Vampire

Rainbow layer cake

Loved the photos of another effort and found the blog of someone who Martha Stewart picked out and brought her on the show...

This the packaged up cakes dyed with gel colours, cling wrapped to go into freezer overnight.

The gradual assembly of the different cakes.  Using Swiss meringue butter cream, with it requiring special attention to stop it from being soupy to it being coagulated ?...(it the scientist in me)

The first few cuts had been made so that can see the colour ooze out from the plain outer covering.

More of the cake had been cut for the hordes at work.

A slice of the cake before consumption.  

Kathy to Maxine "which colour do you want?"  .... Maxine replies "All of them.."

This cake made the gluten free people jealous or annoyed.  But they did enjoy the colour that emanated from the plain butter cream..

C is for Cupcakes, Cookie Monster Cupcakes- Red Velvet Cupcakes

During school holidays had the opportunity to make these cupcakes for Ms T (6 year old).

Carefully chose a cake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  (which is fabulous and a must buy for the recipes and great photos, love the commentary too)

Not many of my cupcake cookbooks have the red velvet cake recipe in it and last time I made a red velvet recipe I must have acquired it from the internet.  Ms T loved the cake and the buttercream icing (usually its the icing she is only interested in)  which speaks volumes to the quality of the taste of the cake.  Indeed, I loved the taste of these cakes.

I like the soft and moistness texture of the cupcakes
which is quite supreme.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook) (makes 12)

60g butter (room temp)

150g caster sugar

1 egg

10 cocoa powder

20ml red food colour (I used 1/4 tspn of powder)

1/2 tspn vanilla extract

120ml butter milk

150g plain flour

1/2 tspn bicarb soda

1 1/2 tspn white wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C (325 F)

Beat the butter and sugar with hand held mixer until light and fluffy and well mixed.  Turn to high speed, slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well incorporated.

In a separate bowl. mix together the cocoa powder and red food colouring (I mixed the powders and added water very carefully).  Add to the butter mix and mix thoroughly until evenly combined and coloured (scrape down the sides with scraper).  At a slow speed slowly add half the buttermilk.  Beat until well mixed, then add half the flour, and beat  again till well mixed. Repeat the buttermilk and flour additions.  Scrape the sides of the bowl.  Mix at high speed until smooth and even mixture. Add the bicarb and vinegar at slow speed. Beat until well mixed after a few minutes at high speed.

Spoon mixture into paper cases until 2/3 full and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25min, or until the spong vounces back when touched. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean.  Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely

Buttercream

I find this had a good texture for piping and great taste.
50g butter
100g sifted icing sugar
5-10ml hot water

Beat the butter until soft and light.  Gradually add the icing sugar, beating well between additions.  Add the water beat again.  Refridgerate covered.

These are the cupcakes I made some time ago.  Using Cool mints for the eyes. and liquorish for black parts.

However I think that in the meantime I have seen other similar cupcake creations and like the use of halved marshmallow and black food colouring to the buttercream.  (Black food colouring since purchased probably due to the sepotisation of local kiddies liking Halloween) (its NOT our culture - in short)

In defence of using american kiddy things of Sesame characters, that is educational and it been on TV here for about 35-40 years.  And it is why proncouncing Z is ZEEE not  incorrectly as ZED occurs in this country.

Martha cuppies and more...

After a shot absence of blogging I have returned.  Only to find that the images I have I really have to remember why and what for I baked the cupcakes for.

These lovelies are using the zoe bakes genoise cake recipe, however they are a bit flat, lovely taste but would need to fill them more with batter, or just use a more cuppy style of recipe.  I do love the cake but I feel it is much more suited for bigger cakes.  (even though I did use the recipe for my small fondat cake in previous blog).  The reason was just to have a morning tea at work,  Butter cream icing and just generally decorated to look pretty.

