Pineapple lump cupcakes

Pineapple lumps are some of my favourite lollies. The chocolate pineapple combination makes it scarily easy to polish off a pack before you know it. Remember this ad? It's not just me who thinks they are good.



With pineapple lumps in the pantry and baking to do today, I thought about how I could combine these two things and modified a recipe for pineapple and coconut cupcakes. The result was 24 delicious pineapple cupcakes topped with chocolate frosting and, of course, crowned with a heavenly pineapple lump.

Pineapple lump cupcakes

Ingredients

• 240 g plain flour
• 280 g sugar
• 3 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 80 g butter, softened
• 240 ml milk
• 1 t vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 300 g crushed pineapple, drained (1 x 440 g tin)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C.
2. Line two 12-hole muffin tins with cupcake papers.
3. Using the paddle attachment of your mixer, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter on slow speed until reaching a sandy consistency and everything is combined.
4. Mix the milk and vanilla together in a measuring cup. Pour into the flour mixture on medium speed until well combined.
5. Add eggs one at a time and mix well, scraping down the side of the bowl with a spatula in between additions.
6. Fold in the crushed pineapple with a spatula. The mixture will be wet and sloppy.
7. Fill the cupcake cases until two-thirds full. Using an ice cream scoops helps spread the mixture evenly.
8. Bake for 25 minutes or until the cupcakes bounce back when touched and an inserted skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tray for five minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate buttercream

Ingredients

• 250 g unsalted butter, softened
• 250 g icing sugar, sifted
• 30 ml tepid water
• 20 g cocoa, sifted to remove lumps

Method

1. Beat the butter and sugar on high speed using the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy.
2. Add water and mix to combine.
3. Add cocoa and mix until smooth.

Pipe or frost the cupcakes when cool, then top with a pineapple lump.

Pineapple lump cupcakes

Piña colada cupcakes

You can vary this recipe to make piña colada cupcakes.

• Replace milk with coconut milk.
• Replace vanilla essence with rum.
• Frost with vanilla buttercream and sprinkle with desiccated coconut to decorate.

Raspberry white chocolate cupcakes

I used to make cupcakes quite often for celebrations but now tend to make more cakes for birthdays. There have been several family birthdays this month, so I'm finishing off my month of baking with some decadent raspberry white chocolate cakes.

This is a modified version of a recipe from my favourite local cupcake recipe book, Divine Cupcakes by Tamara Jane, formerly of Tempt Cupcakes. I halved the quantities and still ended up with more than two dozen cupcakes! I also added a teaspoon of Fresh As freeze dried raspberry powder, popped some dried raspberries into the centre of each and added a teaspoon of raspberry powder to the vanilla frosting. Yum!

Raspberry white chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t freeze-dried raspberry powder
• 250 g butter, chopped
• 250 ml milk
• 450 g sugar or caster sugar
• 150 g white chocolate, chopped
• 2 eggs, whisked
• 1 t vanilla essence
• freeze dried raspberries

Method

1. Sift flour and baking powder together into a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and set aside.
2. Put butter, milk, sugar and white chocolate into a medium saucepan and melt together over a low heat. Stir continuously with a flat-bottomed wooden stirrer until the chocolate has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Alternatively, place ingredients into a ceramic bowl and melt in the microwave on high for approximately 5 minutes, or melt gently over a bain-marie. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
3. Preheat the oven to 155°C while you wait for the chocolate mixture to cool. Line two 12-hole muffin trays with cupcake papers.
4. Pour the cooled mixture into the dry ingredients and whisk together until smooth and all lumps are dissolved. Gently stir in the eggs and vanilla essence until just combined. This is a very runny mixture.
5. Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcakes papers. They should be two-third full. Press 1-2 freeze dried raspberries into the centre of each cupcake and cover with mixture. (Beware: they will keep trying to float up to the top!)
6. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in the muffin trays for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Decorate by piping with vanilla or vanilla and raspberry buttercream frosting or white chocolate ganache. 

Raspberry white chocolate cupcakes

Project Elf

Like many bakers, I've been baking almost continuously for the past couple of weeks and loving every minute of it. Gingerbread, shortbread, truffles, Christmas mud cake and cupcakes of various descriptions - my baking list is quite extensive this year with more still to come. I love thinking about what to bake for an occasion and the pleasure of giving away baking as treats.

