Lime Cupcakes

I was asked to create some sample cupcakes this weekend, one of the flavours was lime, so I set about thinking what the best way to put this in was. I decided to try a few different methods and leave it to the couple to decide which their favourite was. 

For all the cupcakes I made a lime basic cupcake:

300g Butter

300g Caster Sugar

300g Self raising flour

6 Eggs

I baked these at 180oC for around 30 minutes and then left to cool. 

Cooling cupcakes

While they were cooling I made a lemon and lime curd for the centre of the cakes. 

Zest and Juice of 2 limes

Zest and Juice of 3 lemons

250g Caster Sugar

125g Butter

4 Eggs

Combine the zest, juice, sugar and butter in a bowl over gently simmering water. Stir until the sugar and butter have melted. 

Lightly whisk the eggs and then add to the mixture. Continue stirring until the mixture has started to thicken and is coating the back of the spoon. Set aside and leave to cool, as it cools it'll thicken even further. 

Lemon and lime curd

I cut the tops of the cupcakes off, so they were level, and a small disc in the centre. I filled this with some of the curd. 

The topping is where the cakes differed. I decided to try two varieties of meringue and one with butter cream. 

Firstly I made a soft merringue. I combined 1 egg white with 50g Caster Sugar in a bowl over simmering water. I whisked this until the sugar had dissolved. Took it off the heat and whisked until the mixture was forming soft peaks. This was then piped onto the prepared cupcakes. 

Secondly I made a baked meringue topping. 1 egg white was combined with 50g Caster sugar and whisked until forming soft peaks. This was piped onto the cakes and then placed under a hot grill until the top was golden. 

Finally I made Italian meringue buttercream and stirred in some lime curd, from above. I piped this onto the cakes. 

Baked and soft meringue lime cupcakes

I used little coloured sugar paste shapes to distinguish between the cakes and have sent them off to Wales for the testing. The verdict from this kitchen is the baked meringue is the favourite but we shall see which they prefer. 

Coconut and Pineapple Cupcakes

I wanted to make some cupcakes but I wanted them to be a little different. I first had the idea of making lemon meringue but then I thought maybe more variety would be better so I had a look through my books. I settled on coconut and pineapple cupcakes found in the Hummingbird bakery cookbook p33. 

The pineapple element of these comes in the form of tinned rings cut into cubes. I got my mum to do that bit, she cut them into small chunks and then placed a small amount in each of the cases. We used paper cases, that were a kind present, which are slightly smaller than cupcake cases but we thought looked pretty and made them more bitesize. 

To make the batter I mixed together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in the mixer until everything is combined. 

I mixed in coconut milk and vanilla extract until the mixture was light and fluffy. This was then spooned into each of the cases so they were 2/3 full. These were then baked in the oven until the cupcakes were golden and sprang back when touched. These were left to cool. 

Cakes cooling.

Once cool we made the coconut frosting. To do this I combined butter (real butter for once!) and icing sugar together, this was supposed to be until they had started to combine but I found that the mixture was too dry and this wasn't happening. The next step is to add coconut milk, so I added this to the mixture despite it not being combined. This instantly brought the mixture together making it icing, I had to add more than the recipe stated in order to make the butter icing soft enough to pipe. 

All iced.

Frosting sprinkled with coconut

I piped the icing onto the cooled cakes, as I was pipping and not spooning I ran out of frosting and found I needed to make another batch, so I used double the amount the recipe stated. Mum then scatter desiccated coconut on the top of these cakes to finish them off. 

I borrowed mum's cupcake stand to serve these on: 

Cupcakes ready to be eaten. 

Verdict: I gave these cupcakes 6/10, I thought that the flavours were too subtle and I couldn't really taste coconut. I got the texture from the desiccated coconut but no flavour. I also found the pineapple a little weak despite having quite a lot in each case. Gary didn't taste these, as he doesn't like coconut. However, my young niece loved these and eat several through the course of the afternoon yesterday telling me how good they were. 

Mincemeat Buns P.465

When my mum came to visit me today she had a lovely present for me, a jar of mincemeat. I love mincemeat so when I saw this recipe I thought it sounded delicious but we couldn't find any mincemeat in the shops. So was delighted by this surprise present. 

