Red Velvet Cupcakes!

It’s freezing here! Not snowing, because sadly the salt in the air stops that from happening, but freezing all the same. It’s the kind of cold that has your fingers screaming for mercy the second you leave the house and your stomach constantly growling for more food! So in the midst of this cold weather I decided that the perfect antidote would be a rich cupcake that, though Christmas is officially over, would keep some of the spirit alive. Hmmm, what jumps out? A RED VELVET CUPCAKE of course!!!

These little beauties are rich, moist and best of all… Drumroll please! CHOCOLATEY! And what’s even better about them? Nobody has to know that you’re really eating a cupcake filled with the best quality dark cocoa. For all they know it could be strawberry. 🙂

Now these cupcakes don’t necessarily have to be Christmassy. If you’re one of those people who, on the 6th of January when the decorations come down doesn’t want to have to think about, in my opinion, what is the best time of year until next December, you can always omit the sprinkles. These cupcakes are just as good without them!

Charmingly naked, you see?

I love chocolate. That’s a fact of life. And normally for me any part of a dessert that contains chocolate would be the star of the show for me. Well, that was until I met this frosting. It’s a little cloud of heaven just perched on top of a cupcake! My usual problem with cream cheese frosting is that it doesn’t hold it’s shape. I’m all for a thin icing on occasion, but usually I want my thick, pretty swirl on top of a cupcake. That was a problem, until I found a blog post from a genius at justataste! The secret: Heavy cream! Look at my cream cheese frosting, isn’t it just perfect! Here’s the link:http://www.justataste.com/2014/01/red-velvet-cupcakes-piped-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe/ 

So here’s the link to the recipe I used for the cupcakes themselves. I just know you’re going to love them! They were a massive hit here.

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/10/29/red-velvet-cupcakes/

xxx

Happy Baking!

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Banana Nut Muffins with a Cinnamon Streusel Topping!

Have you ever thrown a house party for no particular reason? Well, if you have you’ll know that having 50 people ’round Isn’t an easy undertaking. Between the mountain of food the needs to be cooked, the house that needs to be tidied and the entertainment to be organised it’s a hell of a lot of work.

So these were one of the only foods that I managed to photograph (they were out of the oven first) while the light was good. I know I’ve done a lot of muffins and cupcakes, but they really are my favourite things! And these ones are especially good.

The excessive amount of brown sugar makes these muffins almost caramelly! There’s barely any granulated in this recipe at all. And brown sugar is a bit healthier, right?

Weirdly enough I don’t find many people who get as excited over a muffin as I do. There’s just something about the warm spongey cake studded with chocolate chips (always necessary) and hidden under the disguise of ‘a fairly healthy breakfast option’  that’s just so comforting! So these muffins are for anyone who joins me in the muffin fan club, they’ve even got a brown sugar cinnamon streusel on top! 🙂

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/02/18/master-muffin-mix/ This is the link to the original recipe. All credit goes to Sally.

These high rise muffins have to most glorious crispy crust on top. It’s the initial high baking temperature that makes them rise so high and form that amazing crust. The brown sugar in the streusel also gave them a caramel sheen.  I think that these muffin tops would be worthy of Lorelai any day. If she were around I’d be making a muffin bottom pie for sure! (Sorry about that ‘Gilmore Girls’ reference there!)

These muffins were gobbled up in no time. They were devoured even before the Avoca Carrot Cake, which is a sure fire favourite around here. It must have been that they were freshly baked and still steaming with the melted chocolate chips still warm in their centres and the aroma of cinnamon just drifting…… Sorry, I got a bit carried away there! All I meant to say was that these muffins are divine. And an amazing Autumnal treat. Perfect for the changing of the season.

Well, happy baking guys! Hope you’ve had a good first month back to school.

xxxxx

And so my affair with Frosting began!

