until evenly distributed.

Place the mix in the fridge for 20-30 minutes to cool down.

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Once the batter is cool, roll into balls (mine weighed 40g each) place in the tray and flatten with your fingers. I should have done this step. Ahh hind sight, its a wonderful thing.

Bake for 10 minutes or until they spring back when lightly pressed. The dough is quite a dry mix and you definitely don't want to overcook these or else they will be horrid and dry.

Transfer the half whoopies onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Whilst they are cooling, beat your butter, milk and icing sugar well until light and fluffy. Add your peanut butter and continue to beat to regain the fluffiness. I found I had to add some more icing sugar to stiffen the icing up. If the icing is too soft the whoopie halves will slip off each other.

Transfer the icing into a piping bag with a large circular tip. Pipe the icing onto one half then sandwich another on top to make a sandwich. Unfortunately with sandwich biscuits as soon as all of them are stuck together the total yield of biscuits is halved, meaning they run out twice as fast!

Store these in an airtight container in the fridge to set the icing (or on the bench if your flat kitchen is cold enough).

I hope you enjoy, they do not taste bad at all. A little big for my liking (I feel like I have eaten a cake burger after only one).

Byeee!!!

Caramel Cupcakes: A rainy day treat

Good rainy evening!

Wow sure is pouring down out there in dear old Dunedin. There is something about wet miserable weather that gives me this sense of 'you can eat whatever the hell you like, the calories don't count; it's raining'. Do you guys get that?

Anyway I had some of the caramel I made for my sticky date cupcakes left over in the fridge as well as some left over icing. I had to use them up! Waste not, want not!

Ohhh guess what!!! Exciting!! Exciting!!! (No Alix, it's not Taylor Swift's new single). I bought the Hummingbird Bakery App! Now I can have my favourite baking cookbook permenantly in my pocket so I cant have easy access and impromptu baking sessions!

EXCIIITTTINNGGG!!! I reccommend you get it. It's super cool!!

Right, enough of that. It's cupcake time.

This recipe is basically just a plain vanilla recipe with the addition of caramel. The recipe says to use dulche de leche, a South American tinned caramel. Unfortunately that sells in the international isle at New World for $8.99. A bit out of range for a casual baking session. They also suggest normal tinned caramel as a substitute. I dunno about you but I find the highlander tinned condensed milk caramel a bit weird tasting. Jamie Oliver suggests placing tins of condensed milk, unopened, in a high sided pot filled with boiling water and leaving them to cook for three hours. Apparently this turns the condensed milk into a caramel. I am keen to try that. I didn't know this at the time I made my sticky date cupcakes so I just made up a normal caramel filling recipe that I use in my caramel slices, it's here under my sticky date cupcake post.


Caramel Cupcakes (Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book)
Makes 12-15

40g softened butter
140g castor sugar
120g sieved flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg, room temperature
1/2 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
75g (I sneakily used 100g) of dulche le leche or normal caramel

Icing
300g icing sugar, sieved
60g butter, softened
25ml whole milk
75g dulche de leche or caramel


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, bake.

In a bowl, beat the butter, sugar, flour and baking powder together until it becomes a sandy consistency. Once all the lumps are removed, pour in the milk and vanilla and beat until smooth. Crack in the egg and beat until smooth and fluffy. Add the caramel and beat until incorporated.

Spoon into paper cases in a muffin tray until 2/3 full.

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the tops are golden and the tops spring back when you press them. Leave them to cool slightly before turning out into a wire rack. Leave to cool completely before icing.

Beat the butter, sieved icing sugar and milk until light and fluffy. You may need to add more milk to smooth it out. Add the caramel and beat until smooth. I found I needed to add a bit more icing sugar to thicken it up. The caramel can cause it to become slightly sloppy and if you want to pipe it out nicely you need it to form really stiff peaks otherwise they will slop down.

Place a small spoon of caramel on each cupcake, pipe the icing using a 1M tip (or however you want) then drizzle over some more runny caramel or golden syrup. Nom nom nom.

I recommend you eat at least all of them instantly.

Excellent!

Happy rainy day!!

Sticky Date Toffee Cupcakes

Hi there!