This is a very easy recipe, I didn't have any currants so these were omitted today. It's an all in one recipe, so combined in the bowl I placed mincemeat, eggs, sugar, margarine and self raising flour. This was all combined with the whisk and then placed in the cupcake cases. 

Cupcakes in the oven

These were then placed in the oven and cooked for around 30 minutes until the cakes were golden brown and springing back to the touch. These were left to cool and then we sampled them. 

Out of the oven and cooling

Inside of the cupcake, could do with a little more fruit. 

As my mum provided the key ingredient this time I have used her opinion for today's verdict. I thought this cake was delicious, the flavour of the mincemeat was strong enough to be tasted throughout the cake, and I didn't find these cakes too sweet. My mum says that the cupcakes are very nice but a crunchy topping of maybe some demerara sugar. My mum gave the score of 9/10 and I also agree with this mark of 9/10. I felt that the cake would have been even better if I'd followed the recipe and put in some currants for a bit of extra fruit. 

This recipe was so good that I'm going to attempt to make it again with these small changes, I will keep you posted on how this goes. 

Rose Swirl Cupcakes

Today I decided to try out the rose swirl on the top of cupcakes. I made 2 flavours of cupcakes... Chocolate and a slightly spicy ginger one. (made that up!!) and then 2 colours of icing to top them.

Cupcakes are baked and ready for decorating

To make the icing I used real unsalted butter and beat it until soft then added icing sugar and beat and beat till the whole lot had softened up. I didn't add any milk to this as by the time I'd finished beating it seemed soft enough.

I split the mixture into 2 and coloured one half pink and the other ivory. The plan was to make the roses in the pink and try something else in the ivory, however, it didn't quite work like that. I followed a tutorial I have signed up for online and carefully copied what they did. Unfortunately, my guess at which nozzle to use turned out to be wrong and so the first batch were very tight and so didn't have the right effect. However, I think they still look pretty.

The pink batch with a tight nozzle

Still looking pretty but not the effect I was going for

After another look at the video, I realised that maybe I needed a larger nozzle so I found one that matched more closely. After a few attempts I think I sucessfully pulled this off and was really pleased with one in particular. I decided to try and colour the edges with pink to emphase the effect even more.

Ivory batch

With the star rose shape

 The star cupcake can be seen below from a few angles:

Trimmed with pink

Different view

Another view

 

Overall I'm really pleased with that cake but it's not great odds, 1 out of 24 cakes. I'm going to have to practice some more but at least I've learnt what I'm doing wrong. Whip the icing for much longer and use a larger nozzle!!

On the Farm Cupcakes

Today I decided to attempt some decorating of cupcakes, I found this idea from a website that I've recently subscribed to "Mrs Bakers Cakes" which does online cookery courses and tutorials. Today I tried the on the farm tutorial which described how to make some animal cupcakes. 

Down on the farm.. with the sheep and cows

My husband made some cakes for me whilst I was out at work and allowed them to cool. I then made some butter icing (real butter) and spread that over the top. 

I then coloured some ready made icing in pink and rolled out the white. I cut a large circle out of the white and placed this over the cupcake, then I cut out the same size circle in the pink. Cut this using the same cutter about a third of the way through and this piece is placed on top. 

Using black icing I draw some eyes on the face and used a cocktail stick to make the shaping of the mouth. Using black icing I cut out small circles and made the ears for the cow and then white circles for the sheep. Stuck it all together. 

Zoomed in on the sheep

With the remaining butter icing I practiced my piping skills and piped onto the spare cupcakes. This is coloured slightly purple but I used a silver sparkle spray on top. I can't really see a difference though. 

Piped cakes

Piped cakes

Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes

I decided to make some cupcakes this week and found this recipe from the Cupcake Heaven magazine that I purchased earlier in the week. I thought that this was a classic combination and would be a different idea.

The recipe can be found in the magazine but the basic sponge was made adding yoghurt and rhubarb to the classic sponge cake ingredients. It used only 1 egg to 150g of flour. The sponge recipe was baked in the oven for around 30mins and then left to cool.

