Lil Ms Squirrel's Summer Pudding Cupcakes

My gorgeous cousin, @BridestockBride is getting married in less than a week.  Not one known for convention, she and her hubby-to-be are having a wedding festival.  In amongst all the excitement, she's planning on having a tea tent with a cake stall and has been buying vintage china like a demon for the last year.

You can just about see the hidden middle...

Any of the guests who are vaguely capable of baking have been asked to bring some cake with them.  I still haven't quite decided what I'm making, but I came up with these cupcakes as a potential option.

Summer pudding is something that we never had when I was growing up because my mum doesn't like the 'soggy bread' outside.  For the same reason, we rarely had trifle as she doesn't like soggy sponge.  But I love summer fruits and figured that you could do a pink-tinged hidden middle cupcake with a dollop of 'cream' on the top.  I Googled about for recipes but couldn't find one so came up with my own.

Yesterday I made a half batch of cakes for a trial run and decided to add it to the blog today - even though it means a double-blog-day with my Olympic Food Challenge meal coming later tonight.

Because I'm not sure what the weather is going to be like come Saturday, I went for a topping of Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMB) because it's firmer than standard English Buttercream and will hopefully stand up to a warm day better.  Having mastered Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMB) a few months back for my epic raspberry cake, I decided it was only fair to try IMB as well.  The end product for both SMB and IMB appears to be the same. I don't have any SMB to hand to do a true comparison.  But the cooking method is slightly different.  With SMB, you heat the egg whites over a bain marie with the sugar and then whip them.  IMB requires you to add hot sugar syrup to partially whipped egg whites.  In both cases, you then whip the meringue to within an inch of its life, throw in a huge pile of butter et voila, buttercream.

Girly cakes ahoy!

The recipe I picked for the IMB instructed me to boil my sugar for seven minutes and gave no temperature.  After four, it started to turn caramel in colour so I popped in my Heston thermometer and it told me it was 168c already.  Disaster.  A quick Google revealed that the syrup should be no more than 110c.  The second batch took just over two minutes from initial boil to being ready.

Rather than waste the first batch, I threw in some pink food colouring and made some sugar graffiti just for the fun of it.  I remember seeing Lorraine Pascale do this and I was just interested in how to work with it and how long you have between pouring it and being able to flex it onto things and the moment when it sets hard and will just fragment.

Whilst making up the cakes, I then thought the fragments of sugar would add an extra dimension to the finished cake.  I asked the husband for his opinion.  It wasn't polite (I must confess I was so deflated, I tweeted exactly what he said).  But I'm pleased with them.

Here's how I made them

For the sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery - makes 12-16)

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp rosewater (optional)
• 2 eggs
• red and purple gel food colouring

For the filling

• 200g frozen summer fruits
• 3 tbsp caster sugar

For the Italian Meringue Buttercream (makes more than you'll need for the cakes, but you can freeze it for later use)

• 5 egg whites
• 215g caster sugar
• 60ml water
• 340g butter, left at room temp for about an hour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

• Fresh summer fruits and mint leaves to decorate

• A sugar thermometer
• Cake cases
• 2 x 12 cup muffin trays
• Stand mixer with a whisk and paddle attachment

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and rosewater in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Add a little red and purple food colouring to the batter and beat well until you have a dark pinky-purple colour that you're happy with.  It's important to use gel colours as you don't need too much of them to get a good colour and they won't make the cake batter to liquidy.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile, make the filling by putting the frozen berries and caster sugar in a small pan and heating gently over a medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the berries are in a thick syrup.
7. For the Italian Meringue Buttercream, put the egg whites into the bowl of the stand mixer and add the whisk attachment.
8. Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan with the thermometer and heat until boiling.  Just before the temperature reaches 110c, start the mixer going on high to whip the egg whites.  Once they have some volume and the sugar syrup is at 110c, remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the syrup in a stream into the mixer as it whips the eggs.  Once all the sugar syrup has been poured in, continue whipping until the egg whites are cool to the touch.  This can take around ten minutes.  It's essential that they're cool or the buttercream will end up runny.
9. Once the meringue is thick and cool, start adding the butter in in small lumps.  It will take a while to add all the butter and the mixture may appear to go runny for a while but it will come back together right at the end when the balance of butter and meringue is right.
10. Finally, turn the mixer down to medium and add the vanilla bean paste, beating for another minute until it's all incorporated.
11. To assemble the cakes, use a small sharp knife to cut a deep cone shape from the centre of the cake (don't eat it, you'll need it shortly).  Take care to not cut right through the bottom of the sponge.  Add a spoonful of the summer fruit mix then trim the cone of cake to fit as a lid to cover up the fruit.  Pipe a swirl of buttercream over the top of the cake to cover up the cut but still show some of the pink sponge around the edges.  Decorate with the fresh summer fruit and sprigs of mint.

