a m y m c c r a c k e n

Occasion: Emma BrenBren’s B’day

Recipe: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Around the start of August Meaghan sent me a picture of cupcakes that she wanted for her birthday. They seemed impossible so I was like “pfffft, yeah right!” BUT then I came across the rainbow candy strips that was the key to the decoration and knew I had to suprise her with them.

One of my old workmates, Lauren, also messaged me a few days before I was planning to make Meaghans cupcakes to offer me my first every paid job (exciting!). She was after something bright like my rainbow cupcakes like I’ve done before (like these) for a friends birthday. I showed her what I was planning to make Meaghan and she was super keen on them too. The timing worked out to be perfect that I could make Meaghan & Lauren’s cupcakes at the same time.

Because I was making two batches with the same decoration – I decided to make two different flavours. I made chocolate cupcakes because everybody loves chocolate and I figured custard powder has the same consistency as cocoa powder so I made custard cupcakes too. I was a bit nervous about how they would turn out but it REALLY worked! They tasted caramelly – nom!!

chocolate cupcakes

ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml T cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g castor sugar
• 2 tsp red food colouring
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar

method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C and line two muffin trays with paper cases
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl
3. In another bowl, cream the butter, and sugar until light and fluffy
4. Beat in the food colouring and vanilla extract
5. While still beating, add one spoonful of dried ingredients, then one egg, followed by some more dried ingredients, then the other egg, followed by the rest of the dried ingredients
6. Beat together the buttermilk and vinegar
7. Fold into creamed mixture
8. Spoon the batter evenly into the cases
9. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
10. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down completely before decorating

custard cupcakes

The same as above but swap cocoa powder with custard powder, and red food colouring with yellow.

blue buttery cream cheese icing

ingredients

• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 125g cream cheese
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• 1 tsp blue food colouring
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth then spread over the cupcakes.

decoration

Pipe on white clouds (200g icing sugar & 80g cream cheese) on each side of the cupcake in zigzags. Leave for a few mins to set a little, then push strips of rainbow candy into the clouds.

Miss Emma left the Shock crew at the start of the month so for her last day I made her some cupcakes & decided to make my first attempt at tweaking the Nigella Red Velvet Cupcake recipe where i swapped the red food colouring for some dark chocolate chips. I also made more mixture than I did the first time so there would be more to go around (below recipe is 1 ½ times my previous post).

ingredients

• 375g plain flour
• ¾ cup dark chocolate chips
• 3 x 15ml T cocoa powder, sifted
• 3 tsp baking powder
• ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 150g soft unsalted butter
• 300g castor sugar
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 260ml buttermilk
• 1 ½ tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar

method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C and line two muffin trays with paper cases
2. Combine the flour, chocolate chips, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl
3. In another bowl, cream the butter, and sugar until light and fluffy
4. Beat in the vanilla extract
5. While still beating, add one spoonful of dried ingredients, then one egg, followed by some more dried ingredients, then the other egg, followed by the rest of the dried ingredients
6. Beat together the buttermilk and vinegar
7. Fold into creamed mixture
8. Spoon the batter evenly into the cases
9. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
10. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down completely before decorating

* because I had extra mixture, I made one tray of standard muffin sized cupcakes, then one tray of mini cupcakes. To bake the mini cupcakes, I reduced the temperature down to 160°C and baked them for about 10-15 mins.

buttery cream cheese icing

ingredients

• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 125g cream cheese
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice

 Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth then pipe onto the cupcakes.

 I made up about 4 dozen cupcakes for the RSPCA cupcake day this year. Please vote for my creations so I can win a baking pack for my efforts:

http://www.rspcacupcakeday.com.au/competitions/creative-cupcake/entry/?cupcake=88

I made three different types:

Hello Kitty cupcakes – Vanilla flavour with hint of apple & cinnamon decorated with blue icing and a fondant Hello Kitty and dusted with edible glitter

Rainbow Vanilla Cupcakes – rainbow cupcake (purple, pink, orange) topped with rainbow (yellow, green, blue) buttercream icing and sprinkled with edible glitter

