Raspberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

So my friend Lisa lent me her Primrose Bakery cupcake book and when flicking through this recipe caught my eye. I absolutely love the raspberry-white chocolate combo so this was obviously perfect for me! All aspects of the recipe are quite different to my own standard recipes for both cupcakes and icing so it was somewhat of an experiment to see how these methods changed the final result as well as the taste test!

The first thing that struck me about this recipe was that it used both self-raising and plain flour which I have never seen before in a cake recipe like this. It also involved a lot more steps than my all in one method so it was definitely a lot more time consuming! The original recipe says to cut a hole in the centre of the cupcake once its cool and fill it with jam but to add an extra element of experimentation I put a whole raspberry into the centre of half of them instead to see what that turned out like.

Turns out, I totally do not like this recipe! The cupcakes are much denser than I personally like and somehow seem to wet as the cases seem to peel themselves off after a day… The frosting however was delicious and I will be using that again! I also really like the idea of the mixture having jam in it to give it that extra raspberry flavour so I think I will try adding it to my own cupcake recipe next time and see how that goes.

While this was definitely not the best recipe I’ve ever followed (or maybe it was me who did it all wrong) I have at least learnt that when I want to experiment in future, just change one thing at a time instead of ending up with a disaster! You have to admit, they do look good though!

Mocha Pecan Brownies

Happy Birthday Dad! I made these delicious brownies for my Dad’s birthday as he loves chocolate, coffee and nuts! Normally I buy him chocolate covered brazil nuts so I’m sure this was a nice change for him. This is a Waitrose recipe I found in store featuring Starbucks VIA. Now I love Starbucks, love everything in there with my all time favourite being their peach and raspberry muffin, so obviously this recipe appeals to me too and my hands still smell like coffee, yum!

For this recipe you have to prepare three elements separately before bringing them all together. First off is melting the chocolate and the butter together so you have time for it to cool while doing the other elements. Personally I prefer melting it in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water so you can keep and eye on the mixture the whole time but unfortunately I broke my big glass bowl so I had to use the microwave in this instance.

Next mix all the dry ingredients together and put to one side. Finally, whisk the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer for ages! Basically until it’s grown in size and is thick and mousse like. The same technique as used to make Death by Chocolate. Then you add the chocolate, followed by the flour mixture and then the pecans and then you’re ready to bake! After reading the intro to my vegan baking book, it says to bake brownies in a glass dish to stop the outside getting too cooked. Don’t ask me how but if you can, use a glass dish just in case!

Personally I don’t really like pecans but when smothered in chocolatey coffee brownie goodness, it’s hard to remember why! Amazing brownies and I’ll definitely be making these again, maybe with white chocolate chunks instead of pecans next time…

Present Birthday Cake

So those of you who know me know that it was my birthday about 3 weeks ago and I’ve finally got around to posting about the cake I made for my birthday! After seeing some cakes online that were decorated to look like presents I’ve been dying to make one so my birthday was obviously the perfect opportunity. My lovely friends gave me some Lakeland vouchers for my birthday and so I used some of them to buy this great square tin with moveable sides so you can make it any size square/rectangle you like, pretty good huh?

While I may have splashed out on a tin, I did not buy myself any icing as I had some odds and ends in my baking cupboard so I used them up. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough white to cover the whole cake so it’s very thin and patchy so ignore that in the pictures but the main thing I wanted to do was the bow on top. I watched a quick online tutorial and found out that it’s quite straightforward and you get a great result with a simple method. This is the bit that I’m most pleased with and as it was my first attempt, it can only get better!

The cake itself was just a plain Victoria Sponge mix using 6 eggs in total which made an 8in square cake. I also bought a cake leveller which I used to slice my block of cake in half to put jam in the middle and also to level off the top slightly so that it wasn’t so domed. The cake took a lot longer in the oven than anticipated so unfortunately the edges got a little dry so I’ll have to work to improve that next time but I was very pleased with my first present cake.

My work with regal ice and sugar paste is definitely improving through practice and I’m starting to love celebration cakes more and more. The next one you’ll see here will be a champagne cake which a lovely lady at work has asked me to make for her husband’s 50t birthday. Eek!

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

The mint chocolate combination has always been a classic pairing of flavours and one that is definitely popular in our household! This little combo is one I’ve been meaning to try for a while but just have too many on my list of things I’m dying to make. Hopefully one day you will see them all up on here. I am very fond of making cupcakes as the decoration and icing of them is fun! Plus the making of the cupcakes has become almost second nature so for me it’s all about the experimentation and presentation.