The spare buttercream will keep well in the fridge or freezer.  You need to bring it back to room temperature and then whip with the stand mixer for five minutes to return it to its original consistency.  You can find out more about my experience with doing that here.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Pimms No 1 Cupcakes

I'm on a course this week and was a little disappointed that it meant that I wouldn't make it to the second meeting of the Bath Clandestine Cake Club for logistical reasons.  The theme this month was 'Alcoholic Cakes' and I'd been planning on making a Pimm's bundt cake.  After pondering the best way to deliver all of the fruit flavours associated with Pimm's, I found a fabulous idea on the Skin and Blister blog, where the bundt was drizzled with Pimm's and sugar and then had little sticks of fruit, artfully arranged on the outside.

Made the most of a tiny bit of evening sunlight

When I finally realised I wouldn't be able to make it to CCC (last night, when my usual journey of forty minutes, took an hour and forty!), I decided I'd save the bundt for my cousin's rather fabulous Wedding Festival Bake Off and not bake at all this week.

Depending on how you look at things fortunately (or unfortunately), my course colleagues kind of talked me into baking tonight anyway.  You know when you go on a course and they do that really annoying thing at the start where you tell everyone who you are and then one random fact about yourself?  Well for once, I had something interesting to say.  I told them about my blog.

It sparked a discussion over lunch as to whether I was actually cooking 'real food' or was doing 'beans on toast', 'beans under toast', beans with toast on the side', 'cheesy beans on toast'....  Thankfully, because I've blogged every night and for all apart from about two posts, I've managed to get at least one picture of the results (didn't think about doing it for the very first post, and one disaster went straight in the bin as I was so p'd off with it), I was able to direct them to the blog so they could explore for themselves.

This lunchtime, I got asked what was for tea last night.  I was secretly pleased that the ones staying at the local 4* hotel said that my dinner sounded better than what they'd had.  And then talk turned to what today's recipe was.  Because I'd already spoken about my love for baking and how my normal colleagues have been the recipient of many a cake, I kind of felt duty bound to do my usual Tuesday night activity of baking for work.

And so the Pimm's cupcake was born.  I had done a little research on this last night and was disappointed with the lack of inspiring recipes.  There's even one on the Good Food Channel website that has cucumber buttercream.  That's a step to far for me!

Ready for the oven

With this in mind, I set about creating my own recipe which I'll share with you tonight.  I'm not saying it's perfect.  I think they're okay.  There's probably room for improvement.  I think they're lacking something, but I'm not quite sure what.  So if you want to try the recipe and tweak it, let me know what you did and how it turned out!

I used the Hummingbird Vanilla Cupcake as a base as I was looking for a light airy bake.  A while back, I made their Mojito cupcakes for work, but because I was making bigger cakes this time and needed 14 of them, the vanilla recipe worked better with a slight adaptation.

For the filling, I reduced some Pimm's, orange juice and sugar and then added in halved strawberries and left them to cool.  The buttercream was laced with Pimm's, orange, lemon and lime zest.  I did a bit of research on this yesterday and found that the lovely Jacqueline over at Cake Boule had made Pimm's and strawberry buttercream for her gorgeous truffles.  I was pleased with her tip that she tweeted me that it makes a soft buttercream as I wasn't so worried when it came time to pipe it.  No big Wilton 1M swirls on these little beauties!  Again, if that's what you like, tinker with the buttercream recipe until your happy with the consistency.

I've tried one, purely for the purposes of telling you how it came out.  The rest are piped and now chilling in the fridge in my cake carrier, ready for a trip to the office tomorrow.  There was a small bowl of buttercream left to, so I'll be interested to prod it in the morning and see if it's set or not.

I'll update tomorrow with feedback from my colleagues.  Of course the trouble is that we have a 'Learning Contract' that we wrote on Day #1.  Amongst many things, it states that we are not allowed to criticise others.  Any rule flouting incurs a £1 fine.  So far, we've collected £7 (of which I contributed one for answering the phone to my boss).  So I'm sure they'll say the cakes taste amazing even if they don't really think so.

Recipe - Makes 16 (I use muffin sized cake cases)

For the Sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery)

Got a bit carried away with Instagram effects...

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped

For the strawberry filling

• 16 small strawberries, halved (or eight large ones, quartered)
• 3 tbsp Pimm's No 1
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp orange juice

For the frosting and decoration

• 500g icing sugar, sifted
• 160g unsalted butter at room temperature
• pinch of table salt
• 60ml Pimm's No1
• zest of one orange
• zest of one lime
• zest of one lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and mint in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Beat in the lemon juice.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile make the strawberry filling by placing the Pimm's, sugar and orange juice into a small pan.  Bring to the boil and then simmer until the liquid has reduced by about a half.  Remove from the heat and add in the strawberries.  Toss to coat and then leave to cool.
7. When the cakes are cooled, carefully cut a small cone shape from the top of each cake - keep the cut outs, don't eat them!  Fill the hole in each cake with a couple of pieces of the strawberry and then replace the piece of cake you removed.
8. Make the frosting by beating the icing sugar, butter and salt together using an electric mixer until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add the fruit zest, and continue beating.  Slowly pour in the Pimm's.  Beat until light and fluffy then spoon or pipe some onto the top of each cake, ensuring that the cuts in the top of the cake are covered.  
9. Finally top with a whole fresh strawberry.  Or if you're feeling extravagant/arty, use fresh mint leaves and twists of orange, lemon, lime and cucumber skin cut with a cannoli cutter.