So I got bored this afternoon and my baking itch wasn't satisfied with just the carrot cake I had made. I flipped through my Hummingbird Bakery Cakes Days book that Chris bought me (best present ever) and found this recipe for sticky date and caramel cupcakes. I was originally put off because they used this it called for an ingredient for dulche de leche, which is a South American tinned milk caramel. I found this at the Centre City New World but it was a hefty $8.99. Instead I bought a tin of condensed milk and made my own version on the stove top. (Right next to it, in the picture is the best lemon honey/curd you can buy in a jar! Aunty Von's, I highly recommend it).

I like sticky date pudding. I like it a lot. It is so moist and delicious, especially when drowned in caramel sauce and a bit dollop of sloppy whipped cream on top. As cupcakes, these are pretty close to the real deal. You include some of the caramel you made into the icing so the light and fluffy icing has a hint of caramel to it.

The other day I saw that you could buy caramel food flavouring in the baking isle now. That is pretty cool. If you were feeling a bit poor you could probably substitute the caramel in the icing for a few drops of essence. I might go and invest in some tomorrow.

What you cant substitute the essence for is the gooey layer of caramel that hides between the sponge and the icing. When you bite into it, it oozes outwards and all over the exposed sponge. Only one word can describe the deliciousness; NOMMMM.

Oh and if you want to make this even worse for you, top it all off with some pieces of caramel sprinkled over the top. It's worth it. I promise.

And just a special shout out to my brand new handbeater! Courtesy of Mum and Dad. I am sad to announce the passing of my dear old friend. He came to me second hand from my Mother and we had many happy memories together. Unfortunately he came to a very grinding halt. I shall miss him.

So anyway this is my new beater's maiden voyage :)

It's still so clean!


Hummingbird's Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

For the cupcake:
180g chopped dried dates
180 ml boiling water
80g unsalted butter, softened
150g soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
180g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla essence


For the caramel:
375g (1 tin) condensed milk
50g butter, chopped into small pieces
4 tablespoons golden syrup

For the icing:
80g butter, softened
400g icing sugar, sieved
3 tablespoons whole milk
100g caramel or dulche de leche


Cupcakes:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius on bake.

First soak the dates in the boiling water for 20 minutes (if you are impatient like me pop them in the microwave for 1 minute to help speed up the process).

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale brown in colour and fluffy in consistency.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat until the mixture roughly doubles in volume.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this dry mix into the butter, sugar and egg mix in thirds, beating after each addition. Beat until the batter is smooth and even.

Add the vanilla to the water and date mix. Pour all of this into the rest of the mixture. Mix by hand until the dates and water are incorporated.

Line a muffin tray with cupcake cases and fill them 2/3 full.

Bake for 18 minutes or until they spring back when touched. Leave to cool slightly before turning out onto a wire rack or clean tea towel.

Caramel:
In a small saucepan, heat the condensed milk, butter and golden syrup together on a medium heat. Stirring regularly. Heat until the butter has melted and has been incorporated into the condensed milk. Keep heating and stirring until it turns a darker tan colour (a wee bit darker than the photo below) and becomes quite thick. Take it off the heat and leave it to cool.

Icing:
Cream the butter and a small amount of the sieved icing sugar. Keep adding icing sugar slowly, adding milk in between additions to moisten the mixture. If the mixture is too stiff, add a splash more milk. Add more icing sugar if it is too sloppy. Next add the caramel.I found that after the addition of the caramel the icing becomes quite soft and a bit more icing sugar was needed to stiffen it up again. Beat until fluffy and smooth.

Place a small dollop of the left over caramel onto the top of each cupcake. Next place the icing into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 1M tip (or equivalent). Starting at the outer edge, squeeze the piping bag and start and inward spiral, overlapping the previous circle ever so slightly. Swirl around and up, moving the nozzle up and down quickly at the top to release the peak from the nozzle. sprinkle over a few caramel pieces (I used jersey caramels) and you are good to go.

Do give these a go, they are not that difficult actually. A few components to think about but the left over jar of caramel sitting in our fridge is well worth the effort!

See you later! :)

Pink Ombre Vanilla Cake

Good Monday morning!

I got up rather early this morning. 7am, ok so not that early really but early respective to standard holiday rising times. When I got up it was pouring, no, bucketing with rain. There was even a clap of thunder.

So I proceeded to watch the season 5 finale of Grey's Anatomy. How is it possible to kill off two characters in one episode? or does George come back to life? I hope so. Anyway since I was shocked at such an episode as well as the rain going on in the background I decided to search out a vanilla cake recipe and make an ombre effect with the layers.

