Jaffa Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago we met some friends for afternoon tea at Cornwall Park. I made these jaffa cupcakes to take. It’s quite a long story as to how I decided to make jaffa cupcakes, but here goes……

A few weeks ago I decided to make fudge for some gifts. I wanted to use a recipe from a Jo Seagar cook book which involved melting marshmallows, adding melted chocolate and other things. Instead of going to the supermarket, I stopped at the service station on the way home to buy the marshmallows. There I spotted a bag of orange flavoured M & Ms which cutely only have white or orange candy coatings. I thought they would be good add ins to the fudge to make it look a bit more decorative.

Well, the fudge was a disaster! I melted the marshmallows and butter in the microwave for he advised amount of time, but it must have been a bit long and overheated the marshmallow mixture, as when I added the chocolate the whole things seized. Well, I was determined that roughly $10 worth of ingredients wasn’t going into the bin, so I beat the fudge like crazy until it sort of came together. I didn’t want to waste my m & ms by putting them into sub-standard fudge (which actually ended up tasting ok in the end anyway) so I saved them for another day.

So, when I was deciding what cupcakes to make to our picnic afternoon tea, I thought I would use the orange and white m & ms to decorate them with. I had some lovely Kerikeri oranges in the fruit bowl after our trip to the bay of islands and thought Jaffa Cupcakes would be perfect. However, in the end I decided not to decorate them with the orange M & Ms after all – they are still stashed in my pantry. Instead I topped the cakes with whipped cream (I still reckon this is the best cupcake topping as it pipes like a dream and I don’t find it too sweet) and sprinkled them with orange coloured sugar. Simple but delicious.



Jaffa Cupcakes

100g butter
2/3 c sugar
2 large eggs
3 tbsp cocoa dissolved in 3 tbsp hot water
Zest of one orange
3 tsbp freshly squeezed orange juice
2/3 c self raising flour

• Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs, one at a time
• Beat in cocoa dissolved in water and orange zest
• Fold in remaining ingredients
• Spoon into cupcake cases ( I got 11 cupcakes) and bake at 180c for 17-20 minutes
• When cold top with chocolate icing made with orange juice instead of water or whipped cream

Decorating Brownie

Last week when my sister was up we went to the Wilton brownie decorating course. This is apparently the latest Wilton thing. I hadn’t really thought about decorating brownie before, but of course, the same techniques can be used on any slab cake cut into shapes or just on cupcakes. I enjoyed it for two reasons – it was something fun to do with my sister and secondly it was actually quite good to do a bit of a refresher course on the basic icing skills I learnt in course 1.



Now that daylight savings has arrived and the days are getting longer and slightly warmer we are starting to have a few more salad type meals – and of course asparagus! This salad is one that we had last week. I pan fried lamb leg steaks, sliced them and then combined with baby spinach leaves, sliced roasted red peppers, roast red onions and roasted chunks of kumara. I drizzled the lot with balsamic drizzle. Tasty and pretty at the same time.

I also want to mention that you may or may not have noticed that I didn’t post a daring bakers challenge this week. Life has become even busier lately and I have made the decision that the only blog challenge I will continue to participate in is TWD – lately I have been making my Daring Baker challenges in a real rush and not giving them the time they deserve, so I have decided to retire my DB apron strings – at least for the next little while!

TWD - Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart

This week’s TWD recipe is Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart and was chosen by Carla of Chocolate Moussey. When I got to choose the TWD recipe nearly a year ago this would have been my second pick – a crisp tart shell filled with caramel and peanuts and topped with chocolate ganache. I scaled the recipe back to make only two small tarts.

Dorie’s shortcrust pastry is very easy to make and tastes delicious (almost as good raw as baked!). I rolled out enough to line my two little tart tins and then froze the rest for another day. The caramel layer was made by melting sugar in a pan, then adding a little corn syrup (known as liquid glucose here), then butter and then cream. I was a bit nervous about melting the sugar from scratch, so I did add little water to get it going. My caramel actually turned out pretty perfectly – it was the same dark toffee colour of the photo in the book. But I think next time I wouldn’t take the caramel quite as dark, to get a lighter flavour rather than a dark, smoky toffee flavour.

Once cooled a little, honey roasted peanuts are added to the caramel. I loved the effect of this which is interesting given that I don’t like things such as snickers bars. I did like the way though that the nuts gave a slightly salty taste to the caramel. I think that salted caramel flavour is one of the most wonderful things. The topping on the tart is a thick layer of ganache. I used 70% cocoa chocolate and once again, I think next time I would use a lighter chocolate – maybe 60% as the whole effect was quite rich.