Project Elf is a volunteer project that bakes and delivers cupcakes to those in need of baking at Christmas time. Now, a lot of people may present a perfectly valid case for needing baking at Christmas or any other time of the year, but no-one can argue about the recipients of Project Elf's cause. Organisations such as CanTeen, Child Cancer Foundation, Ronald McDonald House and Wellington Children's Hospital will have cupcakes delivered, as well as the children's families and the staff who support them.

Organised and led by Becs from Stiletto Studio, an army of volunteers is currently baking and decorating more than 800 cupcakes to give away during the next few days, including a special Christmas Day delivery. The call was put out for donations of cupcake toppers, so I got to work making two dozen Christmas wreath fondant toppers for the project. When I dropped them off yesterday, I found Becs and her elves hard at work pouring batter into cupcake cases and the smell of freshly baked cupcakes was wafting through the studio. Yum!

Christmas wreath cupcake toppers

I'm really glad that I could make a (very tiny) contribution to this worthwhile project and look forward to being part of it again next year.

Gum paste decorations

Last night, a friend and I attended Ice Nice Baby with the lovely Tanya Hugyecz from Decorada. This was a practical workshop where we got to try out making gum paste decorations amid the beautiful setting of the Small Acorns store. A glass of wine on arrival and a goodie bag at the end, along with decorated cupcakes to take home and eat, made it a very civilised and creative way to spend a winter's evening.

I've done a little bit of cupcake decorating before, attended a few workshops and accumulated far too many decorating tools in proportion to those that I have used more than once. The reality of time pressures has seen me become quite good at piping chocolate filigree decorations, as they are quick and easy to add to the top of a decorated cupcake at the last minute. Despite the best of intentions to have sessions where I sit and make a collection of gum paste decorations in advance for later use, they rarely happen. Last night was a great opportunity to practise some of the skills I had previously learned while inspiring me to sort through my arsenal of equipment and give decoration making another go. I'm determined to perfect the art of making gum paste roses!

Tanya's iced decorations

Thank you to Amanda and the team at Small Acorns for hosting a delightful evening. We're already looking forward to the next one!

A catch up with The Cupcake Lady

Yesterday, as I contemplated the queue at one of my favourite city cafés (Smith, the Grocer), I passed by the window of tempt. I always stop here to get some inspiration for my next cupcake baking project. Fortunately, I had my camera with me yesterday.

As I popped around the corner into the tempt retail space, I was delighted to find Tamara Jane (The Cupcake Lady) herself behind the counter. We had a quick catch up about what I've been doing since attending her cupcake decorating course in March. I assured her that I'd been baking up a storm ever since, including lots of cupcakes and some recipes from her recently published book, Divine Cupcakes: A Book of Temptation. She appeared genuinely pleased to hear that.

Tamara Jane is one of the most positive, enthusiastic, and energetic people I have come across in a long time. She didn't seem overly surprised that I have a list of volunteer tasters longer than my arm! We chatted about some of the recipes I'd tried, and I asked her about a few measurements and directions I wasn't sure about. It's not often you get to check out queries with chefs about their published recipes, so I relished the opportunity. Alas, we couldn't work out why my raspberry and white chocolate mud cake turned out to be 23 cm when "I just made one this morning and it was 16 cm plus a few cupcakes". Never mind, she assured me. Wasn't I "lucky" to get such a big cake that day? My family would certainly agree.

Apparently book sales are going well, and her retail business is seemingly recession-proof. (I recall something about cupcakes and lipsticks surviving even the toughest of times - small treats and all.) Her classes are now fully booked until January 2010 - gosh, I'm glad I got in when I did to be part of her first-ever course!

Mid-winter Christmas dinner

Mid-winter Christmas has just been and gone for us in the southern hemisphere. We decided to mark the occasion with friends by having a pot luck dinner. We had lots of yummy food and my sweetie made eggnog, which we hadn't tried before. I don't think he was supposed to add chocolate ice cream to it later on but no-one seemed to be complaining. I made Christmas cupcakes, which were vanilla flavoured with vanilla buttercream frosting and decorated with hand-made holly leaves.