I have seen these ombre cakes lurking around Pinterest lately and it wasn't until that I saw a friend of a friends one that I decided to muster up the courage to do one. It was just a matter of when . .

Sweetapolita did this excellent tutorial on a pastel swirl cake that I eyed up whilst sitting in the airport.

Ombre + pastel swirl = an excellent morning activity.

I searched and searched the blogs of iambaker, Sweetapolita and even Whisk-Kid but to no avail. All of Sweetapolita's recipes included copious amounts of egg whites. I don't know about you but I feel guilty leaving 6 or so egg yolks sitting in the fridge. Its not like I am going to make mayonnaise.

Then I pondered whether or not I could turn my vanilla cupcake recipe into a cake. Then it struck me!

Chris bought me the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book, however it got delivered to his Dunedin address. Chris is in Auckland, not Dunedin so I couldn't search the book. But I could search the internet!

So I googled Hummingbird Bakery vanilla cake recipes and sure enough one popped up. Thank goodness!

I had my recipe. It used three eggs. I could live with that.

Lets do this shall we?


Hummingbird Bakery's Vanilla Cake
(makes three 20cm layers)

360g plain flour
360g caster sugar
120g softened butter
360ml whole milk (1 1/2 cups)
3 eggs
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons vanilla essence
pink food colouring

and for the icing:

500g icing sugar
160g butter, softened
50ml whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
pink food colouring
a drop or two of strawberry essence if you wish :)

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees on bake. Line three 20cm cake tins with baking paper and grease the edges.

Beat the butter and sugar together until evenly distributed. It won't cream so don't worry. Sieve in the flour and baking powder and beat until a fine sandy consistency is reached. Add an egg and half a cup of the milk. Beat until incorporated. Repeat until all the eggs and milk are included. Add the vanilla. Beat until smooth. If it is a good day, the stars are aligned and you are wearing your lucky underwear the batter should fluff up a bit. I obviously wasn't wearing the right undies today. The batter was runny. But that's ok, it will still work.

Here is the fiddly bit.

Tare another large bowl over your kitchen scales (digital is best). Pour and scrape all of your batter into the bowl, weighing the total batter volume. Divide this number (1312g in my case) by three. Then get three separate bowls and weigh out three equal portions of batter (437ish g in my case).

Now its time to colour. Drop by drop, colour the batters until you have a light, medium and dark shade of pink. Once the colour is evenly mixed, pour the batter into each lined tin.

Our oven wasn't big enough for all three so I had to bake two first then the last one.

Bake for 25 minutes (or until the skewer comes out clean). If the tops start browning a little too much, place some tin foil over the top. This will stop the browning but let the cake to continue to cook.

Once out of the oven, leave to cool in the tins before turning out onto a wire cake rack.

Ok you have your cakes. Leave these to cool completely before you even start to think about icing them.

Follow Sweetapolita's tutorial on how to ice this baby all swirly and the like. She has a video which is far better than my mushed holiday brain trying to pump out comprehensible sentences.

Beat all your icing ingredients together until they are super fluffy and smooth. The volume should increase quite substantially. Colour all of the icing the lightest shade of pink. Then crumb coat the whole cake with that colour. Then split the remaining icing into three lots and colour two of the bowls a dark and darker shade of pink.

Yeah best to follow Sweetapolita's instructions for this. I have sugar on the brain.

Pop your crumb coated cake in the fridge for half an hour. This allows you the perfect time to revisit the tutorial video. . .

Start by placing a good dollop of icing on the top. Spread this evenly across the surface, letting excess overhang the sides.

Get the darkest shade and carefully dab it onto the bottom third. Do it one small blob at a time. It does not need to be smooth at this point.

Get your middle shade of pink and repeat the same process in the middle third.

Get a mug full of boiling water and a nice long knife, a palate knife would be best. Hold the knife parallel to the cake side, angling  slightly forward. In one cleanish sweep ,  glide the knife around the cake, turning the cake stand beneath it. The colours should start to blend together.

Dipping the knife in hot water and wiping it each time, smooth the edges of the cake. Be careful not to over work it as you will loose the gradient effect. This sort of cake suits a  rougher finish rather than a totally smooth one.

Anyway once done sprinkle with some sprinkles and some edible glitter. Now I just have to find someone to give this cake to. I will post cross section photos once it has been cut into. Which could be a while yet. The cake is sitting on our coffee table looking a little lonely. . . .

