Off The Deep End (Chocolate Cupcakes and Cream Cheese Frosting)

Check out my latest guest post over at Off The Deep End - Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (click here).

Peace & Love

xx

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Keeping It Real - Skull Cupcakes

This has been a week of ups and downs; Whitney Houston passing (down), two cool birthdays (up), losing all of my photos (major down), finding a forgotten stash of money (up), car making strange 'I'm going to die any minute' noises (down), tea and red velvet cake with a friend (up), I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the picture.

The photos for my planned post have disappeared, so I had to rustle something else up in their place. My plan was to blog about a lovely birthday cake I'd made, covered with strawberries and happiness,  but I was just too sad to bake any more happy cakes. I laid out all of my cheeriest sprinkles on the kitchen counter and even tried to imagine myself making sugar flowers but I couldn't. I think we need to be real with ourselves sometimes, don't ignore how you feel, work through it.

So I got out my skull candy mould & immediately felt better. I bought it just after Halloween but haven't quite found the right time to make anything with it. I then picked out some red foil cupcake cases and the juiciest red glitter I could find & the good vibes started rolling in... It's amazing what glitter can do (that and a cheeky glass of red wine!) I reckon it's pretty impossible to stay down when there is red glitter all over the place :)

I stuck with a vanilla cupcake and cream cheese frosting to keep things nice and simple. Once everything was assembled, my mood was officially lightened. My photos aren't back, but all hope isn't gone!

My lesson: Keep it real but stay positive!

What do you do to cheer yourself up?

Peace & Love

xx

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Desperately Seeking Approval

Have you ever wondered what or rather who motivates you to do things? I've heard tales of men starting wars to win the affection of a fair maiden and whilst it sounds a bit far-fetched, I do get it. Sometimes that person is a parent or a group of friends but the need to impress someone that you are into is probably the strongest urge of all, you don't even need to be into them in a sexual way.

I have a person like that, someone who I am trying to impress, that I'm almost 100% confident is completely oblivious to my efforts! It's pretty sad really but what can you do, the heart is foolish! :)

Before you get too worried about me, be comforted that my unrequited obsession has in fact given birth to the beauty that you see before you - a heart in a cupcake! Of course I will do a 'how-to' tutorial in the near future so you too can recreate this bad boy - it would be rude not to.

Until then though, please enjoy the mix of vanilla cupcakes with a red velvet heart centre and cream cheese frosting on top. 

Peace & Love

xx

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Tea and Cupcakes

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea ~ Bernard-Paul Heroux.

This is a busy week for me with some serious life shaping stuff happening. Major changes mixed in with birthdays, anniversaries and baby showers: in other words cakes, cakes and more cakes! Yes, life changing stuff must be marked with cake.

Cake and Tea. 


Generally we use cake as a mark of celebration and tea for everything and anything! For me, baking has become a solace and a place to channel my love and creative energies. The thing is, you can't be angry or bitter and bake something tasty. Food that is cooked with love just tastes different, you can't put your finger on it or explain it, it just does. I bake to stay sane and to keep my heart soft and filled with love. I drink tea because it's tasty and warm and strangely comforting.

Today, in amongst the many cakes I have this week, I decided to use some of the leftover cake mixture to try out these cute silicon tea cup cupcake moulds. I bought mine online from Amazon and they are just as cute as they look in the pictures! The two cupcake flavours are vanilla and chocolate and both are topped with a cream cheese based frosting. For the vanilla cakes, I coloured the frosting pink and the chocolate cakes have had a touch of Nutella added to the frosting. I just couldn't resist after the fun I had last time.

If you want to make Cream Cheese Frosting use this recipe below adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Book;


Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes enough to cover 12 cupcakes.

300g icing sugar, sifted at least TWICE

50g unsalted butter, at room temperature

125g cream cheese, cold

Beat all of the ingredients together in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) on slow speed until the mixture comes together and is smooth and well mixed. Do not overbeat, as it can quickly become runny. If it does get a bit runny then leave in the fridge to firm back up again before you use it.

The actual recipe advises you to mix the butter and sugar first before adding the cream cheese but I always had lumpy or runny icing with that approach. You may have better luck than me though! 

So find yourself a cup of tea, a cake and tell me, what or where is your happy place? 


Peace & Love


xx

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Day 12 - Mixtape Monday & Snowflake Mini Cupcakes

Happy Monday People, I hope you all had a good weekend. I was a busy bee (no change there then) and yesterday had the pleasure of going to not one, but two Christmas Church Services / Showcases.  Both were really well put together and helped to remind me of the reason behind the season. There was food, happy faces, drama and best of all music.