Red Velvet Cupcakes – topped with buttery cream cheese icing, with a sprinkle of red edible glitter and decorated with black cats

Hello Kitty cupcakes

For the Hello Kitty cupcakes, I made the standard cupcake recipe that I use from the Edmonds cookbook and threw in some additional flavours:

ingredients

• 190g butter, softened
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp apple essence
• 1 C caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 ½ C plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• ½ C milk

method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C
2. Cream butter, cinnamon, essences and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk
7. Spoon mixture evenly into the prepared mini cupcake pan that has been lined with paper cases
8. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

butter icing

ingredients

• 250g butter
• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp apple essence
• ½ tsp food colouring

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth. Divide into thirds and colour each batch as desired

decoration

For decoration I created fondant Hello Kitty’s. I made a stencil out of cardboard, rolled the fondant out to about 5mm thick then cut out shapes using a craft knife.

For the features (nose & eyes) I cut out coloured bits from a liquorice allsort using a round piping tip (Steve helped out too), and for the whiskers I chopped up fruit sticks into small strips.

To make the features stick to the fondant I wet the cut out with water then pressed them on. Once dried (by the heater to speed up the drying process) I painted the eyes with black food colouring. Then, when the eyes dried out, I brushed white edible glitter over the kitty. To assemble, I piped the blue icing onto each cupcake then sprinkled with silver edible glitter, then popped on the kitty decoration.

I recommend making fondant decorations at least the day before you plan to use them so they can harden up in time.

rainbow cupcakes

For these I made the same recipe as my rainbow cupcakes post. This time round, instead of swirling the mixture before I baking, I evened it out so the cupcake colours stacked on top of each other rather than marbling.

red velvet cupcakes

For these I made Nigella’s red velvet cupcake recipe (see this post). To decorate I piped the icing on top of each cupcake, sprinkled on red glitter the placed on some black cat sprinkles.

I have recently discovered Nigella’s red velvet cupcake recipe and it’s SO good – and easy. I’m planning to use this (ex the red food colouring) for a basic cupcake mixture because it’s so moist and delicious.

ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml T cocoa powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g castor sugar
• 1 heaped 15ml T red food colouring
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar

method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C and line two muffin trays with paper cases
2. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl
3. In another bowl, cream the butter, and sugar until light and fluffy
4. Beat in the food colouring and the vanilla
5. While still beating, add one spoonful of dried ingredients, then one egg, followed by some more dried ingredients, then the other egg, followed by the rest of the dried ingredients
6. Beat together the buttermilk and vinegar
7. Fold into creamed mixture
8. Spoon the batter evenly into the cases
9. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
10. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down completely before decorating

buttery cream cheese icing

ingredients

• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 125g cream cheese
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth.

To decorate I piped the icing on top of each cupcake and sprinkled on red glitter.

Nigella’s tips:

-          The cupcakes can be baked 2 days ahead and stored, un-iced, layered with paper in airtight containers

-          Icing can be made 1 day ahead: cover with glad wrap and refrigerate; remove from fridge 1-2 hours before needed; beat briefly before using

-          You can use all butter rather than half-butter and half-cream cheese for this icing

The best cooking magazine have come across to date is Super Food Ideas – It’s full of good recipes (and not like the Masterchef magazine that’s full of ads).  The March issue had a range of chocolate slices, one of which has now become a favourite in my office, Steves office and amongst our friends. Everyone that has tried it has called it the best rocky road ever.  It makes a great birthday treat!

I do tweak the original recipe slightly. It did suggest to use Turkish delight but I swap it with raspberry jellies or snakes and I add a bag of marshmallows. Sometimes I use all dark choc instead of a mix of dark & milk choc too.  

rocky road

Ingredients

• 250g packet scotch finger biscuits
• 180g packet raspberry jellies
• 100g packet pistachio nut kernels
• 100g packet marshmallows
• 450g dark chocolate
• 200g milk chocolate
• ½ C golden syrup
• 250g butter, chopped

Method

1. Line a 20cm x 30cm pan with baking paper

2. Roughly chop biscuits, raspberry jellies, pistachios and marshmallows (or use mini marshmallows)

3. Place chocolate, golden syrup and butter in a double boiler* and stir with a spatula until smooth

4. Pour melted chocolate mixture into biscuit mixture and stir gently till combine

5. Pour mixture into a prepared pan, pressing down with the back of a spooon to level

6. Cover with glad wrap an refrigerate for 2 hours or until firm before cutting into squares.

* A double boiler (aka bain Marie) is a saucepan filled partially with water. Place a bowl on top of the saucepan, ensuring the bowl is not touching the water – I use either a glass or metal bowl.