I shall update you as soon as the cake is cut!

TTFN! :)

UPDATE!!

So Jack came home from school and became rather impatient waiting for dessert time. Couldn't let him spoil his dinner now could we?

Dessert time finally came around. . .

Hmm well I think that is more than enough cake for one day :) 

Hmm wait, I think Mum needs a batch of cupcakes made for work tomorrow. 

A Carrot Cake for Jamal

Good Sunday morning to you all!

Being the baked good enthusiast that I am, I am always looking for a good excuse to bake a cake. It just so happened that it was dear Jamal's birthday yesterday which was more than enough excuse to bake a carrot cake upon request.

The recipe I used is my Mum's recipe. She got it from one of her old books in her cupboard above the fridge. Since I don't have access to that cupboard right now (slight geographical hurdle) I can't confirm which book. Anyway it is a rather good recipe. Stays moist (yes I said it, moooiistt) for days and days (if it even lasts that long). The best bit about it is that it gives you the excuse to smother it in cream cheese icing. Om nom nom. One of Mum's secret tricks is to put chopped prunes in the cake. Prunes! They are surprisingly good in this cake as it makes it lovely and moist (moooissttt). Another thing she does is she always makes a 1.5x recipe. So that the cake is nice and tall in her 25cm tin. Haha and wait there is a third thing! Crushed pineapple. This ups the moisture content and provides a lovely fruity texture.

So here we go,

Sophie's Mum's Delicious Carrot Cake
(this is the single recipe - if you want a bigger cake just multiply quantities by 1.5)
ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole meal flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups oil
2 eggs
1 cup grated carrot (about 2 carrots)
1/2 cup crushed pineapple with juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
about half a cup of chopped prunes and/or dried apricots

1x25cm cake tin or 2x 20cm cake tins lined and greased
two sheets of tin foil to place over the top of the tins


Method:

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, grated carrot and dried fruit. Mix until evenly distributed.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, eggs, vanilla and pineapple (and its juice) until evenly combined.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir until combined. Try not to over mix as we don't want the cake getting tough. Just make sure there are no pockets of dry ingredients lying around.

Pour into your tin(s). Now if you made two small cakes bake for 45 minutes (check at 40 minutes though). For one large cake it takes around 1 hour 10 minutes but check at an hour just to be sure as all ovens are different. If you notice your cakes going a bit too brown on top place the tin foil over the tin. This will stop the browning but not the cooking.

Let the cakes cool down before popping out of their tins. Leave to cool completely before icing (overnight in a chilly Dunedin flat works well).

Could we count this as a healthy cake? fibre, carrots, fruits! haha

Now for the icing, I doubled the recipe here as I wanted to put icing between the cakes and down the sides, If you want to cut calories (haha like you would want to) just do a single recipe and just ice the top. This recipe is from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.

300g icing sugar, sifted
50 unsalted butter, softened
125g cream cheese, cold

Beat the icing sugar and butter together with an electric hand beater or free standing mixer until well incorporated and semi fluffy. Add cubes of cream cheese one at a time, beating until well incorporated. Once all the cream cheese is added, beat on high for a few minutes until the icing becomes nice and fluffy. Do not over beat as the icing can become runny (I can give you a nice long explanation as to why that happens if you want). Add a teaspoon of vanilla if you wish.

Sweet, now apply that to your cold cake(s).

I recommend checking out Kaitlin over at Whisk Kid to learn how to ice a cake properly. She will teach you how to crumb coat which is essential when using a light coloured icing (ie anything other than chocolate). What is a crumb coat you ask? Go and see for yourself haha.

I even added sparkles

Well I do believe this cake turned out quite nicely. I hope it tasted all right haha.Carrying it on a plate all the way to Jamal's flat was the host terrifying ordeal. I was more nervous that public speaking and sitting an exam combined! It got there in one piece and damage-free thankfully. I did get some funny looks though as I walked down the main streets of Dunedin.

Time for some food chemistry I do believe, hmm or maybe just food . .

See you later!

Pineapple (and a wee bit of Coconut) Cupcakes

Hello all!

Now this adventure all began with my food innovation class. Wait no it didn't, it started with me gazing at the gourmet food isle at New World for City Centre 40 minutes one Friday night (yes that is how raving my life is).

