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!

Funfetti Vanilla Cupcakes

Happy Friday!

TGIF indeed

So last night after taking a break from researching this terrible jelly lab report (yes I am writing a lab report on jelly) I stumbled across some excellent uses of sprinkles! Such as funfetti cakes and cupcakes and just generally sprinkles on top of everything. The best ones I found were on Sweetapolita's blog. Oh my goodness! I love her blog. It's like her life was plucked from a home and garden magazine. Her two girls are the two most adorable cakelets (as she calls them) on the planet! Anyway I am now in love with 100s and 1000s. So after class I ran to the supermarket to stock up.

Throwing in a canister of sprinkles is a great way to make vanilla cupcakes a bit more visually appealing. Lot  of people complain that vanilla is boring, I have to disagree. It is my favourite cupcake flavour. You can ice them with almost any icing type and they still taste delicious!

The recipe II used is just a plain vanilla cupcake mixture from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. It makes lovely fluffy vanillary cupcakes. You just can't beat them. Then I just literally poured in a canister of 100s and 1000s into the batter. Super easy. I decided that keeping the icing plain white against the sprinkles would be best and I think they turned out rather well. I have already devoured three of them since they were iced an hour and a half ago.

Ok so what you will need:

40g softened butter
140g castor sugar (castor sugar gives a better texture than regular sugar as it dissolves more)
120g flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (although I am pretty sure I used near to three . . .)
A pinch of salt
A canister of 100s and 1000s


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees

First beat the sugar and butter until it is a nice evenly grained sandy consistency. You want to make sure there are no clumps of butter.

Next, sieve in the flour, baking powder and salt. Beat into the sugar and butter until it is nice and evenly sandy.

Next crack the egg in and splash in the milk. Beat beat beat until the mixture becomes smooth and fluffs up and becomes more voluminous.

Sprinkle time! Pour in about half to three quarters of a canister of 100s and 1000s - depending on how many you want left for the top. Mix those gently in - the colours may start to run so act quickly.

Spoon into 12 cupcake cases (in a muffin tray) and bake for 17-20 minutes or until they are starting to turn that lovely golden colour.

Take them out of the oven, leave to cool.

Make up your icing (lets say 30g butter, 3ish cups icing sugar, a good splash of vanilla, tablespoon of boiling water). Just add more icing sugar or hot water if it is too runny/thick. I don't really follow a recipe for icing. It just happens.

I used a piping bag with a 1M wilton tip on the end (the same for doing roses). I swirled them starting from the outside edge, swirling inwards.

DOUSE them in more sprinkles!

and you are good to go :)

 Sprinkles!

 Sprinkles!

 Sprinkles!

 Sprinkles!

Ok method by pictures:

 Beat your butter and sugar together until it is an even sandy consistency with no butter lumps.

 Sieve in your baking powder and flour

 Beat until a sandy consistency is reached again.

 See how sandy it is?

 Don't forget your pinch of salt.

 Add the milk and egg.

 Beat beat beat until smooth and fluffy :)

 Line your muffin tray.

 See how smooth it is? You can also see air bubbles in the batter.

 Pour in your sprinkles.

 and a few more . . .

 Yay! It looks like a unicorn threw up in my cupcake batter!

 Evenly fill up your cases.

 Pop them in the oven for 17-20 minutes

 and Bam! they come out looking lovely.

 I definately reccommend buying a piping bag and a 1M tip - you can use it for so many icing designs and no matter what, the result will always look good.

 Oh look! there is a rainbow inside! How exciting!

 I may or may not have consumed a few while "writing my report".

So here you have it. The best way to jazz up some vanilla cupcakes. This recipe is nice and cheap to make as you don't need a huge amount of butter, eggs or milk. Excellent! Also makes them kind of healthy . . . until you ice them :)

Time to watch Vampire Diaries now I think :)

Have a good night!

A Good Day to Bake Chocolate Cake and Vanilla Cupcakes

Good evening once again.

Today my friend Ashleigh (http://kiwigirlskiwiblog.wordpress.com/) and I had a baking date. We decided to make a layered chocolate ruffle cake. There was our first mistake: layered. The cake mixture we used (thinking we would need a lot of it) was massive! Like huge! Turns out the three layers we wanted turned into five . . .

