Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Chocolate Ganache and peanut butter frosting.

Oh yes.  You heard me right. Peanuts and chocolate!  Who doesn't like this combination?  Dead people, that's who! 

I was looking for an idea for chocolate and peanut in a cake, and was wondering.. should i make peanut cupcakes and chocolate frosting?  or the other way around?  then I found the perfect recipe, tried the cake base in another recipe this week, and thought this cake MUST be made, and it MUST be made into cupcakes! :)  

Peanut butter cream cheese frosting topping a dark moist cake.  wow.  wow! 

In the theme of the Ganesh cake I made last weekend, I feel that this one also deserves to be attached to some kind of deity. So I'm calling them "Holy Jesus peanut butter chocolate cupcakes".

I've had quite a chocolate week this week, i've already made one decadent chocolate celebration cake, but tonight's celebration (one of my dearest friends is leaving for a year to do his masters in the UK) also calls for an uber chocolate feast!  Apart from all the cakes, chocolate has made an appearance in savoury cooking this week as a friend of mine made us chicken cooked with port, sage and cocoa the other day, which was pretty amazing! :) I will definitely put my adaptation of this dish up when i finally get around to making it!

Anyway, the base of these cupcakes are the same as the Dulce de Leche cake posted previously. Only difference is that i did not add the coffee, which was actually totally an oversight.  ah well, for next time ;)  Honestly these cakes are so good that I don't think the coffee is even needed, especially not with the fact that these are filled with chocolate peanut ganache (yes.  i didn't even know this could be done.  my life will never be the same!) and then topped with cream cheese peanut butter frosting (this tastes infinitely better than it sounds, and i certainly would not have made it had Deb from smitten kitchen specifically mentioned that it's good!!)...

Stop Chasing Ganesh! a.k.a. Chocolate cake with Dulce de Leche filling and Chocolate Ganache

Chocolate Dulce de Leche Layer Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache

I know, I know!! The title’s misleading!  There is no Indian elephant god Ganesh in this cake, however honestly if there was to be a cake that represented a god, this would be, at the very least, a contender!

The title comes from a line out of an episode of The Simpsons, where Homer dressed up as Ganesh and tries to stop Apu from getting married.  In turn, my lovely friend Joe always says “Ganesh” instead of “Ganache”, and frankly, that stuff is pretty godly so it does make sense in a way ;)

Anyway, I was looking for a cake that would fit perfectly with one of my best mates – she adores chocolate and toffee like substances, so what better cake for her than a moist dark chocolate cake, filled with lashings of dulce de leche, topped with smooth dark chocolate ganache??  YUM! 

This is definitely, no doubt about it, a celebration cake.  This isn’t something you do on a weekend to have something with tea.  This is a cake to be placed at the centre of attention, shared and enjoyed. 

I have accidentally also found one of the best chocolate cake recipes ever!  I will most definitely be using this when I make chocolate layer cakes.  It’s moist, dense, insanely dark (I don’t know what it is about an almost black chocolate cake that just excited me!), wonderfully chocolatey, and yet, somehow, it still manages to be delicately soft and light.… YUM!  For the Maltesers, what I was looking for essentially was a cake I can make from scratch that rivaled the old school Fontanella cake.  Unfortunately, I believe they have gone downhill over the last few years, hence the need to replace it with something! AND.. SUCCESS!!   I have finally found the right cake!  And to top it off, I know exactly what goes into it as I’ve made it myself (always a concern when ordering cakes from out) J

Frosting - cream cheese and buttercream.

yumyum cakes!

Frosting is a little funny sometimes, it might work out perfectly one time, and another time it just ends up being a runny mess.  here are some pointers to help you get it right.  

At the bottom of the post, there are a bunch of pictures, including "successful" and "failure" frostings. 

First of all, the most important things - it seems like a stupidly long list, but really, once you've made it once successfully, you'll see it's actually not hard!

Flourless Chocolate and Hazelnut cupcakes

Sometimes a regular cupcake just won't do.  Sometime, you  need it to be more like a fancy chocolate, decadent, rich, moist and full of sinful pleasures from top to bottom.  Sometimes, you just need an excuse to make the most chocolatey gooey cupcakes.  This day came, when I decided to make a gluten free cupcake for a chocoholic friend.  What better excuse to make a flour-less cupcake?  

Flourless cakes are my favourite.  I can't go past a small slice of moist, dense cake.  Putting them into cupcake form was a great idea.  These cakes are not the kind of cakes you just keep on eating.  They are very rich!  I made them into fairy cake size, which is halfway between a mini cupcake/muffin size, and a "normal" cupcake (muffin) size.  I would say this is ideal, they are a decent hit of chocolatey goodness, and yet, you could probably have 2 and get away with it ;)  I will not judge you if you had to eat more than that! 

Don't be fooled by the light colour, under the delicate crust lies a dark, moist chocolate experience

Halloween cupcakes!