Chris’s birthday gave me a great excuse to make some creative cupcakes. I looked up heaps of images for ideas and sent them through to Athina (his wife who I made the owl cake pops for). She picked my first choice – Jack Skellington cupcakes which I was very excited about because (a) they looked AWESOME and (b) they needed fondant icing which I hadn’t used before.

The night before Chris’s birthday Athina and Briar came around. It was a very girly night of baking and watching the royal wedding (lame kiss by the way!).

We made batch of my double chocolate cupcakes. Athina had a genius idea of putting pieces of chocolate caramel in the middle from a cupcake that she had earlier in the week that had a caramel easter egg inside it,  YUM!

double chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 ½ C self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 C dark choc chips
• ½ C cocoa powder
• 3/4 C caster sugar
• 3/4 C milk
• 125g butter, melted, cooled
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence
• 1 block Cadbury caramelo chocolate

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a muffin pan with paper cases
2. Combine flour, cocoa powder, choc chips and caster sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre
3. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essence to flour mixture
4. Using a large metal spoon, stir gently to combine
5. Half fill each muffin case with mixture into the prepared muffin pan
6. Place two pieces of caramelo chocolate in the centre of each muffin case
7. Spoon remaining mixture into prepared muffin pan, ensuring to cover each piece of chocolate
8. Bake for 15 minutes
9. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool

decoration

Once the cupcakes cooled, we melted fondant on a double boiler (I used about half a packed / 1 cup). To assist in obtaining a smooth fondant that we could dip the cupcakes into I added some boiling water.

When at reached the desired consistency, dip the top of the now cooled cupcake into the fondant. Let the excess fondant drip off before turning back upright and placing onto the tray. We required two coats of fondant so once the first layer set, we dipped the cupcakes again.

See how smooth the fontant turned out – the cucpcakes acutally had a few cracks after baking but you couldn’t tell after the fondant went on.

Leave the fontant to set before painting on the Jack faces. We waited for about an hour. But next time I will leave these overnight and do the painting the following day – to avoid bleeding.

We googled images of different Jack faces. To paint we used black food colouring and a very fine paint brush. I did the first three or four until Athina and Briar were ready to give it a go (it was a bit nerve-wracking reaching this point and possibly stuffing it up!!).

They turned out amazing and Chris loved them (who wouldn’t??)

For Steve’s Dads birthday I decided to make a cake version of the cupcakes I made on Steve’s birthday.

I doubled my basic chocolate cake recipe:

chocolate cake

Ingredients

• 175g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 ¾ C sugar
• 3 eggs
• ½ C cocoa
• 2 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 C milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a muffin pan with paper cases.
2. Combine flour, cocoa powder, choc chips and caster sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.
3. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essence to flour mixture.
4. Using a large metal spoon, stir gently to combine.
5. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan.
6. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
7. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

runny chocolate icing

• 1 T butter
• 2 T cocoa, sifted
• 1 C icing sugar, sifted
• Splash hot water

Mix the butter, cocoa and icing sugar together. Add hot water until you get a runny consistency

peanut butter icing

Ingredients

• ½ C peanut butter
• ½ C cream cheese
• 1 ½ icing sugar

Cream the peanut butter and icing sugar together then sift in icing sugar to get the consistency that you like.

assembly

• Cut the cake in half
• Cover both the base and top of the cake with a thin layer of runny chocolate icing
• Spread on half of the peanut butter icing on top over the base. I piped around the edge so that it had a nice finish.
• Place the top of the cake over the iced base
• Spread on the remaining icing on the top of the cake
• Place chocolate covered peanuts around the edge

For Steve’s birthday this year he let me go ahead with whatever flavour I wanted to go with. I decided to make banoffee cupcakes using my double choc cupcake recipe… he wasn’t too keen on banana so I decided on peanut butter instead mmmm…. peanut butter…

I hadn’t made a peanut butter icing before so I hit up my good friend google with ‘best peanut butter icing’ the results suggested to use cream cheese.