During this awe struck state I came across these packets of freeze dried fruit powders. Now this made me really quite excited as I had heard before that some cupcake shops use fruit powders to flavour their cupcakes. Now each packet was $8.99 for 40g, a bit pricey for me at the time. Fast forward to our ice cream making lab and were were in a flavour dilemma. Then it hit me, why not colour and flavour the ice cream with some of the fruit powder I found. So we ended up getting raspberry and pineapple and our raspberry chocolate fudge ice cream was a success. But alas! There was powder left over, so I took on the burden of giving it a home with the promise that I would bring out class cupcakes (which I did haha). The first lot I made were vanilla with a raspberry cream cheese icing. Boy was that icing good. It tasted like yoghurt-berry chupa chups. Ill pop a photo down below of them. I was a bit hesitant about putting the pineapple powder into the cupcake batter due to it's acidity. From this experience I would limit the amount in the batter and just knock people out with super pineappley icing, just to ensure a super fluffy sponge.

Now these powders I found at New World City Centre in Dunedin but I imagine places like Farro and Nosh should have them too. I would be surprised if they didn't. They come in all sorts of flavours, actually here is the link, explore for yourself http://www.fresh-as.com. All made here in New Zealand. Very cool I think.

Once again I took a Hummingbird Bakery Recipe for vanilla cupcakes but swapped the vanilla for a tablespoon of the pineapple powder. If you didn't have pineapple powder, hmm perhaps if you get a tin of pineapple in full syrup, drain a small amount of syrup into a sauce pan then boil it until it becomes a thicker syrup then add a tablespoon of that? I imagine that would work. Same with the icing, heat some of the juice up and add the hot juice instead of water when mixing your simple buttercream icing. Yeah that would definitely work.


Slightly altered Hummingbird Vanilla Pineapple Cupcakes

makes 12

40g softened butter
140g caster sugar
120g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon of pineapple powder (or pineapple syrup)
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a muffin tray with 12 cases.

Beat the sugar and butter together. They won't cream but the mixture should lighten in colour. Beat until the sugar is evenly distributed and there are no lumps of butter. Sieve in the flour, baking powder and pineapple powder. Beat until a sandy consistency is achieved. Whisk the egg into the milk, pour half of it into the dry mixture. Beat until smooth then add the rest and continue to beat. Add in the syrup if needed. Beat until smooth. Spoon into cases until they are two thirds full. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden on top and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Once completely (!!!) cool ice them with a simple butter-icing sugar-hot water buttercream. Add a few tablespoons of the pineapple powder or replace the water with hot pineapple syrup. Sprinkle on some desiccated  or threaded coconut and serve.

I piped the icing on these with a Wilton 1M tip. I piped starting from the outside, swirling in and over. Here is the tutorial that taught me how to swirl and do roses :)

and here are the raspberry ones

Don't they look delicious?

Any of the fruit powders could be substituted for pineapple, the raspberry I know works excellently.

I hope this encourages you to venture down the gourmet aisle and look a little bit more closely at all the wonders that lie there! :)

See you later!

Banana Chocolate (and Spice) Cupcakes

Hello!

Sorry it has been so long. I dunno, I guess I have just been lazy. This is more of a post on how NOT to make these cupcakes. Everything was going hunky dory until I misread the important wee bit of info regarding the baking powder. Turns out it was 1 TABLESPOON not 1 teaspoon. So my lovely fluffy cupcakes to be turned out as little runt cakes that were about as flat as my chest (which is VERY flat haha). Anyway they still tasted mighty fine so I decided to go ahead and write up this post. Haha thank goodness I didn't make the black bottomed cheesecake cupcakes tonight. That would have been tragic had I ruined good cheesecake. Since dear Jamal isn't around this weekend to consume cheesecakey things I decided to do these ones instead. Thanks Jamal for sort of helping me avoid cheesecake CATASTROPHE!!

As per usual I got the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (I have my cakelet eye on their Cake Days one - oh it looks amazing!).

