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

Occasion: Athina’s birthday

Recipe: custard velvet cupcakes with custardy cream cheese icing

Teeny is as obsessed with owls as I am with cats so when I discovered this vintage wise owl card on etsy I knew it would be perfect for her!

Occasion: Erin Tremewen’s high tea baby shower

Recipe: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Decoration: coloured icing, edible glitter and white buttons

Erin & Paul welcomed Richmond Bob Tremewen on Christmas Eve

Occasion: Steve’s Dads weddding

Recipe: red velvet with cream cheese icing

Decoration: black & white fondant moulded into leaves, roses & rabbits

Occasion: Emma BrenBren’s B’day

Recipe: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Genna from work has a friend that absolutely LOVES pirates and asked me to make her some cupcakes for her birthday – fun!

She let me choose the flavour so I used my amended red velvet recipe again (with the cocoa swapped with custard powder & no food colouring) with little pirate themed fondant decorations on top.

custard cupcakes

ingredients

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

method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C and line a muffin tray with paper cases
2. Combine the flour, custard powder, 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

buttery cream cheese icing

ingredients

• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 125g cream cheese
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• ½ tsp caramel essence

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

decoration

To create pirate themed decorations to go on the top of each cupcake I rolled out coloured fondant and used some miniature shape cutters & sculpturing/modeling tools. Then to glue parts together I used sugar glue.

 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.



For Briar’s birthday I wanted to make her something bright and vibrant – so rainbow cupcakes seemed like the perfect idea! I’ve seen this style of icing before in my google image searches for cupcake decoration ideas so now was the best excuse to try it out.

I made my standard vanilla cupcake recipe and dyed the mixiture and icing so that when you took a bite it was coloured pink-purple-blue-green-yellow!

cupcakes

Ingredients

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

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. Divide mixture into thirds and colour as desired
8. Spoon mixture evenly into the prepared mini cupcake pan that has been lined with paper cases
9. When spooing the mixture in, evenly place in the colours as desired then gently swurl with a toothpick so the mixture marbles when baked
10. Bake for 15 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched
11. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

butter icing

Ingredients

• 100gbutter
• 2 T vanilla essence
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 T hot water
• ½ tsp food colouring
• 2 C icing sugar, sifted

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth. Divide into thirds and colour each batch as desired, this website details how to get the different colours to blend when you pipe the icing on the top

http://www.bigredkitchen.com/2009/05/rainbow-cupcakes.html

It was actually REALLY easy to do! All you have to do is spoon different colours into the piping bag and it just mixes itself!

I sprinkled yellow and green edible glitter on the top when done just to give them a bit more pazaaz!

They were delicious!

Maree came down from Sydney and we caught up with her to celebrate her birthday at Madame Brussels (p.s. those jugs of espresso martini’s will keep you awake ALL night – seriously, I couldn’t sleep till 4am!!).

Athina and I decided to give her mini cupcakes so I went around to her house during the day – packed with my piping sets and sprinkles!! And Briar helped us bake and decorate too.

The great thing that I have found with having this website is that I have my recipes on hand wherever I go. We used the basic cupcake recipe from the Edmond’s cookbook that I used when I baked with my nephew’s.

mini 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

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 the prepared mini cupcake pan that has been lined with paper cases
8. Bake for 8 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched (note: bake for 15 mins for standard cupcakes)
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

While we were baking we decided to make them EXTRA vanillery (is that a word?.. is now) so we used more like a tablespoon (if not more) of vanilla essence.

butter icing

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. Like the cupcake batter, we decided to put a good splash more of the vanilla essence into the icing too. I was a little nervous that they were going too much with all the vanilla we put in - but it worked and they tasted SO good.

Because we used pink and yellow mini cupcake paper cases, we dyed the icing pink and yellow too. We swirled the icing on top and sprinkled silver balls over the top (I think more bounced off and went all over the floor haha).

We popped them in a gift box and ta da! Mini vanilla cupcakes

xx

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??)