Jelly Baby Cupcakes

Ready for a snooze in the oven

A few weeks ago, I hit on the idea of making Jelly Baby Cupcakes with Miss A as a present for her grandad - my stepfather.  Terry loves Jelly Babies and has a really sweet tooth so this seemed like the perfect activity to occupy Miss A with and had the result that I could bake without worrying too much about my diet.

I had a quick Google this morning for a recipe (the 'rents are due to visit tomorrow to give me a few precious Miss A-free hours to get some housework done) and the only blog I could find was on the OlliesPops blog telling a tale of woe that Rachel had tried and failed to achieve a similar feat.

She gives a good account of testing several different things baked into the middle of cupcakes and advice that she'd tried freezing the jelly babies first, but sadly, they sank to the base of the cupcake case and left a nasty, sticky mess.  Poor Jelly Babies!  She didn't, however, divulge what her recipe was so I figured I'd have a go with my own method and see if I could succeed.

First thing was to choose a decent batter.  Having tried several different vanilla cupcake recipes, I settled on using the recipe I used to rely on before I got back into cooking.  This is a basic pound cake mix that I make by weighing my eggs and then using equal quantities of flour, sugar and butter.  Because I didn't want the jelly babies to sink, I added an extra 25g of flour and to compensate, I added an extra teaspoon of baking powder to make sure they had a good rise to them.

"I'm the king of the castle"

Another thing I tried today was inspired a little by Dan Lepard (yeah, him again!) and his Bare Banana Cake from earlier in the week.  I'd just bought my butter from the supermarket so it was still cold.  I seem to remember somewhere in my Lepard-based reading this week that apparently if you find yourself with solid butter, it's perfectly acceptable to melt it in the microwave on a low heat for a minute or two and have the butter be partly liquid.  

Mine was about 60% solid to 40% liquid when I took it out so I beat it well with the sugar until I was sure that it wasn't warm enough to turn the eggs to scramble.  There was no difference to the end product than if I'd used room temperature butter.  In fact, it was better as I hand-mixed the cake (well with a wooden spoon and in a bowl of course!) so it meant I didn't have to faff around with cleaning the mixer afterwards.

I also took the decision to bake them at a lower temperature than normal (150c fan) in the hope that this wouldn't melt the jelly babies and I covered them in with a little spoonful of batter in the vain hope that encasing them would help prevent the melt.  Because I'm a wuss though, I only baked jelly babies into four, figuring that if they failed, I'd still have a dozen decent cupcakes to ice and top with jelly babies for the gift.

Bless my darling daughter, she bought the story that I was putting the jelly babies to bed when I covered them with cake.  When they went into the oven, she peered through the door as normal and when I asked what she could see, she said 'Shush Mummy.  Jelly babies are sweeping'

Mourning the fate of his buddy inside - note the sticky wrapper

My cakes took around 35 minutes to bake whereas they'd normally be done in 25.  I couldn't see any sign on the base of the case of disaster so I merrily iced them with a thick, lemon based icing, and topped them with another jelly baby.  A few pics and then the moment of truth.  Exactly the same problem that Rachel had.  A gooey-bottomed cake.

I then got to thinking that maybe I should've floured them in the same way that you do with fruit to stop it sinking to the bottom.  But why bother with the faff?  The simple solution would be to just bake the cakes, carefully hollow out a jelly-baby sized hole in the middle, pop the jelly baby in, replace the cut out bit (after having reshaped to make it into a nice little bed cover), ice over the top and voila!  Jelly baby cupcakes!

I'm a bit cross with myself as I've iced all of my cakes now so it's too late for this time round.  But next time I've got some spare cuppies, I'll give it a go.

So any plain vanilla cupcake recipe would work for the 'cut and cover' method.  Still, here's how I would do it next time.

Jelly Baby Cupcakes - Makes approx 16 (in muffin cases)

• 225g unsalted butter, softened (see above tip on microwaving)
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 250g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp lemon essence 
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the icing

• 200g icing sugar, sifted
• 2-3 tbsp lemon juice

• 32 jelly babies (if you make less than 16 cakes, you can eat the rest!)

• One or two 12-hole muffin tins (you can bake in batches if needs be)
• Cupcake cases (use larger ones to make sure you have enough depth to put the jelly baby in)

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas 4.  Line the muffin tins with cake cases.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (or if your butter is melted, until well combined).  Add the lemon essence.
3. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together.Add an egg to the mixture and beat until incorporated.  Now add two tablespoons of flour and beat until the flour is well mixed.  Repeat this until all the eggs have been added.  Beat in the rest of the flour. 
4. Fill the cake cases two-thirds full.
5. Bake for 25 minutes until risen, springy and golden brown.  Leave to cool on a wire rack.
6. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and then add two tablespoons of lemon juice and mix.  You're aiming to get a thick, spreadable icing so if you need more liquid, add a few drops of juice at a time until you get the right consistency.  You can always add a little extra icing sugar if you make it too runny.
7. Using a sharp knife, cut a 'divot' from the centre of each cake.  The hole should be wide and deep enough to put the jelly baby in and allow you space to put the 'divot' back on.  Trim each of the 'divots' to fit snugly on top of the jelly babies and flush to the cake.  Now carefully add a teaspoonful of the icing and spread with the back of the teaspoon to cover the cake.  I find keeping the teaspoon damp helps with the spreading.
8. Finally top with another jelly baby.  If you've got the right consistency of icing, you should be able to stand your jelly babies upright.

