Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

In the weekend we had friends over for lunch. I made these little chocolate cherry cupcakes for our dessert. Lunch was pot luck – a good way of doing things when you have a baby and limited time. I bought some bread, made a big green salad and a chicken filo pie and our friends bought lasagne and a paella, both of which were delicious. The recipe for the cakes is one I adapted from a Julie Le Clerc recipe for a chocolate cherry bundt cake. I didn’t have morello cherries like the recipe called for and also didn’t have all the ground almonds that the recipe required, so I reduced the ground almond in take and upped the four, and used the cherries I had in the pantry.

You could make these cakes with frozen raspberries rather than the cherries and you could add chunks of chocolate, white or dark. The cherries actually mashed up a bit when I folded them through, which kind of gives my cakes more of a cherry swirl look – you could swirl good quality cherry jam through to get a similar effect. I decorated the tops of the cakes with simply whipped cream with a little vanilla bean paste added and sprinkled pink sprinkles on top and added an icing flower. So simple, but so effective!



Chocolate and Cherry Cupcakes (adapted from Julie Le Clerc)

125g butter
¾ c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
3/4c ground almonds
½ c sour cream
1c self raising flour
1/2c flour
¼ c cocoa
1 can cherries, drained

• Cream butter and sugar and then add in vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time
• Stir in almonds and sour cream, then remaining dry ingredients, lastly folding through the cherries
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 180c for 20-25 minutes
• Once cold top with whipped cream and decorate

Coconut Cupcakes

Our next door neighbours have just had a baby girl and what better way to celebrate than with some little pink cupcakes. I haven’t made that many cupcakes since harry was born – cookies seem to be the easiest thing to make with limited time. I did actually make some cupcakes for the time I hosted coffee group at my house, but I had to leave them un-iced, as I completely ran out of time to decorate them!

These cupcakes are coconut cupcakes. The recipe is scaled down to make 12 miniature sized cupcakes. I have iced them simply with a glace icing (icing sugar and water tinted pink) which meant that I didn’t have to spend a lot of time decorating them. The cakes are lovely and moist – not a lot of coconut, but just enough to give that lovely nutty texture. I sprinkled thread coconut over the top to give an indication of what is inside. The cupakes keep rally well (I think the coconut helps with that) and making mini versions means that you can have two without feeling greedy!

Coconut Cupcakes

60g butter
½ tsp coconut essence
½ c sugar
1 egg
1/4c coconut
¾ c self raising flour
½ c yoghurt
3 tbsp milk

• Cream butter, essence and sugar
• Beat in egg, then stir in dry ingredients, yoghurt and milk
• Spoon into cupcake cases and bake at 160c for 20-222 minutes
• Once cold ice with a simple icing made with icing sugar and water, tinted pink. Sprinkle with thread coconut

I am back blogging....

Well, it has certainly been some time since I last blogged. Life is certainly a lot busier being a Mum and now I am a full time working Mum as well, going to back to my role as partner in my law firm six weeks ago. We are lucky in that my husband is staying home to look after Harry. Harry is an absolutely adorable baby – he is such a good boy and is just gorgeous! We are very spoiled parents!!

I have been baking over the last few months and keeping up with most of the Dorie challenges, but finding time to blog has been hard. So, I cant promise that I will be a consistent blogger like I was, but I will try to blog a few times a week. One of the things I have been baking the most is my Nana’s chocolate chip cookies. These are the biscuits that were photographed in the article about bloggers which my blog featured in in the Sunday Star Times back in December. I love chocolate chip cookies and these are the perfect thing to be able to make very quickly and they also freeze really well, actually tasting pretty delicious from frozen.

My parents are coming to visit in the weekend and so I did a little baking last night, making the ever delicious chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t have any chocolate chips, so I used a 220g cake of energy chocolate, chopped which made the cookies delicious. If you havent tried this recipe, you must – I look forward to receiving your comments!

Nana’s chocolate chip cookies

240g butter
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk (I use an everyday tbsp to measure the sugar and condensed milk rather than a proper measuring one)
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ c chocolate chips or 220g dark chocolate, chopped

• Cream butter and sugar, adding in condensed milk
• Stir in dry ingredients and then chocolate
• Roll into balls and flatten with a fork
• Bake at 165c for 15-18 minutes
• Cool on racks

It's a Boy!

Harry William McLeod was born on 5 February at 12.30pm. He is the most gorgeous little boy and we are adoring being parents. Baking and blogging is taking a back seat at the moment while I cherish every moment with my wee man. I am still doing my Dorie challenges, I just havent blogged about them.... yet!

Please keep checking on me though as I will be back soon

Tammy

Blogging Holiday

Sorry there havent been any postings for some time. I have been trying to get everything done before the baby arrives (due next week). I have been keeping up with my TWD baking, but havent got round to posting yet. Please be patient with me over the next few weeks as my life changes!! I promise to keep posting, but I can't promise to be as regular as I was once was :0)

I will post a TWD catch up either later today or tomorrow

Tammy :0)

LBD of puddings

This white chocolate and hazelnut blondie is actually something I made prior to Christmas for a team lunch. Brownie/blondie is always a good thing to make when you want to make a dessert in advance and also something that you can dress up or dress down – kind of like the little black dress of puddings.

I actually prefer brownie to blondie. I do love white chocolate but it can be a bit cloying when baked into something. This blondie was a little different in that it had chopped hazelnuts in it. I served it with a berry sauce (a bought one – my sister is a school teacher and last year the seniors made and sold berry sauce as part of a young enterprise scheme. The sauce is delicious, although quite tart) which was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the white chocolate blondie. But, I must say, I would have preferred a true brownie with chunks of white chocolate in it. Still, it’s always good to try new things.

So, the dolled up version of the blondie is with the berry sauce. The everyday version is cut into wedges and put into my husband’s lunch box.

The blondie recipe was in Dish magazine and you can find it here.

TWD - Mrs Vogel's Scherben

This week’s TWD recipe is Mrs Vogel’s Scherben and was chosen by Teanna of Spork or Foon. I have to confess, looking through the whole Baking from my Home to Yours book, this recipe is probably the last recipe I would pick to make – mainly because the cookies are deep fried. And, in fact, I was very close to not making these until I read that others had brushed the dough with oil and baked in a hot oven. I decided to do that too.

I halved the recipe to make just enough scherben to taste. They are almost like strips of unsweetened shortcrust pastry, dusted with cinnamon sugar and icing sugar at the end. My husband and I ate one each, but I threw the rest out as they are the kind of thing that even though you don’t really like them, they are strangely compelling to eat. I wont be making these again, but am still happy that I didn’t decide to completely give them a miss.

See what the other TWDers thought here.