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.

Blue Star Cupcakes

Well I have finally got round to writing another Blog.... I have certainly baked since then but have moved house 2x. 1,700km the 1st time and 30km the 2nd time. Now have a more suitable house with a massive kitchen and of course huge pantry (which feels like a long walk to get to from the sink but its only about 3m...

Amongst looking at other blogs and getting delighted, I have a partner who is an absolute Nazi clean person, who gets upset at a glass being used and left on the bench 30sec after you have placed it down.

I made these cupcakes a version of the black forest cuppys I have shown previously on my blog but cornflour instead of dutch cocoa powder and butterscotch liquor instead of cherry brandy.

The liquor made them smell absolutely delicious whilst cooking in the oven.

The finished product produced a spongy like cake, that leaned towards the flavour of the raspberry icing of pinkness.

The icing was made by bucket chemistry... icing sugar, small amount of fat melted, raspberry flavouring (thus the pink) and teaspoon chambord to add some more flavour and little water to make it sufficiently wet till the fat cooled after icing the cakes flat...

Used star cutters on blue rolled plastic icing and WAOLL LLAH a scrummy cake. That was also delightful to look at.

Zebra Cupcakes

After looking around on blogs, I was impressed by the big cakes that of the zebra cake. By placing alternate spoonfuls of white and chocolate batters produces an effective stripe pattern within the cake. I was wondering what the effect would be if done on a smaller scale of just a cupcake. So I set out on this task making the zebra cupcake..... Although I didn't like the taste, but I did forget to put in the vanilla in the batter in the effort of excitement of trying to finish them.!! I changed the recipe in that I put in 1 tblspn of vinegar in the cup of milk. I also only used alternate teaspoons of each batter, which seemed to be a bit tedious so I filled the cupcakes in each tray with the same layer of batter so 6 teaspoons of white in each of 6 cupcakes then chocolate of the same 6 and so forth. Next time I will tap the tray before going into the oven to remove any bubbles that may have been produced to keep the texture even in density.





Decorated cupcake, with vanilla buttercream.


















The batter in the papers before they go into the oven.














The cooked cupcakes out of the oven.











Split open cake, unfortunately there are bubbles in the cake which take out the effectiveness of the Zebra pattern.











Sprinkles and vanilla buttercream.




































Split open decorated cake where you can see the stripes.

spring cupcakes

I was going to make cupcakes for work again and decided on Hazelnut and Blackforest flavours.

Using a previous recipe I loved using before called Vanilla nut martini cakes, which has Frangelica in it from as the cake base.
Then using a banana pudding that I had frozen previously as filling.
As the icing on the top was a nuttella frosting.

As it turned out, apparently good but it was not to my liking in flavours, I remembered them as being moist but to me they were dry, but they received compliments and they disappeared quickly.

Hazelnut Cupcakes: (adapted from Artists in the Kitchen, vanilla nut martini cakes)

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup Frangelico
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and brown sugar until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Alternately add 1/3 of the flour and all of the milk, then 1/3 of the flour and all of the Frangelico, beating well after each addition. Add remaining flour; mix until smooth. Line regular or mini muffin cups with baking papers. Fill each 2/3 full. Bake at 190ºC for 14-16 minutes or until muffins test done. Cool in pans for 5 minutes. Remove and cool completely

Banana Cream Pudding (filling) (adapted from the Cupcakery)

1 400g can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup ice cold water
1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
1 banana mashed up (1/2 cup)(no instant pudding in banana flavour here in Aust)

In a small bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the sweetened condensed milk and water until well combined, about 1 minute. Add the pudding mix and beat well, about 2 minutes more. Beat again to incorporate.

2. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the pudding mixture into the whipped cream until well blended and no streaks of pudding remain. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to chill in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours.

Put the filling into a piping bag with the jam insert tip (without coupler). Next time I will poke in at least twice before piping to make room for more filling!!!

Nuttella Frosting

approx 1/2 Jar of Nuttella (or hazelnut spread equivalent)(100g)

whipped cream added to the hazelnut spread to the same volume of the spread and mix to a smooth consistency. Melt 1 tablespoon of vegetable shortening to thicken the frosting, (afraid of the warm weather here letting it melt off
Add any additional decoration.

I halved the recipe to yeild 12 cakes and only used milk instead of buttermilk, as last time I shopped that supermarket didn't stock it.

Baked cakes waiting to cool

Filled with banana pudding, iced with nutella frosting and royal icing flowers

Cut section of the cupcake

Blackforest cupcakes

I have long had a desire to make blackforest cakes with the tinned cherries all ready and waiting. I decided upon a chocolate cake recipe that also gave good results to my palet previously called chocolate cream filled cupcakes apparently from Food and Wine. Of course I didn't fill them with the cream I just used the chocolate cake recipe, with Dutch cocoa which I found hard to find in my local area.... do we have gourmet delis here??

Anyway, these blackforest cupcakes tasted divine. They had good texture and moistness by adding 2 tablespoons of cherry brandy (Kirsch) in the cake mixture which made a good recipe even better!

The filling was the drained fruit liqued thicken with cornflour with more cherry brandy and chopped up pitted cherries. Topped with the cut out cake whipped cream 1/2 cherry with milk chocolate drizzled over the cherry and cream.

Only compliments were given on this cake, it was not heavy with richness just chocolate fruit and cream... and since I loved it how could anyone say that they were anything but!

Chocolate Cupcakes

MAKES 12 CUPCAKES
ingredients
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cherry brandy
2 tablespoons water

directions

1. MAKE THE CUPCAKES: Preheat the oven to 180°. Place 12-cupcake liners in nonstick muffin pan. In a medium bowl, sift the flour and cocoa with the baking powder and baking soda . In another bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks with the canola oil, 1/2 cup of the sugar, cherry brandy and the water. Beat in the dry ingredients at low speed until smooth.

2. In a clean bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites at high speed until soft peaks form. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar and beat until stiff and glossy. Beat one-fourth of the whites into the batter, then fold in the remaining whites until no streaks remain. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling them halfway. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cupcakes are springy when touched. Let the cupcakes cool completely.

Filling and topping
1 can pitted dark cherries
2 heaped teaspoons cornflour
2 tablespoons of cherrybrandy
whipped cream
milk chocolate
Drain the liquid of the cherries, place into a small saucepan. In a very small bowl mix the cornflour into the cherry brandy. Then stir into the cherry liquid under a low heat on the stove. Keep stirring until thickened. The mix will turn from a milky cherry colour to transparent cherry colour. It does not need to boil to thicken. let cool.

Cut open each cupcake in a cone like manner with a suitable knife. Chop up one cherry per cake and place each chopped cherry into the cone hole. Top the cherry with a teaspoon of the thickened cherry liquid. Place the cake top on top. Spoon whipped cream to cover the top of the cake top and place a cherry chopped into half on top. Drizzle milk chocolate over the top.