Dan Lepard's Vanilla Cupcakes

Picture this little recent snippet of my life.  It's a bright sunny, blue-sky kind of day (so not today with the gales and snow that are lashing the UK).  I'm being taken out to lunch by a tall, dark, quite-handsome-for-an-old-guy* man (who isn't my husband) in his super-fast sports car.  Despite the fact that I'm packing a few more pounds than I would if this were a fantasy situation, it's all going really well.  We banter back and forth.  I laugh in the right places, am feeling reasonably witty in my replies and my usual social-ineptness has disappeared despite the situation.  The car falls into a comfortable silence for a few moments before the next topic arises.

Season-appropriate accoutrements

And suddenly I realise that we've hit that time when you've spent far too much time with someone.  Because the conversation has neatly segued onto the oh-so-hot-topic of the fat content of milk.  I kid you not.  If this was a film script, the early part of this scene would have played out against some cheesy easy-listening music from an LP.  The reason for an LP?  Because at the point of the conversation turning to milk, the needle would've scratched across the surface of the record before the stunned silence of my realisation that the conversation had degenerated to such a level.

So how does this little vignette relate to today's recipe of choice?  Well as always, it's a bit of a tenuous link but in some ways, I'm starting to spend a little too much time in the company of the fair Mr Lepard as well.  It seems that whenever I need a recipe that requires baking these days, Short and Sweet is my bible of choice.  I've tried many cupcake recipes with varying success and so far, Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes have been my recipe of choice (incidentally, that recipe calls for full fat milk, but it works perfectly well with skimmed - see what I did there?). 

But tonight when I had a need to bake to distract myself from the melee in my head and cupcakes appeared to be the answer, rather than, in the spirit of this blog trying out recipes from the many other baking books I own, I chose Short and Sweet because I knew I wouldn't be disappointed with the results like I was with Mary Berry's vanilla cupcakes (and I don't need any further disappointment today thank you very much).

Lepard's recipe has a simple ingredients list.  His cupcakes are based on a standard pound cake recipe.  Which funnily enough was how I used to make my cupcakes before I discovered the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook courtesy of my neighbour.  But in true Lepard style, not only does he give you instructions on how to bake with a mixer, he also tells you how to mix them by hand.  Which was perfect because I'm not allowed to use my mixer after 7pm if the husband's in (which is probably 99% of the time).  And so I am now an expert on hand-mixing cake.  Well okay I can make a pound cake by hand.

I love the tips like warming the bowl with hot water before starting beating the butter and sugar together.  And his instruction that sifting the flour is really important.  I'm sure that I read  somewhere that either Dame Mary or St Delia said that you didn't need to bother these days but if Dan says to sift, then sift I must.

The best bit of all was because the recipe is pound cake (equal weight of butter, flour, sugar and eggs), the batter is thick and easy to manouevre into the cake cases.  I get really frustrated with the runny consistency of the Hummingbird batter.  It makes a great cake but I just end up dripping it everywhere - and putting it in a piping bag is no good as it just runs out of the other end far too quickly.  It makes great cakes but it's so hard to work with.  Or at least it is if you're as cack-handed as me.

Pre-decoration

Lepard's recipe makes eight generously sized cupcakes.  I'm sure if I'd scraped the bowl clean and been a little more economical about sharing between the eight cases (and weighed the mixture so each case was evenly filled!) I could've eked out nine or ten.  Instead I got the eight cakes that the recipe suggested and plenty of bowl-licking activity for me.  This is why I am packing a few extra pounds in the little story at the start of this post!

They're now out of the oven and cooling ready for icing.  I must confess as this was a last-minute choice of recipe, I didn't have the wherewithal to make the suggested frosting which uses butter, icing sugar, condensed milk (check, check, check) and double cream (no check).  So they were decorated with a swirl of plain vanilla frosting and some Easter themed goodies ready to be taken in to work.

You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the verdict but based on past experience with anything from Short and Sweet, they're going to get a huge thumbs up.  Watch this space.

And of course, as always, I will insist that you buy yourself a copy of Short and Sweet.  I'm in no way sponsored for this evangelism. But it is probably now my favourite ever book.  Alongside The Elves and The Shoemaker....

Or you can find the recipe over on The Guardian's website

*it would be thoroughly inappropriate of me to describe this person in any other way!  I'm not wanting to offend with my choice of words but I equally wouldn't want anyone to misconstrue the situation if I phrased it differently...

Mary Berry's Little Iced Gems

Day two of baking for Miss A's birthday.  Today is the actual day and I've taken the day off of work so we can do something special.  Special for me (rather selfishly) meant not waking up at stupid o'clock for work.  And yet I was awake at 3:37am.  No matter how hard I tried to get back to the lovely dream I was having, it just wasn't going to happen.  Isn't that always the way when you're interrupted in the middle of a lovely dream??

