Christmas Cupcakes

Seeing it is December 9 already, I thought it was about time I posted something Christmassy. I made these cupcakes last week for a client function. I made about 60 of them. The cupcake recipe came from the Crabapple bakery Cook Book and was spicy mocha cupcakes. I did scale down the amount of coffee in them – in fact I wondered if ¼ c of instant coffee powder was a mistake in the recipe? The cupcakes had a lovely density to them that you would associate with gingerbread. They were subtly spiced and also had melted chocolate in them. They kept well too – I made them in Sunday and they still tasted ok (although probably not at their best!) by Wednesday (the function was on Tuesday).

The icing I simply rolled fondant. This gives a lovely professional looking finish. Some people don’t like the taste of fondant, but rolled relatively thinly it’s not too sweet. I cut out fondant stars and Christmas trees using cutters, and sprinkled them with coloured sugar for the little cake toppers. I used lightly beaten eggwhite to adhere the sprinkles. Another way of decorating these cupcakes which would look quite cool would be to ice them with a simple white glace icing and then pop a red or green giant pebble on top.




Spiced Mocha Cupcakes (adapted from the Crabapple Bakery)

(one recipe made approx 36 cupcakes)

1 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 c boiling water
150g dark chocolate
200g butter
1 ½ c brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 c flour
2 tsp b powder
1 tsp b soda
2 tsp mixed spice
½ c sour cream

• Stir chocolate into hot coffee mixture and stir until smooth
• Cream butter and sugar
• Beat in eggs, one at a time
• Stir in coffee mixture and vanilla
• Stir in dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 200c for 15-18 minutes

TWD - Sables

This week’s TWD recipe is sables and was chosen by Barbara of Bungalow Barbara. These is my first Christmas themed baking for this year as well, although I did make my Christmas cake back in the end of October.

Sables are the French version of shortbread, the difference being that they are much more delicate and thin and contain egg yolks which enrich the dough. I cant remember whether I have made a true sable biscuit/cookie before, but I have tasted them in France. The recipe is very easy – if it was in my Nana’s recipe book it would say “make in the usual way” – ie cream butter and sugar, add egg yolks and then stir in flour. The dough is very soft, but time in the fridge makes the dough much more workable. You could roll this dough out and cut into shapes, but as it is very buttery, you might find that you lose the shape in the baking. I did what Dorie suggested – rolled the dough into logs, then rolled in Christmas coloured sugar, sliced and baked.

I only made a few of these cookies, freezing the rest of the dough for Christmas gifts. I loved the cookies – they are crisp and buttery and with the coloured sugar coating, look particularly festive. Dorie gives a number of variations and I want to try them all. Maybe everyone will be getting sables for Christmas from me this year!

See what the other TWDers thought here.

Cheat's Birthday Cake

I was in Christchurch in the weekend for my niece’s 6th birthday. Piper wanted me to make her birthday cake, but it was a pretty full on day the actual day of her birthday, as my dad and brother in law were cycling in an event, so I didn’t get the time to actually bake a cake. Instead I bought a sponge from the supermarket and some whipped cream. I tinted the cream pink, whipped it, sandwiched the sponge together and the slathered more cream over the sides. I then decorated it with icing flowers – I made the big pink flowers, but bought the little roses at the supermarket (you can get so many more decorating bits and pieces at the supermarket now days). The effect is great I think, for a $4 cake a bottle of cream!

My niece loves baking and so our present to her was a kids baking book, an assortment of cupcake cases, little icing flowers I had made, sprinkles and edible gel pens. She loved the present and I cant wait to see what she creates with her new cupcake decorating equipment.

TWD - Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart

I cant believe that it is a week since I have posted! It is definitely that time of year!!! Functions on every night lat week and being pregnant means that my evenings aren’t quite as full of baking as they used to be. Work is also exceptionally busy so I have been enjoying reading with my feet up rather than hours in the kitchen. Perhaps a sign of things to come?

But I did manage to make the TWD recipe this week which is Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart and was chosen by Lauren of I’ll Eat You. I almost didn’t make this tart. I have been told to slow down a bit and the three steps (three pages in the recipe book) and assembly of this tart almost defeated me. I ended up using some shortcrust pastry I had in the freezer ( a Dorie recipe but I am not sure which one!!), made a quarter of the pastry cream recipe and only poached one pear. I made two little tarts, one each for my husband and father in law is staying with us at the moment, helping with our landscaping.

The pastry cream for this tart was the star of the tart as far as I was concerned. It is made by grinding pistachio nuts with a little sugar and then warming the milk for the custard with the nut mixture in it. The pastry cream turns out a beautiful pistachio green colour (funnily enough!) and has that unique taste of pistachios. Dories says that you can strain out the nuts, but I wonder why you would want to do that, as in my view it is the fine pieces of nut that gives the tart it’s charm.