These are the Martha Chocolate Caramel cuppys.  Yes they involoved at lot of work and the recipe proportions was for excessive amounts of icing after doing all the cakes.  It was also ver rich/sweet.  This was for someone's farwell (although I did not work with him).  The guys that didn't have to worry about calories Loved these and asked questions about the caramel.   The whole combination of the cake caramel filling and icing was just way over the top and too much work.  I also had excessive amount of the chocolate icing as already stated.

It came to pass that MR Obsessively Cupcake had his birthday.  (but he is far from being a cake person..sigh...)

I went in search of a cupcake recipe (from the many cake cookbooks I have) which I adapted into cinnamon ones.  Since it was less than a week of the Martha Cakes and I intended to use that excessive amount of chocolate icing.  It had a good taste and shine, so why not??

I still made the salted caramel filling (thought halved) and cone filled the cinnamon cakes.

As I had removed the overbearing chocolate taste by using a cinnamon recipe for the cake,  I still managed to make it wonderfully sweet with a dallop of marshmallow fluff above the salted caramel before placing the top of the cone back on the cake. He said that his co-workers found them really sweet and could only manage two at best....

This still did not use up all that chocolate icing and it is so much chocolate!!!

But it keeps well in the fridge.

Iced cakes with Marshmallow Fondant

In experimenting and looking around at other interesting things on foodies blogs, I found something on another blog. She has a genoise cake where I halved coz I only wanted so much and then ended up making 2 lots of the original 1/2 so.... well 2 steps forward 3 steps back later.

I have the sponges below. One 4 inch and 8 inch cake. It was great to mix up... little bit different in that....


had to beat up the warmed egg and sugar mix, in a double boiler like situation with a metal bowl, but it gave a very good result with the aeration of the genoise ..... It also smelt great just after cooking it.

I also had made up some homemade marshmallow which I turned into fondant icing. Totally experimental but I just wanted to do some cake decorating techniques as there is absolutely no man here (there is a man) to eat the goodies, but he is on his religion/crusade of extreme low carb diet with fantastic results....

Actually these were made before then and he was intrigued that he did eat some that he took to work. They thought it was a baby announcement of my impending expectancy.....yeah, no.


This blue and green is the 4 inch and I took this to my work and it went down a treat however, I must say that it was very sweet.

This is all to practice for the man of the house, upcoming birthday.... but hoping to do a tiered cake. Chiffon cake isn't dense for the flavour but fondant makes it sooooo sweet. Not as good as I was hoping but well thats why we practice, but they seemed to be awe bound at both mine and his work.... its just probably that not everyone wants to make the effort unless its a wedding cake.

Hot Chocolate Tea Cups

This week I have progressively made these cute "hot chocolate teacups" from the August Better Home & Gardens (Australia)

I managed to make more than what the recipe says, here is the video for it, however I'll have to search for the recipe on its site... MeH! not on the 138pages of recipes...

They are cute little bite sized pink musky sweetness that isn't rich like many other things I create in the sweet department.

This is from the magazine page 126. You can see how they have stylized it.... and the ingredients!!

OK it has a plain biscuit pastry base (5cm discs) with lemon flavoured (I made mine lime) pink icing (which is the glue for sticking all the different parts together). Musk lollies cut in half for the handle, marshmallow for the tea cup and for the chocolate , chocolate with a smidgen of cream......

Not at all rich but lightly sweet.

Truffles

I was randomly looking around other blogs and being a lover of Oreos, (especially for cheesecake crusts). I found the recipe for these on Bakerella's blog.

Got the goodies together and out come these. Much easier than real truffles with all that chocolate messiness. Just have Oreos, room temp cream cheese, mix, freeze coat with white chocolate (and copha (vegetable solid fat)to make it hard. Here I had two layers of white chocolate to get the idea thickness for me.

Sprinkled the aside Oreo crumbs over the truffles.

And even my other half admitted to eating them and he claims that he doesn't like cheesecake...(it has no lemon in it to be like a cheesecake).

I like the shell on the outside and the chocolate centre, with creaminess. The only disappointment is they don't take Oreo enough!

Thanks Bakerella.