They called these Banana and Chocolate Cupcakes, but the only chocolate in them is from the icing and I was surprised to find that there was ginger and cinnamon in the recipe. I think they would be more accurately called banana spice cupcakes. For the chocolate icing, I just made a normal butter cream (with not that much butter really) and mixed in around 1 1/2 teaspoons of ginger and maybe 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of cinnamon into it. It gives the chocolate this lovely warming sensation, just like ginger chocolate. Do it :)

So you will need:

120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 TABLESPOON baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
80g butter at room temperature (they say unsalted and then include a pinch of salt in the recipe - I don't have unsalted so I just use normal and then exclude the pinch)
120ml whole milk
2 eggs
120g mashed banana

Chocolate icing (with another 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon added if you wish)

A few words on bananas. The browner the bananas the better. The blacker the bananas are, technically the riper they are. Ripe bananas (ie when they fall off the tree) are black. The starches in the flesh have been broken down into their simpler sugar constituents resulting in a more caramelised, sweeter baked result. Bananas are a climateric, ethylene dependent fruit. To speed up the browning process either throw your bananas around about an hour before you need them (against a wall works well) or pop them in a paper bag with half a cut apple. The bruising causes the production of ethylene (the ripening hormone) which speeds up the process of ripening. Apples are naturally high ethylene producers so their ethylene can be used to ripen other fruits as well. Make sense? Or you could just hide a few bananas behind your couch for a week. That too would make good black banana . . .


Anyway  . . . the method:

(Makes 16)

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees on bake.

In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until combined.

Sieve in the flour, baking powder, ginger and cinnamon then mix until a sandy consistency is reached. Make sure you scrape down the edges of the bowl with a spatula regularly though the batter making process.

Slowly pour in the milk, beating well until it is all combined and the mixture is smooth.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating until they are well incorporated and the mixture is smooth. Remember to scrape those edges.

Stir in the mashed banana using a spoon.

Spoon the mixture into patty cases until they are two thirds full.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until they are golden brown on top and the sponge bounces back when touched.

Leave the cupcakes to cool in the muffin tray for a few minutes before removing and transferring to a wire rack or clean tea towel.

Once the cupcakes are completely cool, whip up your chocolate icing (75g softened butter, 250g (ish) icing sugar, 100g (I think) of cocoa, a few tablespoons of boiling water and a teaspoon or two of ginger and a teaspoon of cinnamon). Either ice them using a palate knife, butter knife or pipe the icing on using a nozzle and bag.

Enjoy!!


 The method in pictures for all you visual learners out there . . .

Ok children, so caster sugar and butter. Go!

Beat until it looks like this.

Oh dear, the egg went for a bit of a wander . . .

So sieve in your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, ginger and cinnamon).

Beat until a sandy consistency is achieved.

Like this :)

I have started making up milk powder milk. I know it sounds gross (it does smell odd I have to admit) but lovely my flattie Alix and I consume a vast (I mean VAST) quantity of custard at very odd times of the night. We go through a lot of milk between the three of us (Lucy sometimes joins us on our late night custardapades) and I figured if we make the custard up with milk powder milk we a) wont taste the milk powder and b) save $1 per litre of milk we use. I figure I can also use it in baking, it has the same solids content as fresh milk. All milk powder is is fresh milk that has been homogenised, pasteurised (like fresh milk) and then spray dried. I have started to get used to it. I even had it over my cereal at lunchtime (haha slash managed to drink a litre of it in the last 24 hours).

What are we doing again? Ah right, adding the 120ml (aka half a cup) of  milk. Add it slowly and beat until the batter is smooth and starts to fluff up.

Next beat in the eggs one at a time. Beat until they are well incorporated and the mixture is . . . you guessed it . . . smooth!

Next the gross bit. Mashed banana *shudder* I hate the stuff. It activates my gag reflex. It is all right in cake though. Actually it is excellent in cake. Excuse the 10g too many of banana.

Mash up the banana and then mix it gently into the batter.

Spoon into the patty cases until two thirds full.

Pop these in the oven for around 20 minutes (or until they are golden brown etc etc you know the drill).

If you have any bananas that are looking a bit sad, peel them, pop them in a snap lock bag and then freeze them. Next time you want to make banana cake/loaf/cupcakes, just whip these bad boys out and you will have instant mushy banana. Just a word of warning, they will go really black and gloopy looking. Why all the better for baking with! They are safe to eat don't worry :) They have just undergone cellular damage during the freezing process (oh god I am a nerd).

Haha remember how I said I didn't put the right amount of baking powder in? These looked fine when they first came out of the oven but as they cooled they started to sink. They sunk until the tops were wrinkled like cerebral cortex. Lovely.

Icing time!