The pears are poached in a red wine syrup, cooled and then displayed on the tart. The garnish is toffeed pistachio nuts. This step did defeat me however, and I just chopped raw pistachio nuts for my garnish. The tarts were well received by my husband and his dad. I don’t think I would make this again though, mostly because I don’t like pears!



See if the other TWDers enjoyed the tart here.

TWD - All in One Holiday Bundt Cake

This week’s TWD is all in one holiday Bundt Cake and was chosen by Britin of the Nitty Britty. This cake is perfect for this time of year in the states – full of all the things that you associate with autumn and thanksgiving – pumpkin, cranberries, pecans and apples. Of course, we are heading into summer, not autumn here and we don’t celebrate thanksgiving, but this is the most delicious cake for any time of the year.

The recipe is easy to put together. The only more time intensive bit is that we don’t have canned mashed pumpkin here, so I cooked some pumpkin and mashed it. When I do this I do it in the microwave and don’t add any liquid, as that makes the pumpkin go watery. It is best to steam it. Also, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, fresh or even frozen cranberries are very rare here, so I used dried cranberries instead. I also only had a 70g packet of pecans which is about 2/3 of a cup instead of the cup stipulated in the recipe, but that was fine.

This was my second time using my bundt pan. Last time was to make Dorie’s banana bundt. This time I didn’t have such great success getting the cake out of the tin – I don’t think I left it for quite long enough before trying to remove it. But it was still mostly in one piece. I made the maple syrup glaze for the cake, but I think I watered it down too much and the glaze kind of ran off the cake. It still tasted pretty good.

I would definitely make this cake again. See what the other TWDers thought here.

Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago I made these cupcakes and I was so delighted with how they turned out. I really need to get back into the cupcake making thing again as they are so much fun. I also need to start thinking about Christmas treats. Now that I am nearly 30 weeks pregnant the time I used to spend baking in the evenings is now spent lying on the sofa watching Sex and the City – I have never seen this before, but started watching re-runs on Sky and am now addicted!! I need to start baking again in time for the Christmas baking extravaganza!

These cupcakes are the same lemon cupcakes I made for my baby shower. Even though they look completely different, the flavours are virtually the same. The pink ones were baked in pink paper cases, and I actually popped a raspberry in each cake before it was baked for lemon and raspberry cakes. I then tinted cream cheese icing pink, swirled it on top and topped with edible glitter and a white chocolate heart which I had used a chocolate transfer on. It was the first time I had used edible glitter and I probably used a bit too much, but they still looked cute.

The other cupcakes I left the cream cheese icing uncoloured and then topped them with a red icing flower which I made. The cases are red, so all colour co-ordinated. Not as great looking as the pink ones but still cute and effective. The thing with cupcakes is that it’s almost all in the look rather than the taste.

Cheese Scones

Recently I bought a new recipe book which is a breast cancer research fundraiser, but is full of the favourite baking recipes of well known NZ cooks. It is a lovely book and has some great recipes. I decided on Sunday to make the cheese scone recipe for lunch. I absolutely love cheese scones, but I have never really been a great scone maker.

This scone recipe is not your usual in that it contains an egg. In some ways this made the scones a little more like cheese puffs than cheese scones as they were very light. They also had buttermilk in them. When we came back from three months travelling round Europe five years ago, I always had buttermilk in the fridge, as our trip had included time bike touring round Ireland and I became addicted to Irish soda bread. The Irish soda bread recipe I was given by the owner of the B & B we stayed in in Tralee, included buttermilk – hence having it in the fridge. These days I don’t make as much bread and when a recipe calls for buttermilk I often add a tablespoon of white vinegar to a cup of milk and let it sour. This is what I did on Sunday.

I made two thirds of the following recipe (using just the egg yolk rather than the whole egg) and it made 6 large cheese scones. They were delicious both hot from the oven and even once cooled later on in the day. They all got eaten before I could see whether they would have survived until the next day, although I think scones are always better on the day made and preferably hot from the oven.



Cheese Scones (adapted from a Treasury of NZ Baking)

3 c self raising flour
½ tsp mustard powder
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
25g butter
100g grated tasty cheese
1 1/2c buttermilk (or sour your own milk by using my method above)
1 egg

• Combine flour, mustard powder and cayenne pepper
• Grate in butter and rub with fingers, stir in cheese
• Combine milk and egg
• Pour milk into a well in the middle of the flour and then us a knife to bring the dough together
• Pat out on a well floured bench and cut into scones. Sprinkle tops with a little more grated cheese
• Bake at 220c fanbake for 12 minutes