As you can probably tell from almost everything I’ve posted so far, I’ve been veering away from frosting. The sky high towers of sweet,buttery, creamy heaven haven’t had much of a show on this blog so far. This is mainly because I know that once I’d taken a single bite off the top of a ‘Vanilla Buttercream Frosted Fudge Chocolate Cupcake’ I’d never go back! And now I have, and I don’t think that I will.

          

These chocolate cupcakes are SO moist! It’s almost unreal. They definitely deserve a picture to themselves. I almost felt bad putting icing on top of them. But then I didn’t!

Is it just me or do these look like whippy ice-creams on a cupcake? I almost feel as though I should have put little flakes sticking out of the top! Maybe I’ll do that next time!

          

There is actually no chocolate in these cupcakes. It’s the cocoa that give them they’re perfect chocolaty taste and texture. Sometimes I find that putting chocolate in cupcakes or brownies can give them a slightly greasy texture. Try and use a good brand of preferably dutch processed cocoa such as Bourneville for best results. Drinking chocolate (Cadburys etc.) is usually about 50% sugar which will really change the taste and colour of your cupcakes. So basically, Emergencies Only!

This picture here is a great example of ‘The End of the Piping Bag Conundrum’.

That was a mouthful!

What I mean by this is: With any icing I’ve piped from a piping bag I’ve always found that the last cupcake, or whatever you’re using the bit of icing at the bottom of the bag for comes out wonky. I reckon it’s that there just isn’t enough icing left to pull it off smoothly. And that would be perfectly fine if every time I took the nozzle out of the piping bag there wasn’t a good spoonful of icing just sitting there. It’s infuriating!

I usually just decorate the cupcake with something to take your eye off of the blobby mess underneath, chocolate chips in this case. Any comments or solutions would be appreciated!

    

So here’s the link to the original recipe: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/06/03/classic-chocolate-cupcakes-with-vanilla-frosting/ 

Happy Baking!

xxxxx

My First Paid Gig! Wedding Cake.

I’m going to start with a back story, just to get you in the loop. My friend’s dad does wedding ceremonies. They’re usually relatively small and independent, but really beautiful too. One day he asked me and his 2 daughters if we wanted to make a cake for this wedding. The only brief was that they wanted it to be chocolate. Perfect! 

  

Needless to say, it took us quite a while to make! We decided to go for a devil’s food chocolate cake. They had asked for chocolate after all. It took us a little bit longer to decide on the style, but classics win every time, so a three tiered cake it was. Not the most innovative idea anyone has ever had but this really couldn’t be a flop. This cake really is my pride and joy! Me and my friends just sat staring at it for ages when it was finally finished, which happened to be about 6 hours after we started!

 

The play mobile pieces on the top were a genius idea of my friend’s 10 year old sister. She even matched the hair colours on the dolls to the ones of the bride and groom! The only slight problem was the eye-patch, we’re just hoping that the groom didn’t notice. 🙂

 

 

This cake has a secret… Do you want to know what it is? To make this cake extra special and extra tall we decided that instead of 3 layers of cake we’d make 6. So in each tier of the cake there happens to be 2 devils food cakes separated by a thin layer of vanilla buttercream icing. I hope the wedding party didn’t die of a heart attack after all the butter that went in.

 

 

I reckon that the hardest part of this cake was the icing. The crumb proof layer was one of the most nerve wracking things I’ve ever done! But we managed it! The cake stayed in one piece.

One of the greatest things about this cake is that it’s super easy. It’s just an easy peasy devils food chocolate cake recipe:

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/DEVILS-FOOD-CAKE-5310

I got mine off Nigella Lawson.

Topped off with an even easy peasier buttercream icing:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/quick-vanilla-buttercream-frosting-recipe.html

To this I just added a small amount of cocoa powder until it reached the colour I wanted. And voila! Cake made!

 

 

Now, I know in the title I said paid gig. I wasn’t lying, it was paid. Even if it was only 6 euro once we’d paid for food and divided it up between ourselves. 🙂 But it was a million times worth the effort.