Ok so a friend of mine loves Halloween.  In fact, it's by far her favourite "feast" occasion, much more than Christmas etc :D  Her and her partner hold a Halloween event every year (even before they met, they individually used to have a Halloween party.. awwwww)

Anyway this year I made cupcakes!  of course, they had to have a Halloween theme, so I decided to make Red Velvet cupcakes (mm blood red!) and some kind of black cake, which this time was Guinness Chocolate cake with a small amount of black food colouring for extra um.. blackness.

For the recipes of the cakes, click here:

Red Velvet Cupcakes
Chocolate Guinness cupcakes

As we were planning on decorating them, I decided on making a regular buttercream frosting, and separating the mix and colouring each part.

I made the following colours - plain white, pinkish/grey, orange and green.

As for decorations,  i bought sweets in the shape of vampire fangs, skulls, bones and Sarah provided some chocolate eyeballs and pumpkins :) 

Chocolate Guinness Cake

If you want a dark, moist chocolate cake, this is the one for you.  I was looking for a dark chocolate cake for Halloween - we had red velvet cakes, and I was thinking about making black velvet but a friend noticed this recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book, and since I happened to have a can of Guinness, it was the perfect time to try!

The recipe is for a single cake, however I've found that Hummingbird bakery cakes always work out well as cupcakes too! 

• Some notes about this cake mix:  It will be MUCH runnier than many cake mixes. 
• At first, it smells kinda beery.  Then once it's all mixed in together, life is good :) 
• Before I took it out, i touched it lightly and the cake sprung back anyway, however please note that even though it did this, it still didn't actually look cooked.  This is fine.
• This particular time,  I used regular butter-cream as I was making millions of little cupcakes, however I believe it would probably taste even better with the cream cheese frosting
• I made regular cupcakes, mini muffin, and also mini cupcake size.  I adjusted the cooking time by sight, I figured about 10 minutes for the tiny ones, 12-14 for the medium size.  If you are making a whole cake, it should take about 45 minutes, until the top is springy (bounces back when touched lightly) and a skewer comes out clean when put through the middle of the cake.

Ingredients

(for 24 large cupcakes, approx 40 fairy cakes, about 50-60 mini cupcakes)

For the cake/s

250ml Guinness

250g unsalted butter

80g good quality cocoa powder

400g caster sugar

2 eggs (at room temperature)

1 tsp vanilla extract

140ml buttermilk (if you can't find buttermilk, use runny plain unsweetened yoghurt)

280g cake ("OO") flour, sifted

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp baking powder

For the frosting

50g unsalted butter, softened

300g  icing sugar

125g full fat Philadelphia cheese

Cocoa powder, for dusting (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C, then line 2 x 12 muffin pan thingie with muffin liners (fairy cake liners are too small) 

Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb together into a large bowl. 

Pour the Guinness into a small saucepan, add the butter and gently heat until it has melted. Remove the pan from the heat and stir the cocoa powder and sugar into the warm liquid. 

Mix together the eggs, vanilla essence and buttermilk by hand in a jug or bowl, and then add this to the mixture in the pan.

Add the liquids to the bowl containing the flour, and whisk on a low speed until incorporated, making sure you scrape down the sides and get it all well mixed.

Spoon the batter into the cake liners until 2/3 full.  If there is any extra, put it to the side, you can cook it in another batch after the first batch is done.  

Bake for approximately 15-18 minutes or until the sponge bounces back when lightly pressed.

Leave cool in the tin for about 5-10 minutes, then remove them from pan and cook on a wire rack.  

Make sure the cakes are completely cold before frosting. 

To make frosting: 
Sift the icing sugar into a bowl (the bowl of free standing mixer if you're using). 
Chop the butter into small cubes, and if it's not soft, put in the microwave in 5 second intervals until it's soft and pliable. 

Work the butter into the icing sugar with the back of a spoon.  This is my method of preventing the whole kitchen becoming a cloud of icing sugar, as whilst it does smell quite nice, it's also horrible and messy.  

Once you've worked the butter in, using the electric whisk (or freestanding mixer with paddle attachment) mix the butter and icing sugar together until there are no large lumps of butter and it is fully combined with the sugar in a sandy mixture.   You can choose to cover your freestanding mixer with a clean teatowel at this point, to make sure the clouds of icing sugar don't puff out. but if you've worked in the butter, this shouldn't happen.  Having the butter at room temperature REALLY helps for this!

Add the cream cheese and mix in a low speed (I "pulse" it in until it's combined then increase the speed to medium and beat until the frosting is light and fluffy.  Be careful not to overbeat the cream cheese frosting, as it can go from voluminous and fluffy to runny in a surprisingly short amount of time.  You can beat the hell out of it for a couple of minutes though!  it DOES need to be nice and fluffy!
Place the cooled cake on to a plate or cake card and top generously with the cream cheese frosting. The cake can be decorated with a light dusting of cocoa powder.

As I used buttercream, I piped the frosting on.  The frosting above should just be spread on using a palette knife :)  

Lemon curd cupcakes

Mmmmm!!!  These cupcakes are amazing.  I am in total awe of the person who actually decided to put together this recipe, for they are just... wow.  