Santa Claus also made a rare mid-year celebrity visit, along with the Christmas Fairy, to oversee our Secret Santa/Yankee swap - which brought plenty of laughs. I think Santa just enjoyed having lots of pretty girls (and guys!) sitting on his knee. ;-)

Our party gave me a great excuse for goal #80 - Decorate a room with fairy lights. Actually, I've hurt my back so my sweetie had to put the lights and other decorations up, but I'm sure it still counts. Obviously photos of the room didn't look very impressive, so you'll just have to take my word about how pretty the lights looked. :-)

Celebration cupcakes

My parents commemorated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday. To celebrate, we had elevenses for about 70 family and friends. My sister-in-law and I did all of the catering and I had a baking binge last week to help us along. We also had two sessions making gumpaste flowers.

Among other things, I made cupcakes. This is the first time I had attempted to mass-produce cupcakes and also the first time I'd tried the recipes from my cupcake decorating course earlier this year. On Saturday morning, I baked 60 cupcakes, half each vanilla and chocolate. We piped milk and dark chocolate shapes for the chocolate cupcakes and had pre-made gumpaste flowers to decorate the vanilla cupcakes. On Sunday morning, extremely tired from having flown to Auckland overnight for the Simon & Garfunkel concert, I made one batch each of chocolate buttercream frosting and vanilla frosting, tinted a slight ivory colour. Then, I assembled the flowers and decorations into the finished products below.

I was thrilled to see the reaction from our guests, many of whom thought I'd ordered professionally made cupcakes. :-) Needless to say, they all disappeared quickly!

Vanilla cupcakes iced with buttercream frosting, tinted slightly ivory in colour and decorated with gumpaste flowers (hand made).

More vanilla cupcakes, with chocolate cupcakes in the background. Iced with chocolate buttercream frosting and finished with decorations piped from milk and dark chocolate.

Maple, apple and pecan cupcakes

It's baking day. :-) We are going to a friend's for dinner tonight and I'm making dessert, so it's time for a new cupcake recipe. Wondering what to do with some apples that had gone soft, I found this recipe for maple, apple and pecan cupcakes on Zen Cupcake. Any recipe with nuts in it is going to be quite expensive, so I'd call these 'special occasion' cupcakes. You can use walnuts if pecans aren't available.

Maple, apple and pecan cupcakes

Ingredients

• 60g butter, softened
• 1 cup self raising flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple-flavoured syrup
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup coarsely grated apple
  
• Maple frosting
• 90g butter, softened
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 2-3 teaspoons maple-flavoured syrup

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a standard 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
2. Beat butter, flour, cinnamon, sugar, syrup and eggs with electric mixer on low speed until ingredients are combined. Increase speed to medium and beat until mixture changes to a paler colour.
3. Stir in pecans and apple. Fill cupcake cases 2/3 full with batter.
4. Bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until golden. Cool on wire racks.
5. To make maple frosting, beat butter, sifted icing sugar and maple syrup until light and fluffy. Spread or pipe over cupcakes and decorate with a pecan.

That also completes another 101 goal: #87 - Try 10 new recipes. Since the inception of baking day, most of my recipes naturally fall into that category. I will keep experimenting and trying new recipes and posting them here. If you'd like to try any for yourself, just search for my recipes or baking tags.

Mint chocolate cupcakes

Yesterday was Mother's Day. Following on from an incredibly busy day on Saturday (three parties and a whole pile of action), Mother's Day involved lots of food while visiting both our families. Exhausting!

To celebrate Mother's Day, I wanted to try making a special kind of cupcake recipe which would also allow me to experiment with decorating. I used Tamara Jane's recipe for mint chocolate cupcakes. This recipe is different to any others I have come across as it uses no milk; the liquid comes from melting dark chocolate in boiling water. Also, it includes ground almonds, something which adds texture but with a surprising light result. Decorating is done with dark chocolate ganache (instead of buttercream frosting); the consistency of ganache is markedly different to pipe. And, I'd also get to practise some of my chocolate piping skills.