 

‘Till next time my friends. 

xxx

 

The Missing Link: The Classic Victoria Sponge.

This has been long due. I didn’t feel that I had the right to call myself a baker (or bakress, if you’re a feminist) until I’d proved to you all that yes, I can bake a victoria sponge, and I can get it to rise!

 

I made this recently for a host of guests that we had staying over. It seemed the perfect choice, who doesn’t like a victoria sponge? I thought that everybody did, that was one rule that I thought there was no exception to. Until……. I had an 8 year old boy come up to me and tell me that he didn’t like jam, he didn’t like jam! I’m still flabbergasted, sugary berryey goodness! What’s not to like? So I commissioned a special slice without cream for him. The problem was finding it once the second layer was on top!

However, all in all, this cake went down well, scrap that, it went down amazingly! Screw modesty! So why was I polite and took the smallest slice? When I went back for seconds it was all gone. 😦

This is possibly one of the simplest recipes out there, and it’s foolproof, even if you only have one baking dish of the right size. ‘Looks down embarassedly’. Ok, I admit to it, I did have to bake the cake twice. I only have one 9 inch baking dish so I cut the recipe in half and did it again. Silly, but what could I do? (I really am in a rhetorical question mood tonight.)

 The strawberries in the middle of the cake give it a summery zing that you just don’t get from the jam. And the buttons on the top are a kind of family tradition, my Mom’s been putting them on top of my birthday cakes since I was about 5.

And for the leftovers.

I’m going to write the recipe up because I’m not 100% sure where it came from, I’ve known it forever you see!

 

Classic Victoria sponge Recipe:

For an incredibly moist, spongey and summery treat.

Serves 10. (8 if you want leftovers)

Ingredients:

For the cake:

300g caster sugar

300g butter

6 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

300g self-raising flour

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons of milk

For the filling:

250g strawberries

A tub of single cream

Berry jam

And chocolate buttons (optional but advised)

 

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/ 170F/ Gas mark 5.
2. Grease 2 9 inch silicone cake tins.
3. cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add in the eggs and vanilla essence and mix until well combined.
5. Mix in the flour and baking powder, do not overmix. This will knock any air out of you cake mix and will make it less light and airy.
6. Then stir in the milk to thin out. Your batter should be smooth and creamy.
7. Pour into your prepared cake tins and level with a spatula. (I got a new rubber one recently)
8. Pop into the oven bake for about 20 – 25 mins or until the cake springs back when you poke it and a knife comes out with only a few small crumbs attached.
9. Cool on a wire rack until your cakes reach room temperature.
10. Then spread with jam, cover with sliced strawberries and dollop your cream on before dropping your second layer of cake on top and covering with you (optional) chocolate buttons!

Incredible low fat Brownies. Nothing more needs be said!

Is this my first post on them? If it is, I am so sorry I haven’t gotten here sooner. You deserve more. :p
Though it is the middle of summer and I should really mention more season friendly recipes that I’ve baked, I’m getting a brownie itch today, and I just have to scratch it!

 

First of all, I have to mention, often when people see the words low and fat together they immediately scroll off to find a more taste-bud friendly recipe. DON’T. This is the densest, fudgiest and richest brownie recipe that I’ve ever tasted. And it’s also the healthiest. In the original recipe there’s no white flour, no chocolate and no butter. Have you ever heard such good news?

What these brownies do have are rolled oats, cocoa powder, yogurt and some optional peanut-butter! They’re perfect for breakfast before your morning jog, the jog being optional in this case!

I did do a few things slightly differently from the original recipe. The oats weren’t a priority for me as I don’t jog so when I baked them I used half oats and half white flour, my blender is non-existant so I had to use a smoothie maker to turn them into a flour. Not ideal! I gave up half way, why persevere?!

I also decided to omit the peanut-butter swirls on the top, calories? No… Well, maybe!