Sponges are cooling after coming out the oven

Whilst the cakes were cooling the theory is to make some custard, however, I had a little disaster with mine as I wasn't watching it properly and it boiled over and burnt everywhere. So I popped into the local supermarket and bought a tin instead.

Once the cakes are cool then I cut out a small square from the top and piped in the custard.

A small square was cut out and filled with custard

Custard filled sponges

Next step was to make the frosting for the cakes, after much research and previous problems, I decided to use unsalted butter this time to try and make it thicker, and what a difference. The icing tastes great but is also MUCH thicker, in fact so thick that when I first tried to pipe it the bag split and I needed to add some milk to thin it out a little. I didn't make enough icing to cover the cakes but I did the best job I could with the small amount. The piping worked much better with the thicker icing and held it's shape beautifully. I know that in order to get proper piping swirls I'm going to have to continue using butter. 

I piped a small swirl on each cake and then it was time to make the rhubarb compote. This was so easy. Slice up the rhubarb and then add some sugar, bring it to the boil then cover and leave it to boil for a few more minutes. The rhubarb softens up very quickly and disintegrates to form a lovely topping. Final touch was to allow this to cool and then top the cakes. 

Swirls of various sizes on the top of the cakes. The shape was holding beautifully

A zoomed picture of one of the swirls

Once done it was time for the tasting. Oh they're good. The sharpness of the rhubarb is perfectly complimented with the icing and custard. You can taste each part and they go beautifully together. Very very nice cakes.

My husbands comments are "mmmmmmmm..... " and that he doesn't know what else to say, they're very nice. 

The finished cakes

Zoomed in for a closer look. Fantastic

So for our marks.. I give the cake 10/10, I can't think of any way this can be improved and it's different from standard cupcakes that I've tried. I could happily eat plenty more and the sharpness makes them not too sweet. From my husband.. 9/10 (very high score!!) he says to make that a 10 maybe they should be muffin size so that when adding the custard I wouldn't have to cut it out through to the bottom but could leave some sponge underneath. To be fair to the recipe it does say to make 12 muffins and I made 24 cupcakes so basically that makes the recipe perfect!!

So total for these cupcakes 19/20.. fantastic score!

What is this blog about?

Hello all,

My first post should really be to explain something about me and why this blog exists... 

I'm a 26 year old recently married women who currently spends her time teaching people to drive. Recently me and my husband have been watching more cooking programs on the television, like the Great British Bake Off and Masterchef and have been inspired. I recently purchased Jo Wheatley's "A Passion for Baking" book for my husband and have been looking at her blog and this has further inspired me. I would like to be able to make birthday cakes for our children (explains the mini Manley), or celebration cakes for family and friends. I want to learn how to decorate and style so that food will not only taste good but also look good. 

So the idea was born... I'm going to learn how to decorate using piping bags, glitter and cutters. I'm also going to bake, like never before, by following recipe books and working my way through them. I won't do every recipe in the books as we probably won't like them but I think I should do most of them and the plan is to do one a week but we'll see how this goes. I'll log all my efforts on this blog and try and post plenty of detail, please feel free to comment and ask questions which I'd be happy to answer. 

To start with I want to take baby steps as this is a bit of a new thing for me. I've had to order piping gear and will post my first experimentation with that. 

The recipe book that I will firstly be working my way through will of course be Jo Wheatley's "A Passion for Baking" since she's the one to inspire me I think it should be her book I start with. Now for where to start, do I start from the beginning of the book and work through? or should I pick out my favourite recipes? We've decided to do things completely at random so I don't spend ages trawling through the book trying to decide. My husband is going to write down all the recipes and put them in a hat, each week I'll pick out the recipe for that week and work on that. This week he picked page 82 at random... "Mini Banoffee Pies".. this is something I saw in the book and loved the look of so quite pleased to have this as my starting point. 

Bring on the baking... 

Here's a picture of me and my husband with our wedding cake which was home made by me, him, my mum and Lorraine, and His mum and sister. Decorated by his mum.