So for fear of a toppling cake that would fit no cake box alive we decided to split it into two and three stacked cakes.Leveling the tops of the cakes was such a pain, I think I will invest in one of those Wilton cake levelers.

 So the three stacked cake was supposed to be this ruffle cake, buuuuuuttt . . . we ran out of icing sugar (as we had already used 1.5kg worth already) and so the icing was a bit too runny (second mistake!) and the ruffles looked like the hillsides of Nelson (sliding down the hill). So that failed. So instead we just iced it. Plain and boring. We had gotten to the point of CBFed and we ended up with this:

Isn't is monstrous? And that is only three layers. I added some glitter on top to make it a wee bit fancy.

Then we wanted to cover up the bottom edge's messiness . . .

So we added a wee bit of ruffle using my mini star nozzle that had icing in it left over from the cupcakes we also made (they shall come in a sec).

Ta daa!! Doesn't that look tidier now.

Ok so what about the other two layers? 

This terrible looking melted, crumby mess went from this:

To this! WIN!

Success I think yes! WINNING!!!! All I did was start by making one rose in the middle of the cake and then just piping adjacent roses until I came to the edge (a rose is piped using a 1M Wilton nozzle and starting in the middle swirling outwards). You can see in some places there are wee incomplete roses. In the gaps in between roses I just piped a curve of icing to cover the base but to also blend in with the surrounding roses. You can also see I did it along the edges too. This was a chocolate cake with a cream cheese icing (odd mix I know). Even though I crumb coated and froze the blasted cakes I still managed to get crumbs in it, also I don't think my base layer was thick enough as you can see the cake through the icing. Sort of like trying to cover a black wall with light pink paint; you need a lot of layers.

Sorry, I am quite into taking photos at the moment. I have a really average point and shoot which is extra basic (hence the cheap price I bought it for). I originally got it so that if I went out to town and dropped it no one would cry over it. Only problem is that I haven't used it in town because I don't go anymore. I am a nana.

The cake recipe we used was really big (it used 3 cups of sugar!) so here is another recipe which tastes exactly the same but has smaller proportions and makes quite a decent cake as it is. The final batter is really runny but never fear, just make sure the bottom piece of baking paper you use to line the base of your spring form tin goes up the sides about three cm or so). 

Mocha Chocolate Cake ( a recipe from Sue!)

Add the ingredients in the order stated below, beating well between each addition.

2 large eggs

1 3/4 cups castor sugar

1/2 cup sunflower oil

1 cup buttermilk (or half and half yoghurt and milk)

1 teaspoon vanilla

then sift in together:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

Once that is all beaten and smooth add:

1 cup of STRONG black coffee

Pour into a well lined spring form tin and bake at 180 degrees (Celsius!!) for 1 to 1 hour 10 minutes or until a skewer just comes out clean.

Once cool, ice with whatever you want, we usually ice this with a chocolate ganache! :) Ill pop that recipe up another day, Oh the suspense!!

So those cupcakes eh? we ended up making mini ones. Except we didn't expect to make 32 mini ones . .

By the time we got around to icing the cupcakes we had given up (or at least I had - Ashleigh made pretty, tidy swirls) so I just made big star blobs then covered them with random sprinkles. They taste delicious though. We used the Hummingbird Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe.

Vanilla Cupcakes:

40g Butter (softened)

140g castor sugar

120g flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 egg

90ml milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

In a bowl, beat the butter, sugar, flour and baking powder until a sandy, but even consistency is reached. Beat the egg into the mixture and beat until smooth. Then add half the milk, beat until combined and then add the rest and repeat. Then add the vanilla (adding extra for good luck :) ) and beat for a few minutes to really make sure the batter is smooth. Oh yeah don;t forget to sieve the dry ingredients first. Spoon into paper cases to 2/3 full and bake at 180 degrees (Celsius!!) for 20-ish minutes or until golden brown and spring back upon touch. Leave to cool and then ice with a plain vanilla, chocolate or other icing of your choice :) This should make about 12 (depending on how big your cases are).

Cool bananas! 

Time for a sleep I think. 

Happy baking!