Jellybean-tastic

Anyway, I decided to capitalise on yet another early start by baking the mini cupcakes for her to take in to nursery tomorrow.  I feel like I'm entering into that competitive motherhood thing which I so despise.  I don't get why the sisterhood feels the need to compete against each other in that alpha mummy way.  I'm a slummy mummy and I try to be proud of it.  But she's come home with so many boxes of funsize smarties and tiny slivers of shop bought cake that I feel compelled to provide something.

So the Little Iced gems from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes seemed to fit the bill.  Basically it's cupcakes made in petit fours cases.  Personally I felt that even for toddlers the petits fours cases to be a bit stingy so I used mini muffin cases from PME.

Because the cases were so tiny, I used a disposable piping bag to help me fill them rather than faffing around with teaspoonsful of mixture.  I ended up with thirty rather than the sixty five indicated by the recipe.

Tiny cupcakes

Berry indicates that you should just lay the cases out on a baking sheet with no need to use a special tin.  I found that this made the cakes a little misshapen.  It may be because I slightly overfilled them.  But they look home made and so in my book, that's good.  They cook really quickly, the texture is light and spongy (yes I ate cake at 5am but they are tiny!)  I much preferred this recipe to her standard-sized vanilla cupcakes which you can find a blog about here.

Because they'd risen to the top, I used a thicker icing than normal to decorate.  Normally I'd use a runny icing and let it flood to the edge of the case but here it would've dripped right off so I just smooshed a bit on with the back of a teaspoon and topped off with a jelly bean to make them look funky.

A great idea for baking for a children's party or as dessert if you're doing a nibbles type party.

Recipe

• 75g butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 100g self-raising flour
• 1 level tsp baking powder
• 75g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp milk

For the icing

• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• about 1 tbsp lemon jice
• sweets to decorate

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas4.  Arrange the mini cake cases on baking sheets.
2. Beat all the cake ingredients together until thoroughly blended.  Spoon scant teaspoonsfuls of mixture into the cases, being careful not to overfill.
3. Bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown.  Cool on a wire rack.
4. To make the icing, measure the icing sugar into a bowl and add enough lemon juice to give a spreading consistency.  Spoon a little on top of each cake and spread out with the back of a teaspoon.  When the icing has almost set, top with a sweet.

Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes

So my little girl turns two tomorrow.  And as part of a few days of festivities, we spent an hour this afternoon baking the first of four sets of birthday cakes.  I know this sounds a bit excessive, but I'm trying to make her birthday a bit special.  We don't have a huge family and because I work full time and haven't been able to take her along to playgroups, I don't have a myriad of other mummies with offspring to invite over for a party.

Tomorrow, it's just me, her and the husband.  On Thursday I'll send some mini cupcakes to school with her for her classmates.  On Friday, my two neighbours are coming round for coffee with their children so we'll have cupcakes then and on Saturday, the 'rents are coming down so her official birthday cake will be made.

I must check myself here because earlier I had a bit of a rant on Facebook about people who buy excessive piles of presents for their two-year-olds.  And here I am making four lots of cakes for mine!

One of the reasons I've probably not made an effort to 'bond' with some of the other mothers is because I'm not really a woman's woman.  I have female friends, don't get me wrong.  And the ones I have are ace.  But I'm not a girly girl, I don't enjoy shopping and working in a male-dominated environment suits me down to the ground.  I felt like a social outcast in my post-natal group as although I wasn't the oldest mother, I was the oldest first time mother.  I was the only one who breastfed and I was the only one going back to work.  All of which immediately seemed to mark me out as a pariah.

One of the cakes...

And then we come on to some of the other mothers who've acquaintance I've made.  Like a fool, I let down my guard and added them as friends on Facebook (they've since been removed).  Some of them posted pictures of the piles of presents that their under-two offspring got for Christmas.  Seriously, it was obscene.  One had a travel cot packed full of presents for a one year old.  Now maybe they have a large and generous family - I don't know - but it just seemed wrong that so much should be lavished on a child who probably wouldn't appreciate it.

I passed comment on this by way of saying that the best thing Miss A had for Christmas was the huge cardboard box that all my Christmas shopping came in from Amazon.  We turned it into a car.  A bit later we pulled the flaps out and turned it into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  She was heartbroken when my husband crushed it in front of her and stuck it in the recycling bin.  And yet she has piles of toys (comparatively small piles I might add) that she rarely touches.  She's far happier in the kitchen with me, demanding to crack eggs or rolling and cutting bits of spare dough.

In response to my comment, one mother posted that I shouldn't feel bad I was so poor, and that if I saved hard, I could make it up to her for Christmas.  She missed my point entirely.  Again, I don't know this particular woman's personal finances, but I wouldn't imagine she's that well off knowing what I do.  More young and naive.  I earn a decent salary thank you very much and I could, if I felt like it, buy my child an iPad (yes, this is what her child got for Christmas amongst about fifty other things).  But seriously?  A not-yet-two-year-old with its own iPad.  The world has gone mad.

And they call it Puppy Love

The best thing that happened to Miss A today (besides getting to crack three eggs) was when we popped to the shops and we discovered the Guide Dogs for the Blind collecting box that has recently appeared.  She spent a good ten minutes sat talking to the plastic dogs and petting them.  This is what children are supposed to do.  Not live in sterile worlds with only electronic devices for company.