My sister was up for the weekend and we kind of looked at each other thinking hmmm, this is going to be very rich. But we stood up to the challenge and the tart was wonderful – one of those things that you think you are not going to be able to eat very much of as it is just so rich, but you keep going back for another bite as it is just too good!!!

See if the other TWDers loved this tart here.

Cornflake Crunchies

I mentioned a couple of week’s ago that I had had a look through some of my Nana’s old recipe books. Last weekend I made these cookies from one of Nana’s books. They were called caramel biscuits in the book, but I am not sure that the title gives a very apt description of what they actually are.



The cookies are what I would call a good tin filler – they are delicious every day cookies, easy to make and the recipe yield is quite high. They are plain biscuits made more interesting with the addition of coconut and cornflakes. I also added cinnamon chips. Cinnamon chips aren’t available in New Zealand, but my lovely friend, Morven, bought me some on her recent trip to the States. Cinnamon chips have an interesting flavour – more of the kind of flavour you get from one of those cinnamon flavoured chewing gums rather than a spicy cinnamon flavour. They did go really well in these cookies though. You could substitute chocolate chips or even dried cranberries, raisins, sultanas etc for the cinnamon chips, or leave them plain as in the original recipe. The cookies will appeal if you like a crunchy cookie. I think I would re-name them cornflake crunchies.

Cornflake Crunchies

120g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tbsp condensed milk’
1 egg yolk
½ tsp vanilla
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ c coconut
1 c cornflakes
½ c cinnamon chips, chocolate chips or dried fruit of your choice (optional)

- cream butter and sugar
- Beat in condensed milk, then egg yolk and vanilla
- mix in remaining dry ingredients
- roll small balls of mixture into balls, place on tray and flatten with a wet fork
- Bake at 175c for 15 minutes or until golden

Wilton Course 4

My blog has been rather neglected of late and I must apologise for a rather short post. Hopefully next week will be better! This is the final cake I made for the fondant and gum paste Wilton course. To be honest it doesn’t really display any of the “skills” we learnt in the course, mainly because I didn’t like many of the effects we were taught – I prefer a simpler style.



I did like the contrast between the pale pink icing and dark chocolate cake for this cake. The wee flowers are dogwood rose shapes which give quite a contemporary look.

Fingers crossed for more blogging next week – I have been baking, just not blogging!

TWD - Cottage Cheese Pufflets

This week’s TWD recipe is Cottage Cheese Pufflets chosen by Jacque of daisy Lane Cakes (you have to check out Jacque’s blog – it’s one of my favourites!). This was an interesting recipe – one I probably would have by-passed if I wasn’t baking with the group. It sounds very interesting and it is. Interestingly it is in the cookie section of the book – the name of the recipe to me indicates little muffin like cheese puffs, but these are in fact cookie type creations.

I only made a quarter of the recipe as I had done some other baking over the weekend and Dorie (quite rightly) advised that the pufflets are best eaten on the day of baking. The cookies are little squares of pastry made with butter, a little sugar, cottage cheese and flour. The dough is a very soft one and you have to chill it well before rolling out. I ended up making little square puffs rather than triangle and being the impatient person that I am, I didn’t roll the dough out as thinly as was recommended. Each little pufflet has a small dollop of jam in the centre (I used raspberry jam).

I liked these better than I thought I would. Although, I think they were at their best when they were still warm from the oven. I actually the pastry of these would be nice made with something savoury inside – like some pesto and prosciutto. I don’t think I would make them again as a sweet something though.

See what the other TWDers though of the pufflets here.

Something Different

I usually have porridge for breakfast – summer and winter. I love it and it is my favourite meal of the day. Lately it has left me filling a bit full and icky, so I decided that I would make some muesli in the weekend to give my body a bit of a change.

I am one of those unusual creatures who doesn’t like dried fruit. So shop bought muesli doesn’t really do it for me. If I am out and I have cereal I have to pick out all the sultanas and raisins – even one sultana will ruin my breakfast. So, the muesli I make for myself is pretty plain. Often I do put sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or linseeds in it, but I kept this version pretty low key.

The muesli was simply made by mixing together rolled oats, whole almonds, about 50g melted butter, 1/3 c brown sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon. I spread the combined mixture on a baking tray and baked at 160c for 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it as the sugar can burn and then it is ruined. Once the muesli had cooled I mixed it with all bran for some extra fibre. It was perfect with mixed berry yoghurt and milk for breakfast this morning.