But to me, I think if I had added it I would have made them almost too rich for me to eat. I shared them out with other people as I couldn’t manage more than 2. Those 2 were worth the slight nausea!

It’s midsummer here in Ireland so I should really bake something befitting to the weather but when brownies call… So thanks for reading and here’s the link: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/06/10/skinny-peanut-butter-swirl-brownies/

Hope you enjoy!

XXXXXXX

 

 

 

 

 

Summer, and special chocolate cookies…

The summer it is!

Alas, at last it has arrived, those long endless days and those months that seem to go on and on forever. We no longer live for the days during which the sun beats down on us as we cool ourselves off in the ocean, we are in those days!

So because of my truly contradictory nature and the fact that as I’m cycling up to 10 miles a day I decided to go for something a bit unorthodox but never unwelcome for this time of year. Chocolate!

COOKIES!

And now you ask… ‘What’s so special about these cookies? They look pretty ordinary to me.’

And with a smile I reply ‘They are protein packed, on the cookie scale are rather healthy and are still absolutely delicious!’

Now do you see why they’re special? They taste like some sort of incredible fudge, except they’re cookies!

The secret? No flour, lots of peanut-butter. I must admit, I was terrified when making the dough. When you find yourself scooping almost a WHOLE JAR of peanut-butter into a batch of cookies you can’t judge me for beginning to freak! But I had already gotten myself in too deep, I had to keep going. And anyways I thought, I’m giving most of the batch away.  Well, about this much of the batch!

They’re like some funny little army getting ready to march out!!!

These cookies are full of cocoa. I added chocolate chips instead of the recommended peanut-butter chips which was perfect for me because I have a really sweet tooth and though these cookies are absolutely out of this world they would be even better suited to someone who rathers dark chocolate to milk as they had that same slightly bitter tang to them. But regardless, everyone adored them!

They would also be perfect to fuel a morning run, I know, chocolate for breakfast is frowned upon by a lot of people but with the amount of protein packed peanuts in this recipe it would keep you fueled for hours!

And an extra bonus is that they’re gluten free!

So here’s a link to the recipe, SBA (yes I have started abbreviating it! :)) if you’re interested. Go on, add these to your get in shape for summer (or during summer) routine!

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/06/06/flourless-peanut-butter-brownie-cookies/

Hope you enjoy!

xxxx

 

 

 

 

 

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!!!

These completely 100% deserve those capital letters!

Chocolate chip cookies are one of the most used and loved inventions in the whole of the baking world. And because of this they are also one of the most difficult. Not difficult to bake, not difficult to bake AT ALL! They are in fact some of the easiest and most forgiving baked goods out there. What is difficult is finding the right recipe. Some people are lucky, they have their great-great-great grandmother’s recipe that has been passed down through the centuries and is usually unrivaled by any other cookie recipe! However, not all of us are that lucky. Most of us have to scour cookbooks and the internet for that recipe.

And guess what?!? I’ve found it!!!!!

I’ve tried many cookie recipes in the last while, ones that call for cooking directly from the bowl to ones that call for refrigerating for almost a full week! (Insane I know, there was barely any dough left to bake by the end of it !) And even in these cases I found that I ate more of Sally’s dough in the 1 hour period than I did in nearly a week! So of all the cookies I’ve tried so far this one has to be the best, I’ve still got a couple to try so if I find anything on a par to Sally’s one I’ll send it on out! 

And on that note, I was thinking a couple of nights ago: ‘I cook so much off Sally’s Baking Addiction that I might as well just stop writing this blog and send you over to hers instead’, so I went to one of the many trusted recipe books on our shelf and rustled up two batches of muffins for our guests. A triple chocolate batch and a lemon and blueberry chocolate chip batch. 

The verdict: ‘Nah!’ They were dry, the lemon was overpowering, and there WASN’T ENOUGH CHOCOLATE! So, my guilty feelings appeased for the time being I went back to my trusted baking adviser and made these cookies.