And I'm glad for my child and her creative imagination.  Because when she wakes up tomorrow morning, I'm hoping that she will be chuffed that I've turned her chocolate cupcakes and bits of biscuit into a dachshund.  Now it takes a bit of imagination (and you need to know what a dachshund is!!) but Miss A does adore her dogs and particularly, Rolo our dachshund.  As it's just the three of us tomorrow, I didn't want a huge, elaborate cake but I wanted to do something that she'd love and could be involved in making.

I happened across the inspiration for this a while ago and it seemed perfect.  So with a few shaped bits of chocolate biscuit and some ganache-topped chocolate cupcakes from the original Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, we have ourselves a dachshund.

Last year's cake. It's a zebra, alright?!

Of course, I then made the fatal mistake of asking the husband if it looked like a dachshund.  He said something along the line of 'it's some chocolate cakes', crushing any imaginatory spirit that I had.  Okay, so the picture (below) is rubbish because of poor lighting and space in my kitchen but it looks vaguely dog like, doesn't it?

I should know better, after he decided that all the effort that went into last year's big cake created a cow.  It was supposed to be a zebra.

Anyway, after a lot of waffling, here's a tiny bit about the bake.  The book states that the Hummingbird Bakery uses a Devil's Food Cake mix for their cupcakes.  I don't know what constitutes the difference between Devil's Food Cake and regular chocolate cake but it has a high sugar and low butter and egg content.  This makes for a soft, sticky cake which personally I found too sweet.  I blogged before about my issue with Hummingbird Vanilla Cupcakes being sticky on the top and not being able to stack them.  I had the same problem with these.

Another problem I faced tonight was that for some reason, the wrappers started to peel from the edges of the cake.  I've had this before with the vanilla recipe too but I don't know why.  Last time I assumed it was the wrappers or the heat that caused it (it was in the summer) but this time, it's much cooler and I used different wrappers which have been fine with other recipes.  If anyone is still reading this far through and knows what I'm doing wrong, I'd appreciate the advice!

Chocolate dachshund made with Miss A's help

I topped these cakes with some chocolate ganache made with half chocolate, half cream, a knob of butter stirred in and a half teaspoon of vanilla essence.

If I'm honest, I won't bake these again.  I much prefer the chocolate cupcake recipe over at Joy of Baking.  Best ones ever and always get me compliments.


Chocolate cupcakes (recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery)

Ingredients

• 100g plain flour
• 20g cocoa powder
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 40g soft unsalted butter
• 120ml whole milk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Put the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and butter in a large bowl and beat on a slow speed with an electric hand mixer until well combined and a sandy consistency.
3. Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla extract together in a jug and add half to the dry mixture.
4. Beat slowly to combine and then more quickly to beat out any lumps.
5. Add the remaining liquid mixture and beat slowly to combine. Do not overmix.
6. Transfer the mixture into the cake cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until they spring back to the touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean.
7. Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack

Mary Berry's Vanilla Cupcakes

A good rule of thumb, as most people know, is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  This has become increasingly apparent as  I've been on this journey of trying new recipes.  Most of what I've cooked has been pretty new to me.  Other recipes, however, are me seeking an even better alternative to my staple recipes.

For example, I adore Angela Nilssen's  Ultimate Chocolate Cake.  I recently tried Nigella's Chocolate Fudge Cake as an alternative.  I didn't like it, everyone at work politely ate it (probably fearing that if they dissed it, they'd never get cake again) and then I got the husband's brutal assessment of it.  I can't repeat what he said here, but he didn't like it.

Ladybird cupcakes

Not one to pull his punches, never ask him for an honest opinion on something if you're not fully prepared to hear the absolute worst.  In fact, we now have a new method of me garnering his opinion on something.  If he doesn't like it, he'll say so in his own inimitable style.  If he doesn't pass comment, then the item being assessed (food, clothes etc) ranks anywhere from passable to sublime in his opinion.

Anyway, I digress (as I always do).  There are some things that are new recipes to me where I've tried several different versions before settling on a recipe that I like.  There's the meatball odyssey - Rachel Allen's got a thumbs down; BBC Good Food Chipotle Meatballs are good; Waitrose met the husband's seal of approval and now I'm never allowed to cook him any others.  And the naan bread quest.  When Sainsburys stopped selling the Sharwoods Naan packet mix, I tried one from my 'Breads of the World' book ("old boot leather") before happening across THE BEST NAAN RECIPE EVER, courtesy of the lovely Dan Lepard (he followed me on Twitter today. Cue girly squealy excitement!)

Collapsed grass

But I'm getting the feeling that sometimes it's better to know when to stop.  Mary Berry's Hokey Pokey cake is not a patch on my own coffee cake recipe.  And I'm sorry, but the vanilla cupcake recipe just doesn't do it for me either.  Don't get me wrong, they're pleasant enough but I much prefer my trusty Hummingbird Bakery recipe.  It's so good, it's published in both the original Hummingbird Bakery book and Cake Days.