These cakes are for serious lemon lovers... they have the amazing combination of tart, sweet, creamy, textures, everything.  They are... just... wow.  so SO good! 

The curd is so deliciously lemony and creamy, the cake is soft, light, also lemony, and the frosting (which contains some of the lemon curd, as well as cream cheese and whipped cream) brings it all together to a lovely, lemony delight!  

Poor little cupcake, sitting on a plate, it was eaten only a few moments after this was taken

I really felt like trying something lemony, as we suddenly ended up with quite a few lemons from friends' and colleagues' trees, we were going over to my aunt's for tea to celebrate mother's day with Nanna, so thought it was the perfect opportunity to try something delicious and lemony!  These are a winner I think!! 

Carrot Cupcakes - Hummingbird bakery stylez

I adapted this recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.  I've never actually been to the shop in London, but my sister swears by this recipe, and everyone I know who's been to the shop have adored the food there :)  The recipe was for cake, but this was adapted for cupcakes.  

funny hat wearing cupcakes.

Vanilla... beans, extract, paste, essence..

My rant about the availability of Vanilla in Malta.  I need to make this clear, vanilla essence and vanilla extract are NOT the same thing.  Vanilla essence is completely sans vanilla, completely artificial.  It is also the reason I thought i never liked vanilla!  It's something i never thought of until i tasted real vanilla, and loved it!  If i was rich, i would always use vanilla pods, but seeing as they cost about 4 euros PER POD, the cost is a little prohibitive.  In Australia, I started using vanilla paste, which is a thick vanilla extract with extra vanilla seeds added.  This is by far the best non pod vanilla product to use.

Now: I cannot find anything but either real pods or essence in Malta. (EDIT!!! I have found  Natural Vanilla extract in supermarkets now.  Not all of them, but at least a few.  Also try baking shops!)  I tried to use essence but even though everyone was like "yummy cupcakes la" all i could taste was this horrible artificial taste, even though i put half the amount of essence.  Artificial taste, and the extra level that vanilla gives - nowhere! :(   I was so disappointed because it was the essence, and there's nothing I could have done.  Anyway, I searched far and wide.  to no avail, so when i made the shortbread this Xmas, i used a mix of essence and vanilla pods, which was somewhat better.  I'll tell you, the ones that had JUST seeds (no essence) in them were better.  so so much better.  And i love those little black dots!  Anyway i don't have to worry now, as luckily my lovely sister brought me some Taylor's Collection Vanilla Bean Paste from the UK :)  YAY!!!

AMERICANS BEWARE!!!  please note that extract and essence are different for you, as apparently in the US essence is actually just strong vanilla extract.  Gah!  way to confuse things! 

Vanilla beans (cured)

I guess that sometimes I think we're getting too used to the artificial taste of things, and what scares me most is that I think people are starting to prefer it!  The real thing tastes natural, and is what caused them to make the essences in the first place.  Surely that means it's superior in taste?   Otherwise why try replicate it?

the tea party - post 2 - Gill's Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

This cake recipe was given to my mum from Gill, an australian friend and ex colleague of hers.  When we were leaving australia in 1995, Gill made an incredible little book, full of delicious hand-me-down recipes, things she'd discovered, and little tidbits of australian memorabilia, including photos, and pressed eucalypt leaves.  It is a lovely book, full of love and written with true friendship in mind:)

Gills carrot cake recipe is delicious :D

As you can see, i don't always follow the "loaf" tin suggestion.  i've used round, i've made a giant double one, i've even made em as a sort of cupcake/muffin style and it's always pretty much worked out.  this is an almost failsafe cake recipe! :D

the tea party - post 1 - The lemon cupcake

My birthday is coming up, and to celebrate had a tea party at Sarah's house yesterday!

I was sick on Friday, so spent the day indoors, and the evening baking away :)

The menu (at least the part that i made) was:

Lemon cupcakes
Carrot cake
Scones
Mini Quiches

Sandwiches were lovingly made by becky, mc and alison :)  and deliciousness they were too!! :)

Ok so when looking for a lemon cupcake recipe, my demands were simple.  They must be LEMONY.  by lemony i mean lots of fresh lemon flavour bursting out of each cupcake.  2nd demand was nothing too complicated.  Apart from that, thanks to my mother's trusty Kenwood it was all good :)  Oh and they had to look like they would be soft and delicate :)

Red Velvet Cupcakes! :D

Made these for a tea party on saturday :D

I'd never made cupcakes successfully before, there would always be something that would spoil them... but this time i was determined to make deliciousness! :D My sister's been going on and on (and on and on ad nauseum) about the Hummingbird Bakery in London so I thought i'd try their recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes, which is something I've wanted to make ever since seeing it on True blood (don't ask me which season or episode, but it was a while ago).

The lurid red colour of the cake, which is essentially a lightly chocolate flavoured vanilla cake appeals to me, makes it a little more "WOO" than a regular cupcake. I don't really have the patience for finicky decorations, so a cake that's a decoration in itself is ideal! ^_^