Ellie's second birthday party

In the weekend it was my friend, Jenny’s, daughter, Ellie’s second birthday. I was very excited to be asked to join in the celebrations. Ellie loved the icing flowers I made at my last cake decorating class and so as my contribution to the birthday spread I made these cute little miniature cupcakes – pink of course, because what else for a two year old girl! I used another crabapple bakery recipe for the cupcakes – they had only egg whites in them instead of whole eggs which gave them a lovely light flavour. I also added a dash of violet syrup which you couldn’t really taste. I added the violet syrup into the cream cheese icing as well –once again you couldn’t tell it was there, but it just added a hint of something.



I also made these # 2 biscuits, using my shortbread recipe that I use when I am decorating as it has a firmer texture than my other shortbread recipe (250g butter, 1 c icing sugar, 1 c cornflour and 2 c flour). They look cute with the little pink sprinkles.


A photo of the birthday girl about to blow our her candles

Over the weekend the latest Taste magazine arrived. There was a recipe for pommes Anna which I tried out on Saturday night. This is basically thinly sliced potato (I used agria which I love for when a floury potato is required) layered with butter and cooked on the stove top until cooked and crunchy. We had it with hot smoked salmon, baby spinach salad and vanilla sauce – essentially a mayonnaise flavoured with vanilla bean seeds, as demonstrated by Jason Dell at Savour NZ. The vanilla sauce sounds unusual but was perfect with the smoked salmon.

TWD - French Chocolate Brownie

The TWD recipe for this week was chosen by Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook and is French chocolate brownies. The recipe called for flambéed raisins to be included in the mixture. I don’t like raisins and so completely left them out. I thought about adding craisins, but they just didn’t seem to go with brownie. Dorie seems to use a lot of raisins in her recipes – I tend to leave them out.

These brownies used all chocolate – the recipes I tend to use for Brownie have cocoa as well as chocolate. They had a nice dense texture but probably weren’t as gooey as I like brownie to be. Actually, Dorie says in her preamble to the recipe that the recipe was meant to be a cake, but the group of French chefs she baked it for thought it was brownie. I think it is more cake like than brownie. One of my taste testers said he thought it was creamy in the middle – maybe that was what Dorie was originally intending?



Judging this brownie as brownie I would give it probably a 6.5 out of 10, but thinking of it simply as a nice chocolate cake/slice I think I would give it 7.5.

See what the other TWDers thought here.

May Cupcake Hero - Cocoa

The theme for cupcake hero for May is cocoa. I found this quite a tricky challenge as I wanted to make something in which cocoa was the necessary ingredient, not just chocolate. For a long time now I have wanted to make a filled cupcake and when I was thinking of cocoa, I thought of chocolate self saucing pudding – one of my childhood puddings that Mum used to make on a regular basis, where the star is cocoa. Cocoa is a necessary ingredient of the self saucing part – you cant substitute chocolate. So, my cupcakes for this month are chocolate self saucing pudding cupcakes.

I decided to make a plain vanilla cake as the basis for the cupcake, then scooped out the centre and filled with cold chocolate self saucing pudding. I wanted there to be a contrast between the pudding and the cake and I didn’t think I would get that by having a chocolate cake as well. The topping is simply, whipped cream and then a sprinkle of dutched cocoa powder.



I only made a half recipe of chocolate self saucing and I made it in the microwave. Five minutes on high and you get a pretty simple pudding made. I do prefer the crustiness you get when you cook it in the oven but for using it as a cupcake filling, the microwave was fine.



I used dutched cocoa to make the pudding. Dutching cocoa is a process which I think makes the cocoa more alkaline (don’t quote me on this!). The cocoa has a much stronger and chocolatey flavour. I use it where I want to add depth to whatever I am making. I use equagold (an NZ company) dutched cocoa.

I used the crabapple bakery vanilla cupcake recipe, adding vanilla paste to get those little flecks of vanilla bean that I love. These cupcakes are great. They are definitely like eating pudding for morning tea. If you don’t want to make the cupcakes, just make the pudding. If I am making it by itself, I add chocolate chunks and cook it in the oven for a nicer texture. These cupcakes are really yummy - especially with the whipped cream on top!



Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding Cupcakes

First of all make the pudding and leave it in the fridge over night

½ c flour
1 tbsp dutched cocoa
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
¼ c milk
1 tbsp melted butter
dash of vanilla essence

· Stir dry ingredients together, then stir in milk, butter and vanilla
· Pour into a microwave proof dish
· Mix together1/2 c brown sugar and 1 tbsp dutched coca and sprinkle over batter
· Pour over 1 ¼ c boiling water
· Microwave on full power for 5 minutes

Make vanilla cupcakes – I used this recipe, using vanilla instead of rose water. Once cold, scoop out the centre and fill with pudding. Top with whipped cream and a dusting of cocoa powder.

Cupcake Fun

In the weekend we went to Christchurch to visit my family. On Saturday night when my husband and Dad went to the rugby, Mum and I looked after my nephew and niece, Griffyn and Piper who are 6 and 4 and too adorable for words. We decided to make cupcakes and decorate them. Cupcakes are a great thing for kids to make. Griffyn and Piper loved measuring the ingredients and putting them in the bowl and mixing, and really loved the decorating at the end. Licking the bowl was another highlight!