For me, the word cupcake signifies a light, supremely soft, melt on the tongue cake, topped with a tooth-rotting swirl of buttercream.  Whilst these cupcakes where spongy enough, they just reminded me of an overgrown fairy cake or a small version of a Victoria sponge.  I think the slightly crispy exterior coupled with a dense interior just didn't enrapture me enough.

That's not to say that the Hummingbird recipe is perfect.  It drives me to distraction that I can't stack them on top of each other in the freezer box without them becoming stuck together - for some reason there's always a slightly sticky residue on the top of the cakes.  But I've had so many genuine compliments on them and requests for the recipe that I doubt I'll try another recipe from elsewhere.

Couldn't bring myself to eat the little critter

I do also like that these are fling-it-all-in-the-bowl-and-mix cupcakes.  Great when you need to knock up some cupcakes quickly whilst trying to stop your toddler from cleaning the windows with a piece of left over cookie dough.  The Hummingbird recipe is far more involved with lots of beating and scraping and adding bits of this then mixing then adding some of that then mixing blah blah blah.  But that's probably the difference between the two - more care, more air.

My other gripe is that it only made nine cakes instead of 12.  With the Hummingbird recipe, I always manage 12-16 cakes.  Then again, in some ways I'm glad.  I was trying to do some 'get ahead baking' for Miss A's birthday but I would rather bake the Hummingbird cupcakes to share so these will be good ones to practice icing techniques on.

The buttercream I used for the grass was just some leftover, bog-standard two parts sugar to one part butter buttercream but it proved to be a little too soft for my new grass making icing nozzle.  I've been informed that mashed potato is a good substitue for practicing icing techniques however I'm not sure how the husband would take to spud-topped cupcakes!

Recipe

• 100g butter or margerine
• 150g caster sugar
• 150g self raising flour
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence.

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas 4.  Line a muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Mix all the ingredients together into a smooth, even batter.
3. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling each one to about 2/3 full.
4. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch.
5. Cool on a wire rack before icing.

Updated: Nigella's Chocolate Fudge Cake

In just two short weeks, my little girl will turn two.  I realised this morning (with a touch of horror) that I have four different events to bake for.  Her actual birthday, cake to take to nursery for her last day in the baby room, cake for when my two neighbours pop round with their children for coffee and a cake for when the 'rents visit the weekend after her birthday.

I prefer 'Sausage' dog, myself

For her actual birthday, it's just me and her and the husband. The husband isn't really allowed cake, what with his diabetes, but in my world, birthdays should always be celebrated with cake.  And so I wanted to make something quite small that we can easily share and not have too many leftovers (although I'm sure my work colleagues would have done the honours on the remains).

Googling about for inspiration for her main cake, I happened across some adorable Sausage Dog cupcakes.  My cousin, the lovely @BridestockBride and Miss A are both doxie obsessives.  If you're a regular follower, you'll know that we have a doxie called Rolo and she's Miss A's best mate.  We also regularly make 'Rolo' shaped cookies and I've been spreading the doxie cookie cutter love amongst my Twitter friends - discovering the lovely @LaurenPrince (go and visit her blog when you're done here!) is also a fan.  If you want to know where to get your own doxie cutter from, then visit Cakes, Cookies and Craft Shop.

Anyway, the cupcake doxie appears to be just a line of ganache-topped cupcakes with biscuit ears and faces.  I'm going to use Dame Mary's cupcake recipe from 100 Cakes and Bakes (and the subject of last week's Weekly Bake Off challenge) and try out the Primrose Bakery Bourbon Biscuit recipe which was recommended to me by the lovely @HungrySquirrels (another fab blog to read) - because they are dachshund shaped!

With antennae made from rice noodles!

For the visit from the neighbours and their assorted toddlers, I'm going with further cupcakeage.  I still can't decide which to make although ladybirds are currently at the forefront of my mind.  I joined Pinterest today.  If you're not au fait with this, it's an online mood board website where you can post pictures of things that you like.  I love it as I often happen across pictures of things I'd love to have a go at baking and then forget where I saw the picture.  You just click a button on your browser's bookmark bar and it saves the pic to your Pinterest profile for posterity.  Love it.

Finally, for the main event, I'm hoping to make a dalmatian themed cake.  These are Miss A's second favourite dogs.  My poor spaniel will be jealous - but he doesn't like her unless she has food so he can't complain too much.  I want to make a fondant covered chocolate cake and, despite being a huge fan of Angela Nielsen's Ultimate Chocolate Cake, I felt the time was ripe to see if there are any other comparable (or better) recipes on the market.  Given that it's for such an important occasion, I wanted to road-test it first.

I asked Twitter and Twitter suggested Nigella's Guiness Cake.  Sounds amazing, but not really suitable for toddlers.  Flicking through my copy of Nigella Bites, I happened across her Chocolate Fudge Cake which sounds like it fits the bill.  Twitter confirmed this to be so and it's currently cooling in the kitchen, waiting to be iced.