And they were good. ALMOST as good as the dough. Which is saying something! They were moist and fluffy and soft and chewy with the perfect chocolate to dough ratio (though I did use chopped up chocolate chinks instead of the chips as I had none on hand).

I do believe that they were perfect. 

As far as I’m aware it’s the cornstarch that gives them their amazing texture. This, I believe, is what seperates the men from the boys, or in this case the good cookies from the not so good!

So now that I’m done tooting these cookie’s horns I think I’ll leave you this evening with an apology for the time between this post and the last and yet another photo of these cookies!

🙂

(And also the link) 

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/08/06/the-chocolate-chip-cookie/

 

‘Skinny’ Peanut Butter, Banana and Chocolate Chunk Muffins.

After my muffin binge yesterday and the day before I decided to try something a bit healthier for Sunday to go alongside the Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice-cream that’s planned for later on this evening. I also wanted to try another recipe off Sally’s Baking Addiction. Just to make sure that Friday night’s recipe wasn’t a wild mistake and Sally’s baking and recipe writing skills aren’t as mind blowing as they seem. There was no need. These ‘skinny peanut butter and banana chocolate chunk (my addition, though absolutely necessary in my mind) muffins were no let down.

If I hadn’t baked them myself I would never have believed that they were anything less than completely authentic all butter muffins. They were moist and rich, not crumbly at all. I think it was the low fat yoghurt that gave them that brilliant softness .They were, I’m not going to say dense, because that gives a bad impression and the only impression that I want to give here today is good. What I mean by putting that word dense here at all is that they were filling. Not a muffin to be taken lightly, please excuse the pun. 🙂 I, despite my amazing ability to eat an immense amount of food in a sitting could only manage 1 and a half. I think it must be the protein in that half cup of peanut butter alongside those two ripe bananas that has me still full a couple of hours later.

I think this one shows how moist these muffins really were the best.

Sally is a god. I just think I have to get that out there. Maybe I should write some sort of a prayer or something…. Is that weird? Anyways, if I did,  I reckon it would go something like this:

Sally,                                                                                                                                                                                              Creator of the absolute nicest most amazing muffins in the world,                                                         Not to diss your other baked goods or anything I just haven’t tried them yet                                   I’m sure they’re really amazing too. 🙂                                                                                                                       Please keep coming up with great recipes.                                                                                                             Rock (and bake) on!

Now, this post will have to be quick, there’s an ongoing hum in the background of ‘Are you nearly done’, from my mother. She really wants to go and watch ‘The Matrix’ with me you see (I know, on a school night, terrible!).  It’s been coming on for a while. It’s been a good few years since we watched it last, the shock of the ending (I won’t say any more on that for fear of spoilers, it really is a good trilogy, you should watch it) on my young and innocent mind caused me to become more and more reluctant to re-watch it. But now I have to face the music. Wish me luck!

So instead of leaving you feeling deprived of my good company, I’ll leave you with a host of pictures of these muffins for you to drool over along with the link to Sally’s recipe if you want to see more (way better than my) pictures or actually cook the real thing.

Link:

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/09/18/skinny-peanut-butter-banana-muffins/

And now for the pictures:

Just a quick note, the chocolate chips/ in my case chunks, are not optional. Even if you are on a diet. Brave the calories, for me, please! They’re SO good, especially fresh from the oven. Warm, melted, delicious chocolate. You really don’t want to miss out on it.

I put this one in in case your eyes are allergic to purple, even though I think that the napkin looks nice. Also, to even more show up the peanut butter drizzle on the top for 2 reasons. Reason number 1. It’s really good, like extremely good. Yet again, especially when it’s warm.                                                                                                                                                                                            Reason number 2. I was quite proud of my drizzles. I think some of them look pretty good. And yes, I know, I’m extremely modest.

And that, take note of the wrappers, is where the rest of the muffins are on their way to. So I’m going to go and fulfill that prophesy now.

🙂                                                                                                                                                                                                       xxx  ❤