These are definitely 'celebration' cupcakes, as the dark chocolate ganache is incredibly rich. I ended up using less on each cupcake, decorating only the very centre and adding piped chocolate shapes to give shape and height. This helped make the ganache mixture spread further. It is also a very large, wet mixture - I wasn't sure it would all make it into the cupcake liners!

Mint chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

• 140g dark chocolate
• 330ml water
• 4 tablespoons cocoa
• 300g self-raising flour
• 2/3 cup ground almonds
• 180g butter, softened
• 400g brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspons peppermint essence
  
  
• Dark chocolate ganache
• 400g dark chocolate
• 375ml cream
  

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line two 12-hole muffin trays with cupcake papers. (Makes 24)
2. Melt the chocolate and water together in a small saucepan or in a small jug in the microwave. Cool.
3. Sift the cocoa, flour and ground almonds together.
4. Beat the butter and sugar until light, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the peppermint essence.
5. Stir in the dry ingredients, then the cooled chocolate mix and blend until smooth.
6. Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake papers and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Cool cupcakes in the muffin trays for 5 minutes before removing the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

Decoration
Make dark chocolate ganache by melting the chocolate and cream together in the microwave on low power. Stir to combine and set aside to cool before use. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint essence and mix well. Pipe the ganache onto the cold cupcakes and decorate as desired.

Cupcake decorating Part 3

Tonight was the final session of my cupcake decorating course. Our focus tonight was mostly on creating intricate decorations, including making and using royal icing. This was entirely new to me; I love the taste of royal icing on weddings cakes (but not the cake itself, lol) but have never tried making it myself.

Our first exercise was similar to last week, where we learned how to pipe patterns using chocolate. This time, we had templates of butterflies to experiment with, but using royal icing instead, which has a different feel to piping with chocolate. (Actually, we first had to make more piping bags out of baking paper. I'm getting better, and fluked my first one tonight, but it's going to take a lot more practice to perfect this skill.) We learned how to pipe each side of a butterfly's wings then dusted them down with glitter. They need to dry overnight, then can be attached by piping a head and body.

We then had a go at working with gum paste in different ways, just like we did when we made roses in our first session. This included using miniature cutters to make different types of flowers, experimenting with shapes and 3D. I was working with yellow flower paste and we decorated vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. The daisies on the left cupcake were made by using little flower moulds and piping a tiny bit of royal icing onto the centre. The gerberas above it were made with a silicon mould, something I could do with more practice in. The flower on the right cupcake was made with a plastic press then left to set inside an egg container. It is sprinkled with a tiny bit of glitter; apparently glitter makes even the biggest mistakes look better!

So what next? I have bought Tamara's brand new book, Divine Cupcakes, which was released yesterday. It is full of the cupcake recipes she uses as well as guides and ideas for decorating them. I am going to have to take some time to decide what sort of decorating I'd like to do in the future then buy the specific tools I'll need, as many will need to be ordered from overseas and I can easily see my costs adding up. I have ideas for decorating cupcakes for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary celebration in June, but will need to start small before then and practise some of the techniques I have learnt. Oh, and my sister-in-law is really keen to glean everything she can from my course, so we need to practise together.

Cupcake decorating Part 2

Last night was Part 2 of my cupcake decorating course. Last week, we learned how to make basic recipes and piping buttercream frosting. This week, we built on what we'd already practised, but this time it was all in chocolate. Mmmmmmm.

Tamara's goals for us was to go away having made three cupcakes (which she'd pre-baked): two iced with chocolate buttercream frosting, so we could practise our technique from last week; they would also have piped chocolate decorations. The other one would be covered with chocolate plastercine and decorated with a formal rose. It turns out that I got to decorate six.


These two cupcakes were covered with chocolate plastercine, which is basically a mix of 55% chocolate and glucose syrup left to set overnight. It is warmed in your hands before being ready to mould. You can use miniature cutters, roll the plastercine into strips and craft it, or roll it out flat and use a large cookie cutter to create a solid icing piece for the top. The cupcake on the right is finished with a gold powder (edible fairy dust!). At $25 for a tiny bottle, we were encouraged to use it sparingly ... not sure if I'll be splashing out on this just yet.