So far, the experience has been worrying.  The recipe states to use two eight inch (20cm) sandwich pans.  I fear Ms Lawson's must be at least three inches deep as by the time I'd finished the batter, it was very evident that I would head for disaster using my little two inch deep pans.  I quickly fished out my 8 inch Christmas cake tin which is five inches deep.  Even this only had a gap of an inch at the top when the cake went into the oven.  At twenty minutes, I was on my knees in front of the cooker, praying to the High Priestess of Baking (Dame Mary) that it wouldn't overflow and leave me scraping burnt offerings off of my grill pan which I'd sensibly put underneath.

Thankfully, it rose a mere half inch out of the tin, leaving me with a cake that's even bigger than Nielsen's Ultimate Chocolate Cake.

Excuse the messy edge on the cake board please!

I am now off to finish off the icing.  It's taking an age to cool - I guess because it was in the oven for an hour and a half vs the fifty minutes recommended for the two-pan method.

And if it's a nay, then I'll be moving on to Lorraine Pascale's 'I Can't Believe You Made That Cake' next.

Verdict and photos will be posted tomorrow once the work mates have got their teeth into it.

Update 1st March 2012: Well my colleagues were really impressed with this one.  And when someone finally was brave enough to have the first slice, it went like wildfire.  I even got asked for the recipe.

However, and it's a pretty big however, I'm obviously getting really fussy in my cakeage because I really didn't like it.  It tasted just like a mediocre chocolate fudge cake that you'd get with squirty cream or cheap soft scoop ice cream in a chain pub.  Now there's nothing wrong with that kind of cake, necessarily.  But I don't aspire to bake cakes like that.  The icing was bland and too buttery for me.  The cake lacked a deep chocolate flavour.  Someone asked if it was cherry flavoured and I must confess even I got a hint of cherry once it was pointed out to me - but no fruit was harmed in the making of this cake.

So it's a crowd pleaser, but like always, I'm never part of the crowd.  So it's back to the drawing board with James Martin and Lorraine Pascale's chocolate cake recipes now in the running for birthday cake of the year (for Miss A!)

Hummingbird Bakery Mojito Cupcakes

It's National Baking Week this week so on Sunday I decided to make some Mojito Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery's (@hummingbbakery's) Cake Days book.  I've had mixed success with recipes from their original book - the vanilla cupcakes and raspberry chocolate brownie bar are to die for; other recipes such as the cheese and spinach muffins just didn't work for me.

Nevertheless, I intend to have a go at more recipes from Cake Days as so far, everything I've made from it has been more than passable.  I picked these in particular because mojitos are my cocktail of choice.  Not that I drink many as according to my mother, one sniff of a barmaid's apron and I'm anybodys...

Mojito cupcakes - replete with mint leaves

So why am I posting on Tuesday about something I baked Sunday?  Surely that's cheating??  Well I baked the cakes on Sunday, popped to the shops, came home, started stocking the fridge and my little assistant took it upon herself to tip a newly opened box of icing sugar all over my kitchen floor.  At the time, I was less than amused.

No icing sugar, no frosting.  I finished them off tonight (decorating them, not eating them!) hence why I'm using this as a sneaky Tuesday recipe.

These are mini cupcakes and now they're frosted, I totally understand why.  They are VERY sweet and I can feel my teeth rotting just looking at them.  The sponge on its own is beautifully fragrant with a hint of lime and mint and a crunchy sugar-rum topping.  But the frosting just doesn't work for me.  It is too sweet and I feel it should be sharper.  Even adding lime juice didn't seem to cut through the sweetness.  I'd welcome suggestions on how to make really sharp lemon or lime frosting as it's something I've never found a successful recipe for.  Answers on a tweet to @lilmssquirrel.

Makes 12 medium sized cupcakes or 20-30 mini cakes

For the sponge:

100ml White rum 
170g Caster sugar
40g Unsalted butter, softened
120g Plain flour
1/4 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Grated lime zest
1 tsp Grated lemon zest
1 tbsp Finely chopped mint
1 large egg
120ml Milk 
1/2 tsp Vanilla essence 

Preheat oven to 170deg C and line a muffin tin with cases 

In a saucepan bring the white rum and 30g of the sugar to the boil, reduce by half and set aside. 
Beat together the butter, flour, salt, baking powder, lime and lemon zest, mint and remaining sugar. Mix until you have a crumb like consistency. 
Mix together the egg milk and vanilla in a jug and gradually pour this into the dry mix mixing until you have a smooth batter. 

Spoon cake batter into the cases up to 2/3 full. Place in the oven and bake for 12-15 min's for mini cupcakes or 15 to 20 for bigger or until the cakes are a light golden brown and springy to the touch. 

While the cakes are still warm spoon the rum reduction over them (1/2 tsp for mini cakes 1tsp for bigger approx) Then leave to cool completely! 

While the cakes are cooling, make and drink a mojito! ... erm I mean make the frosting! 

For the frosting

80g Unsalted butter
250g Icing sugar
1/4 tsp lemon zest
1/4 tsp lime zest
4 tsp milk
4 tsp White rum

1tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp chopped mint or lime zest 

Using and electric whisk, beat together the butter, icing sugar, lemon and lime zest until combined in a sandy consistency. Stir together the milk and rum and pour this into the butter mixture while still beating, whisk until light and fluffy. 
Divide the frosting between the cakes. To finish, mix together the caster sugar with either 1 tsp of mint or lime zest and sprinkle over the top.