For these cupcakes I used my basic chocolate cupcake recipe which is the same as the one I used for my Chocolate Orange Cupcakes but with out the orange of course! I enjoy the speed of this recipe as once you've put all the ingredients in the bowl and mixed them you’re done! This mixture makes 16 cupcakes in standard sizes of 12 if you’re using slightly bigger than standard cupcake size like I did here.

I again, used my standard buttercream icing recipe for these cakes. I added a few teaspoons of peppermint flavouring to the mixture and found the more I added the more it affected the consistency meaning I needed to add more icing sugar to make in ‘pipe-able’ again. The flavouring I used wasn’t as minty as I would have perhaps liked it to be so I might look around for a better quality flavouring to use next time! I added a couple of drops of green food colouring to the mixture to make it look pepperminty.

While my cupcakes were cooling I melted some chocolate and put it in a piping bag and made some chocolate shapes to use as decorations. Simply pipe your desired shapes onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper and put in the fridge to set hard. Then all you need to do is use a small palette knife to remove them from the paper and voila! Your own handmade chocolate decorations. Delicious!

White Bread

I made bread! While this may seem glaringly obvious as I am posting about it but, never did I expect my first attempt to make bread actually turn out to be, well, bread. I’ve always heard that bread is really hard to make and assumed myself that it would be because it’s about technique rather than simply following a recipe but I did it! And I’m very proud of myself however crazy that may seem!

Someone I work with, Glen, told me that he made his own bread and so I asked him to give me a very simple, basic, potentially Kathryn-proof recipe for bread. And guess what? It worked! He said that the simplest bread to make was white bread and wholemeal is overall trickier because of the texture of it. My mum also said from experience that homemade wholemeal bread can turn out rather dense. Needless to say, I went with the white option but after a few more practices I think I’ll branch out a little more.

A key part about making bread is the kneading. I kneaded mine for about 10 minutes in total at two different stages in the process. The idea of kneading is to stretch out the dough (I’ve heard this activates the yeast but that would be a lie…). Somewhere along the line through watching various cooking programmes and reading recipe books I picked up a simple methodical kneading technique. Once you have the dough on a floured (very important!) surface I pull the dough towards me wit the knuckles of one hand and simultaneously push it away from me with the heel of my other hand. I then fold it in half give it a quarter turn and so it again and again and again until I’ve been doing it for 5minutes.

Whether this is the proper way to do it or not I have no idea but it seemed to work well for me as, I may have already mentioned this along the way but, I made bread!

Vanilla Iced Biscuits

Well the weather my still be absolutely appalling but! I am keeping in the summer spirit with my baking, presentation wise anyway! At the beginning of the week I spent the day with my friend Lindsay who surprised me with a whole host of new baking equipment including these lovely cutters which of course I used at the first opportunity! In the first series of the Great British Bake off Miranda made some vanilla cookies which she decorated amazingly. Taking inspiration from her, I used the recipe she contributed to the book from the series and then decorated them!

The recipe calls for a vanilla pod which I hadn’t used before, usually going for the cheaper and easier option of vanilla extract. I splashed out a little on this recipe and decided to buy some and they do add a depth of flavour not achieved by its bottled substitute but it isn’t something I’ll be doing every time! If you ever do use them, keep the outside of the pod as you can put it in a jar of sugar to make vanilla flavoured sugar which is what I’m doing with mine.

This recipe requires patience as it takes some time to chill the mixture at various stages throughout the process. As for the decorating well, it took me around 2 hours to achieve these results. I piped round the edges of all the biscuits in the sections of colours I wanted and then diluted the icing a little more and ‘flooded’ the enclosed area with icing, like colouring them in really!

I made 24 biscuits but my cutters were quite large sizes so if you use smaller ones, you will obviously be able to make more! The recipe advises that the mixture makes around 30.

Here is the recipe I used:

200g unsalted butter, softened

200g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

1 medium egg, beaten

400g plain flour

Put the butter and the sugar into a mixing bowl. Split the vanilla pod in half along its length and scrape out the seeds into the bowl. Beat with an electric whisk/mixer until very light and creamy. Gradually add the egg, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour into the bowl and work in using a very slow speed

Use your hands to bring the mixture together and make a soft dough. Divide the dough in half and form each portion into a thick disc. Wrap in clingfilm and chill until firm - around 30 minutes

Roll out the dough, a portion at a time, on a floured work surface to a thickness of 5mm. Cut out shapes using cutters. Gather up the trimmings and knead gently then re-roll and cut out more biscuits. Arrange the biscuits slightly apart on a lined baking tray to allow for spreading then chill for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C

Bake the biscuits for 9-12 minutes, until just starting to turn golden brown around the edges and firm to touch. Remove from the oven and leave to firm up, then transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely. Then decorate as you wish!