I used the basic one egg chocolate cake recipe from the Edmonds cook book. It is a good one for every day cupcakes as it has little butter and only one egg so is very economical. We iced them with cream cheese icing which we tinted blue. The kids each had a wee bowl of pebbles and other small lollies and some hundreds and thousands and decorated their own cakes. They loved it!



The photos I took of the kids were pretty hopeless so here is a really lovely one of them that my sister took.



Last night for dinner we had fish which I roasted in the oven after brushing it with a paste I made with crushed garlic, olive oil and paprika. I served it with a really simple orzo salad which was orzo mixed through with baby spinach leaves, feta, some olive oil and lemon juice. Really simple but really yummy.

Just one more thing – I have written another article for the Foodlovers website on making old fashioned puddings more styley – you can see it here.

One Egg Chocolate Cake (Edmonds Book)

50g butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 egg
½ c sugar
1 tbsp cocoa
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
few drops of vanilla
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in ¾ c milk

· Melt together butter and golden syrup. Beat in egg and then sugar
· Add remaining ingredients
· Spoon into cupcake cases (or into a lined 20 cm cake tin)
Bake cupcakes for about 20 minutes at 170 c

Daring Bakers May Challenge - L'Opera Cake

The Daring Baker challenge for May encompasses all the things I love about being a Daring Baker – it challenged me to make something I would probably not have tried, but for the challenge. This month it was L’Opera cake. Now, the cake you see in the photos probably doesn’t look all that complex, and to be honest, the individual components are not that hard, but put them all together and the Opera cake is quite a feat.



An opera cake consists of five components – a sponge cake made from ground nuts rather than flour, a sugar syrup which is used to moisten the sponge, a buttercream to sandwich the first two layers of cake together, a chocolate mousse and finally a glaze to top the cake. The main DB rule was that the cake had to be a light coloured cake. I based my cake around some little icing flowers I had made a few weeks ago that are a pretty pale pink colour, making my cake rose flavoured.



I didn’t have anything special to make the cake for, so decided to make only a third of the mixture. It made a nice loaf sized cake. The sponge was fairly easy – a nice light almond sponge which was then moistened with sugar syrup to which I added some rose water. The butter cream was made using egg and a sugar syrup. I think it was the best butter cream I have made – it was lovely and thick and creamy rather than buttery. I tinted the butter cream pale pink and also flavoured it with rosewater.



The mousse was made by folding melted white chocolate into beaten cream. This gave an almost ganache like mousse. I also tinted this pale cream. The glaze was actually a bit thicker than I thought it would be. It was ganache like as well. I went a bit crazy on the food colouring in the first attempt, so I re-made it. It still turned out a bit darker than I would have liked. I think I would also add a bit more cream to the glaze to make it a bit thinner.



The verdict? This cake was delicious. I took it into work and it was a hit – at least with the women. I heard through the grapevine that my business partner thought it tasted like hand cream! At least he got that it was rose flavoured! This is a real special occasion cake. I would make it again and would be interested to try different flavours – I think a chocolate one would be particularly nice. I really enjoyed making this cake and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make it look as good as I could. Thanks again to the Daring Bakers for another fun challenge! You can see the other DBs’ Opera cakes here.

TWD - Pecan and Honey Sticky Buns

This week’s TWD is honey and pecan sticky buns chosen by Madam Chow of Madam Chow’s Kitchen. We were in Christchurch over the weekend visiting my family, so I made them down there for lunch on Sunday. It is quite interesting cooking in someone else’s kitchen. Mum hasn’t got the huge array of baking dishes that I have, but I managed to improvise using a pottery dish that she usually makes quiche in. Also, Mum’s kenwood cake mixer was her mother’s so it must be almost 40 years old. Even on low speed it seemed to be going awfully fast!



The buns were another variation using brioche dough. Once again I ignored Dorie’s instructions to make a full batch of the brioche dough and I halved the recipe. The dough was made on Saturday night, left to prove in the fridge overnight, then filled with cinnamon and sugar (I used mixed spice because I couldn’t find cinnamon in Mum’s pantry), rolled into scrolls and then put in a baking dish into which you have already put a mixture or honey, butter, brown sugar and pecans.



The buns are delicious. The honey mixture turns into toffee as it cools – the optimum time for eating them is while they are still warm but not so hot that the honey mixture burns your mouth. They are a breakfast / lunch item but Mum actually ate one cold with runny cream on it. I guess that would be a bit like bread and butter pudding?



I really liked this recipe. I love pecans and I love sticky buns, so it was a great combination. I would definitely make these again! You can see the other TWDers’ buns here :0)

Mocha Macaroons

Last week I made these macaroons for another staff members birthday. It was only the second time that I have made these French style macaroons. The first time I made them I was really disappointed with them – I am not sure what I did wrong, but they didn’t set up like they should have and were disappointingly flat. So, I actually wasn’t going to try making macaroons again. But, I see so many beautiful looking macaroons on Tartlette’s blog, so I decided to have another go.



I used a Donna Hay recipe for mocha macaroons. The actual macaroon part is a plain almond macaroon, but the filling is espresso powder and white chocolate. They are dusted with dutched cocoa. I didn’t want to make heaps of them, so I just made a third of the recipe. This worked quite successfully even though I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t get enough volume with just one egg white.

I was really pleased with these. The macaroons were crispy on the outside and chewy inside and I think they look like they should as well. I will definitely be trying other variations on the macaroon theme again.