I don't know about you but I am a sucker for Christmas music, I love all of it, the hymns, the Christmas albums, Brass Bands, the lot. Mariah Carey's Christmas album gets a special mention but my all time favourite Christmas song is 'Baby It's Cold Outside' originally written by Loesser in 1936 (thank you Wikipedia :). As a little gift I have compiled a top ten although it's so hard to narrow it down as all of the Christmas songs have been covered a million times so I have selected the versions that I'm loving and the songs that have come to mind.  

Top Ten(ish) Crimbo Tunage

1. Baby it's Cold Outside Willie Nelson ft Norah Jones

2. All I Want For Christmas Is You Mariah Carey

3. Santa Claus is Coming To Town Jackson 5

4. Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow Dean Martin ft Nat King Cole

5. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Annie Lennox (LOVE this mix, it's a little bit bashy!)

6. Joy To The World Whitney Houston with The Georgia Mass Choir
7. Hark The Herald Angels/Gloria in Excelsis Deo Mariah Carey
8. Jingle Bells Amy Grant (another bashy mix!)
9. I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus Johnny Clarke (reggae Christmas)
10. Auld Land Syne Barenaked Ladies

Before I forget, the cakies on show are an old favourite Red Velvet, topped with Cream Cheese Frosting & Red Fondant Snowflakes. Check out an earlier post for instructions on how to make your very own.

What are your favourite Christmas songs? Let me know :)

Peace & Love

xx

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How To - Red Velvet Cupcakes

I figure it's been a while since I did anything vaguely helpful on this blog and it's about time that I shared some hints and tips. As I've been making so many Red Velvet Cakes recently with 200 to make this week alone, it seems like a good place to start.

Recipe (taken from the Hummingbird Bakery Recipe Book and slightly adapted)

Makes 16 cupcakes 


For the Sponge
120g unsalted butter
300g caster sugar
2 large eggs
20g sifted cocoa powder
38ml red food colouring
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
300g sifted plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
240ml buttermilk
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

For the Cream Cheese Frosting
100g softened unsalted butter
600g sifted icing sugar
250g soft cheese (Philadelphia)


1. Preheat the oven to 190ºC (375ºF), Gas Mark 5
2. Mix the butter and sugar together (known as creaming) with either a food processor or an electric hand whisk until they are pale and fluffy.
3. Whisk the eggs together separately and slowly add the eggs until everything is mixed together.
4. In a separate bowl, make a smooth paste out of the food colouring, vanilla essence and the cocoa powder and then add it to the batter. Mix thoroughly.
5. Mix the salt and the flour together and then add half of it to the batter and mix together. Then mix half of the buttermilk with the batter and repeat the steps again until everything is mixed in smoothly. You will need to use a spatula or a spoon along the edges of the bowl to make sure that everything is fully mixed together.
6. Lastly add the white wine vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to the mixture and mix it all up until everything is incorporated.
7. Fill the muffin cases to just over half way and cook in the oven for about 18-20 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when you put it into the centre of a cupcake.
Leave to cool down a bit (so you don't burn your hands) and then cool the cakes on a wire rack.

8. For the frosting add everything together in a bowl & mix with an electric mixer on a medium speed until it is smooth and there are no more lumps... Easy peasy. If you are not icing the cakes straight away then store the icing in the fridge. It gets quite hard when it is cold so leave it out of the fridge if you  will be icing them at the same time.
9. Lastly cover the cakes with the frosting when they are completely cool otherwise the frosting will melt.

Things to watch out for!


1. Don't try and substitute the ingredients as it won't taste as amazing! It's worth taking the time to find the right thing. For buttermilk go to a big store like Tescos, Morrisons, Sainsburys or Waitrose etc. Note - Asda does not sell buttermilk and you won't get it in smaller versions of the above stores.

2. Artificial food colouring is best - in my opinion at least. It gives a proper red colour and has no lingering flavours (only dodgy chemicals :). I tried to use natural food colouring once and ended up with Brown Velvet cake that had hints of beetroot & paprika flavours lingering in the background. If that is your sort of thing then by all means go for it but I was unhappy with the effect.

3. This mixture makes a lot of cakes. Depending on how full you want the muffin case you can get way more than 16 out of this mix. I have found that if I try to fill the cases up too much, it overflows and you end up getting ugly cupcakes. Not my thing but they still taste gorgeous. It's a fine line between under filling and over filling. Ultimately you will need to practise with your muffin cases and see what works for you....

I hope that was useful, happy baking :) Pin It