The icing for these two cupcakes is chocolate buttercream frosting. The roses were made by rolling a long strip of chocolate plastercine around a central bud shape. The challenge was being able to complete the whole rose without the paste becoming too soft and greasy from the warmth of my hands. The white chocolate decorations were made by piping directly onto greaseproof paper; again, speed is of the essence when lifting them off the paper and arranging them on the cupcake before they melt in your hands.

And now for the decorations which stand up; I'm surprised how easy they are to make. They involve piping a closed shape on greaseproof paper, adding a small stick, leaving it in the fridge for a while, and voila - they just peel off and stay standing up by themselves! The chocolate daisies on the right cupcake were made by using a tiny cookie-type cutter. I just need to practise my technique for piping (and finishing) blobs; the white parts of my flower look a bit clumsy.

Cupcake decorating Part 1

I had a go at decorating fancy cupcakes for Halloween last year. Last night, I stepped my goal up a notch. I have started a cupcake design course, which runs for two hours every Tuesday night for three weeks. Tamara from tempt is our teacher; what a wonderful, creative, warm, energetic person she is. Enticed by the idea of learning how to bake and decorate fancy cupcakes like the ones in her window, the course quickly filled up and is now fully booked until the end of May.

We began with two basic recipes for making 36 cupcakes; one chocolate and one with a vanilla base. They taste every bit as good as they look. Tamara gave us lots of simple variations for each, eg add 1 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries to the vanilla mixture, or two grated orange zests to the chocolate mix for jaffa cupcakes, or a cup of chopped nuts to either mixture. There were lots of little tips and tricks along the way for making these simple cupcakes (a good beater makes life so much easier) and my notebook is already filling up with notes.

Then we got onto making buttercream frosting. We tried two flavours: a plain vanilla type (which can be coloured), and chocolate. We had a go at piping some basic frosting, and here is my first attempt in chocolate. (The person next to me coloured the vanilla icing pink - definitely not my choice!)

Tamara promised that we would go home having made a little rose like the one on her ad. [Gulp!] Using gum paste, she showed us how to hand-mould the bud, then each of the five petals into a rose shape, and voila! I also had a go at colouring my gum paste purple, naturally. With a bit of practice, these roses are fiddly but not all that tricky to make. Apparently they will last for months if they are kept away from moisture; I'm already thinking about making a whole pile for party favours for my parents' big wedding anniversary party in June, but that will depend on how much patience I have!

Apparently next week we are going to "throw around some chocolate" (mmmmm!!!) and make an even bigger mess. I can't wait!

A taste of the past

Today was my first day back at work for 2009. It certainly wasn't easy after a 2 1/2 week break! I have three weeks left until my contract expires and have no idea what the future holds for me after that. One of the (many) advantages of working from home that I will miss is the flexibility it offers; if I need to pop out for an appointment, I can easily do so and work earlier or later to make up for it. Today I made use of this advantage by refinancing my mortgages; heavy stuff for the start of a year. (All was fine - whew!) As for the (many) disadvantages ... that's another story.

Having my meeting in a part of town that I rarely get to these days meant that I could stop for a quick coffee in one of the most quaint settings. Smith the Grocer is gorgeous, and decorated to resemble and old-fashioned grocer's store. Everything at Smith the Grocer is about presentation; from the exceptional coffee with 'Smith' frosted on my cappuccino in chocolate, to old newspapers pasted on the walls, to the surrounding display cabinets. It's a wonderful place to 'step back in time' right in the middle of the city.

Nestled into a corner of Smith the Grocer is tempt, a tiny piece of cupcake paradise and another little step back in time. Having become recently fascinated by cupcakes, and having an initial try at baking and decorating cupcakes myself, I was keen to explore the goodies tempt offer. A friend tells me she visits tempt for inspiration and good ideas before having a go at recreating some of their designs for herself - and she succeeds!

I guess I imagined it to be a small shop filled with delights; of course I should have realised that it's not practical to having hundreds of fresh, exquisitely hand-decorated cupcakes at the ready 'just in case'. Instead, tempt have a display case and cashier who sells a few cupcakes from the display but also takes orders for future purchases. Here is the display that greeted us today:

I was given a cupcake kit for Christmas, complete with all the little frosting attachments I'll need. However, I think it will take a bit of practice before my creations end up looking like these.