Rosey Turkish Delight Cupcakes

As mentioned in my last post (which I posted like an hour ago) I have had a rather cupcake oriented day. Yes an hour later I am still in my pajamas. Yes it it 4pm on a Sunday. This is bad. Really bad. It's almost dinner time. For the record I did get up at 8am.

I had too many cupcake flavours that I wanted to try out at once. So I used Chris' thank you party for his helpers for the Cystic Fibrosis NZ street collection he organised to try two of them out.

The first one was the banoffee cupcakes and the second ones are these rose cupcakes. The recipe says they are rose but because they use rose water, just like Turkish delight, I associate them with being a Turkish delight flavour rather than a rose flavour.

I was really excited to buy some rose water, I found it in the international section of New World, City Centre. It was $8.99 for a 300ml bottle. A bit of a splurge if you are only just trying these out but I think it was well worth it. It lasts for ages and I plan on making Turkish delight in the holidays coming up. And once it is all gone you are left with a really really cool shaped bottle.

Flip I wish I could write essays as fast as I write blog posts.

This is really just a vanilla cupcake recipe that has two teaspoons of rose water added to the batter and 2 teaspoons added to the icing. Simple as!


Rose Cupcakes (adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days)
Makes 12

40g butter, softened
140g castor sugar
120g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons rose water

Icing:
300g icing sugar
80g butter, softened
25ml whole milk
2 teaspoons rose water

A few drops of pink food colouring


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, vanilla and rose water, beat in. Next add your egg and beat until thick and smooth.

Fill your cupcake cases 2/3 full 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. Add in your rose water and food colouring 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.

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

Decorate with anything you wish :) I found those wee flowers at the supermarket.

Things got a bit messy after 50 cupcakes came through my kitchen

Tidy time I think

These cupcakes are amazing! If you love that amazing rose flavour of Turkish delight you won't be able to stop eating these :)

TTFN!!

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!

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! :)

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!

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling

Good afternoon!

Today my father requested some nice pretty cupcakes in order to give to some of the people at work as a thank you treat, Mum said I should make vanilla but I am so over vanilla, I wanted to make something different I could share with you on here. So I went through all my loose recipes that need to be copied into my book and I found a lemon cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. I have done this one before but I think this time I will cover the tops with nice bright daisies instead of my stock standard rose. These are extra delicious because when you bite in to them a stream of lemon curd flows from the center and onto your taste buds causing a delightful taste sensation.

(You will find out later that I gave up on the daisies haha)

So to get started I made the lemon curd this morning. It is pretty easy. All you need is:

Lemon Curd:
The rind and juice of two large lemons
1 cup sugar
100g butter
2 eggs, beaten

 So first zest the two lemons - I didn't really here since my lemons were ugly and I didn't want black bits in the nice smooth yellow.

 Next I recommend squeezing the lemons over your bowl through a sieve - so it catches all the pips and bits of pulp you don't want.

Next add the cup of white sugar to the bowl and place over a double boiler making sure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl.

 Now stir to encourage the dissolving of that sugar.

 Next you are going to want to cube your 100g of butter (to increase the surface area for melting) and add it to your juice and sugar mix.

 One must always have a cup of tea on hand.

When the butter has totally melted and everything dissolved you are going to want to grab two eggs . . .

 In a separate bowl whisk the eggs up to break up the yolk . . .

  . . . like this.

 Start stirring the butter, juice and sugar mix and slowly pour in the eggs, make sure you don't stop beating! Otherwise the eggs will scramble.

 Keep stirring for 20-30 minutes until the mixture thickens quite a bit.

See how thick that looks?

 Quality control of course.

 Next, to get rid of the few bits of egg that didn't quite mix and cooked into white blobs, strain the curd through a sieve.

 And there you go, a nice jars worth of lemon curd. Just pop this in the fridge after leaving to cool to room temperature on the bench.


Now for the cupcakes.

 You will need those items above and:

Lemon Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)
120g plain flour
150g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
40g unsalted butter (room temperature)
120ml milk
1 egg
(I also added a squeeze of lemon juice for extra lemony ness).

Preheat your oven to bake at 170 degrees C.

Beat the butter and sugar together to a sandy consistency.

 Sieve in the flour, baking powder and zest and beat some more to reach an even sandier consistency.

 Next add the egg milk and beat until smooth.

 A squeeze of lemon for good luck.

 Next line a 12 pan muffin tray with patty cases of your choice.

 Spoon in the mixture until the case is 2/3 full.

 Now pop these in the oven for 16 minutes at 170 degrees or until golden and springy.

 Chris pouncing on the left over scraps of batter on the beaters and in the bowl.

 16 minutes later and they look beautiful!

 Can you tell our oven is hotter at the back?

 Now I popped on a 40-something writing tip on my piping bag, filled my piping back with a spoonful of the lemon curd and then inserted the tip into the cupcake and squeezed, filling the cake with curd.

 Make you you push the tip all the way down.

 Now put your left over curd in a clean jar to store in the fridge, ready for your toast in the morning.

Now for the icing:

I just used a normal butter cream icing but added another squeeze of lemon and a couple of teaspoons of the curd in with it. I was going to make daisies but they weren't working for me today :( I was using a 104 petal tip to make the petals but no luck. I think my icing was the wrong consistency. That or my tip was too big. Anyway I first covered them with icing to make a good base for the daisies.

 My first attempt

 That one isn't too bad, it's just when I covered the whole cake it looked really weird and mono-tone. I think I need to get a couple of bags and tips and make shades of yellow. Hmm aren't daisies white? haha my bad.

 So resentfully I resorted back to roses. Bleh I really wanted cute flowers.

Hmm the back ones look messy. Today was not my day for piping. I may or may not have thrown a tantrum over them resulting in a few of them ending up upside down . . .

So here they are, lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling. We could only fit 11 in the box so I gave the 12th to Chris and he rated them a "really good" out of ten. Shot Chris.

Anyway I am about to post up what we made for dinner tonight as part of my cheap cooking special so check that out too, corn fritters, nom nom.

See you later alligators!