They were so delicious and tasted like mars bars!

double chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 ½ C self-raising flour, sifted
• 3/4 C dark choc bits
• ½ C cocoa powder
• 3/4 C caster sugar
• 3/4 C milk
• 125g butter, melted, cooled
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease a 12 x 1/3-cup capacity muffin pan. Alternatively, line holes with paper cases. Combine flour, cocoa powder, choc bits and caster sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.
2. Add milk, butter, eggs and vanilla essence to flour mixture. Using a large metal spoon, stir gently to combine.
3. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin pan. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

icing

• 2 T cream cheese
• 2 T peanut butter
• 1 1/2 C icing sugar

Cream together the each cream cheese and peanut butter. Mix in as much icing sugar till you get the consistency you want.

decoration

Pipe icing onto the cupcakes. Decorate with a roasted peanut.

My job is to put together DVD releases and I had our first release of ‘Ace of Cakes’ to present to the sales team. If you haven’t watched this show – you should, it’s based around ‘Charm City Cakes’ a bakery in Baltimore where they can make any type of cake that you can imagine (and it’s way better than ‘Cake Boss’). I had come up with a really cool package for our first release – that includes a PIPING SET!! (partially because I wanted one). Check it out…

We have monthly meetings to present our product to the sales team – so to get them just as excited as I was, I decided to bake something out of the ordinary to bring out when it was time to present it. I chose to go with the BURGER cupcakes from the ‘Zombie Ate My Cupcake’ book (see my post about Megans Vegan Brains!)

What you need is

• two batches of vanilla cupcakes
• one batch of chocolate cupcakes
• one batch of icing
• fondant
• red, yellow & green food colouring
• toothpicks

vanilla cupcakes

Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ C caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¼ C milk
• ½ C sugar syrup
• ⅓ C sesame seeds

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C
2. Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk
7. Spoon mixture evenly into a greased muffin pan
8. Bake for 15 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack. Brush on sugar syrup and sprinkle on sesame seeds
10. Leave to cool down

chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ C caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¾  C plain flour
• ¼ C cocoa powder
• ¼ C choc chips
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¼ C milk
• 1 tsp food colouring

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C
2. Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk and choc chips
7. Spoon mixture evenly into a greased muffin pan
8. Bake for 15 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down

frosting

Ingredients

• 1 T butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp food colouring
• ½ C icing sugar, sifted

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth. Divide mixture between two bowls.

 burger elements

• Burger Buns   Cut the vanilla cupcakes in half
• Burger Patties   Cut the tops off the chocolate cupcakes and disregard (it seems a waste to throw them away so I kept mine to snack on!), then slice the base into half
• Sauce   Divide mixture between two bowls. Colour one half with red food colouring and the other with yellow lettuce
• Lettuce   Roughly kneed a few drops of green food colouring into a ball of fondant (approx. 1 cup). Don’t completely kneed the colour through – leave so it’s marbled. Feed coloured fondant through the widest setting of a pasta machine, continue feeding through decreasing one notch at a time till you get to the thinnest setting (or the thickness you desire). Rip the sheet of fondant into ‘lettuce’ pieces

Note: I made my ‘lettuce’ the night before, so the it could hardened before assembly.

assembly

1. Get a base of the vanilla cupcake then place a slice of chocolate cupcake on top
2. Pipe on the yellow, then red icing (zig zag right to the edges so you can see the sauce when completely assembled)
3. Place a burger pattie on top of the sauce
4. Arrange lettuce on top of the pattie
5. Place the vanilla cupcake on top, then hold everything into place by putting a long toothpick through the top

Ta Da!!! Now you have Burger Cupcakes!!