I used a 1M nozzle. But just ignore the poor icing effort. I was disheartened by my brain looking dense cakes so I didn't put any effort into piping them into a nice ruffley swirl.

Oh yeah, then I dropped my camera into one of them :( Shot Sophie.

So there you go :)

They were actually really tasty. I love the ginger in the icing. Next time I will remember to put the right amount of baking powder in haha as these were very cakey and squidgy not light and airy. If at first you do not succeed . . . hide all evidence that you tried :) so I am in the process of mass cupcake consumption.

catch you later alligators!

Peanut Butter and Dark Choc Chunk Cookies

Hello!

Isn't it an excellent afternoon to bake cookies? I just heard thunder in the sky in amongst the thumping of rain against our tin roof. Oh and now hail! This is wonderful! It sounds like I have a rain simulator going. But I don't.

Well since the weather is so delicious, can I tempt you in some as equally delicious peanut butter cookies?

The other day I was told that Whittakers had just released a new peanut butter flavoured chocolate. I haven't tried it yet but in semi celebration/inspiration I decided to make these cookies. Whilst flicking through my Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, I found this recipe. A bit of forewarning though, they have a tonne of butter and even more sugar in them! (400g!). Oh but they are sure worth it.

The recipe says it makes 24 but I managed to get 32 out of this lot, and the cookies still turned out huge! The important thing is to make sure you cream your butter and sugar enough and then once the eggs are added beat until the volume almost doubles. I cannot stress the important of creaming enough - it makes the cookies light and fluffy but also yields a greater dough volume which means more cookies!

So here is what you will need:

225g unsalted softened butter
200g caster sugar
200g brown sugar
2 eggs (large/size 7)
240g crunchy peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I always throw more in)
340g plain flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
75g dark chocolate, chopped

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

Cream the butter and both the sugars together in a bowl and bea ton high for around three minutes, or until the mixture lightens in colour. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Continue beating until mixture almost doubles in size. You want it to be very fluffy.

Next, weigh out your peanut butter and then add that to the mixture. Add in the vanilla. Beat until combined.

Sieve in the flour, baking soda and salt. Beat until evenly dispersed.

Once a smooth dough has formed, stir in the chopped chocolate.

Roll the dough into balls (somewhere in between a ping pong ball and a gold ball in size).

These cookies expand quite a bit so place only 8 at a time, evenly spaced on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Press the balls down with a flour fork.

Bake for 11 minutes. Remove from oven, leave to cool on the tray before transferring with a spatula onto a cooling rack or paper towel. Repeat for the rest of the cookies.



Ok so the method in pictures for all you visual learners out there :)

 (So much sugar!!)

 Cream together your butter and sugars until nice the fluffy.

 Since there is brown sugar in the mix, it wont go white but it should go a light brown colour like above.

 Such tiny tiny eggs! We had tiny eggs so I chose the smallest and used three instead of two large ones. It worked out fine.

 Beat beat beat until super fluffy!

 Now get your peanut butter ready .

 The extra crunchy meant there were extra peanutty bits!

 That is quarter of a 1kg jar . . .

 Mmm yum

 Beat this together until nice and evenly dispersed.

 See how smooth it looks :)

 Don't forget your vanilla!

 Haha who sealed our baking soda bag with a paper clip! Very cool.

 Sieve in your flour, salt and baking soda. Beat the mixture until a smooth dough has formed.

 Now for the fun bit. Chop your chocolate into chunks. You want a few big chunks in there.

 Mix that in . . .

It helps if you flour your hands before rolling the balls of dough. That way it wont stick to your hands as much.

 In between pressing the dough balls down, dip your fork in some flour, that way the balls wont stick to your fork. Once pressed, pop them in the oven for 11 minutes.

 While waiting for the first lot to cook, roll the rest of your dough. It saves time later.

 And Bam!! 11 minutes later they come out looking like these beauties. See how large they became? You don't want to space them any closer. Once they are cool, remove them from the tray and pop the next lot in :)

 Serve with a nice glass of milk :)

 Chris managed to pick up one that had just come out of the oven. The chocolate was still gooey. Jealous. But it did sort of fall apart.

 So many cookies!

Now before Alix, Lucy and I get to them, I put them in a freezer bag and then into the freezer where they shall live and only come out one at a time! haha. Just put them in the microwave for 10 seconds and you have warm fresh cookies every day!

Have a good rainy afternoon!

xoxo