Caramel cupcakes

I had some left over dulce de leche after making sticky toffee cupcakes so I used it up in these caramel cupcakes.

I made these once last year, here, but I was slightly disappointed with them. I seem to remember them not rising as much as I had hoped and the texture not being quite right. However, this time they were perfect! Very light and fluffy, although incredibly sweet (I'll let you judge whether that's a good or bad thing. It didn't stop me eating them that's for sure!) I love sweet things, hence my blog, but I'm not sure if it's necessary to have so much sugar in the recipe in addition to the dulce de leche.

I've not always had 100% success with Hummingbird Bakery recipes but I certainly have been on a role with them lately. I think the trick is to make sure absolutely everything is at room temperature (butter, eggs, milk) and to follow the recipe to the letter. This may seem glaringly obvious, but I'm really bad at not having my butter and milk at room temperature. All I can say is thank goodness for microwaves!

I've just read through my old post of these cupcakes and noticed that I said that I'd add the recipe at "a later date." Is nearly seven months "later" enough?

Caramel cupcakes

Recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery, Cake Days.

80g (3oz) unsalted butter, softened
280g (10oz) caster sugar
240g (8 1/2oz) plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
240ml (8 1/2fl oz) whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 large eggs
150g (5 1/2oz) tinned caramel or dulce de leche

For the frosting (I recommend halving the amount):
500g (1lb 2oz) icing sugar
160g (5 1/2oz) unsalted butter, softened
50ml (1 3/4fl oz) whole milk
100g (3 1/2oz) tinned caramel or dulce de leche

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5 and line a muffin tin with muffin/cupcake cases (12-16). Using a hand held whisk or freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment whisk together the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt on a low speed until crumb like in consistency. Place the milk and vanilla essence in a jug with the eggs and whisk by hand until combined. Pour 3/4 of this mixture into the dry ingredients and mix together on a slow speed, then increase the speed to medium and keep beating until smooth and thick. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the remaining milk mixture and the tinned caramel, and continue to mix until all the ingredients are incorporated and the batter is smooth. Divide the batter between the muffin cases, filling each by two thirds. Place in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes or until well risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool for a while in the tin then transfer to a wire rack to cool down fully.

Using the electric whisk or freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the icing sugar with the butter on a low speed until combined and still powdery in texture. Slowly mix in the milk, and once it is incorporated, increase the speed to high and whisk until light and fluffy. Add the caramel and beat in well. Spoon the frosting onto the cupcakes once they have cooled, smoothing it on with a palette knife and swirling the frosting.

Apple pie cake and sticky toffee cupcakes

Last week was my brother's birthday (my eldest brother was the week before) so I got to make another celebration cake! After showing him various recipes he decided on Edd Kimber's apple pie cake.

The sponge layers were light and packed with cinnamon flavour, but not in any ways overpowering. Sandwiched between the layers were cinnamon cream cheese icing (seriously tasty), caramelised apples and a drizzle of sticky syrup made from the apple juices. I think this was my tallest cake yet. It was huge! Huge and delicious.

Mmmmmm, look at that drizzly syrup!

As I want to support Edd Kimber with his first book I won't type out the recipe, but I can highly recommend it. I'd quite like to try all of his layer cakes as they look so impressive.

I also baked some sticky toffee cupcakes last week. These were iced in a mad rush so apologies for the lack of pretty decoration. I've made them before, for bonfire night last year, but they were so good I didn't get a chance to photograph them! They were just as tasty as before: a sticky date sponge with a dulche de leche butter icing (yes, it really does taste as good as it sounds!)

They may even be my favourite cupcake flavour to date (ooh I love a pun), or at least tie with nutella cupcakes, although I think I'm sliding into dodgy territory here, a bit like when Kate raised the difficult question, "if you could only have one type of cake for the rest of your life which would you choose?" It's so hard to pick an absolute favourite!

On a separate topic, I acquired some duck eggs this week. Can anybody recommend any recipes they'd be extra tasty in? I've never baked with them before so I'm quite excited.

Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

Recipe from Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, p.185

For the sponge:

180g (6 1/2oz) pitted and chopped dates

180ml (6 1/2fl oz) boiling water

80g (3oz) unsalted butter, softened

150g (5 1/2oz) soft light brown sugar

2 large eggs

180g (6 1/2oz) plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence (use extract, it's better!)

For the frosting

160g (5 1/2oz) unsalted butter, softened

500g (1lb 2oz) icing sugar

50ml (1 3/4fl oz) whole milk

100g (3 1/2oz) tinned caramel/dulce de leche

12-16 dates, pitted and chopped, or small pieces of soft toffee to decorate

Place the chopped dates in a bowl, pour over the boiling water and leave to soak for approx. 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5, and line a muffin tin with cases. Using a hand held electric whisk or a freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Break the eggs in one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing well on a medium speed after adding each egg. Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Add these dry ingredients in 3 batches to the egg and butter mix, then adjust the speed to medium-high and continue mixing until the batter is smooth and even. Scrape around the sides and bottom of the bowl to pick up any ingredients that might not be mixed in, then beat again briefly to ensure everything is well encorporated. Next add the vanilla essence to the date mixture and mix this into the cake batter by hand, making sure the dates are evenly dispersed throughout the batter.

Fill each paper case up to two thirds full with the batter. Any remaining batter can be used to fill extra cases in a second muffin tin. Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to cool slightly before removing from the tin and placing onto a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Using the electric whisk or freestanding mixer with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter and icing sugar on a low speed until sandy in texture and no large lumps of butter remain. Still mixing on a low speed gradually add the milk and mix in well, then increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy. Finally add the tinned caramel, beating it in thoroughly to ensure the frosting is evenly mixed. Spoon generous amounts of the frosting onto each cupcakes, then gently smooth over with a palette knife making a swirl on top if you wish. Scatter over the chopped dates or toffee pieces if using. (I strongly advise halving the frosting quantity. I iced generously and still had loads left over!)

A Birthday trifle cake

Last week was my eldest brother's birthday. He is the family's chief trifle eater, known for eating left over Christmas trifle for his breakfast on Boxing Day. No birthday or Christmas is complete in his mind without a trifle, so when I saw the Caked Crusader's trifle cake at the beginning of this month I immediately knew this would be the perfect birthday cake for him.

I can't decide what was best about it, other than it is both a cake AND a trifle! Its wobbly appearance was pretty spectacular. I think all cakes should wobble from now on. My nephews definitely appreciated the cake's wobble-factor too.

The cake cut really well, had all the textures and flavours of a trifle, and looked beautiful. The colours and layers make it a really attractive celebration cake. Needless to say this cake disappeared very quickly. I can easily see this becoming a family favourite. Thank you so much Caked Crusader for a fantastic recipe!

Notes on the recipe:

I fully admit to not taking 2 days to make this cake. I started the evening before and finished the following day, so I cut a couple of corners in terms of refrigeration time. It worked fine, but it's probably better to follow the Caked Crusader's time scale!

My cake took longer than 30 minutes to cook, nearly double the time, so I put a layer of greaseproof paper over the top of the cake to stop it from burning and to allow the inside to cook for longer.

I added more powder and sugar to my custard as I like mine to resemble and taste like Ambrosia custard :)

For the jelly I used just enough boiling water to completely melt the block then made up the rest of the pint with reserved juice from the tinned strawberries/raspberries ( as I feel it makes for a tastier jelly).

As you may have noticed, I've decided to start putting my weblink on my photographs. Although I can see how fun, addictive and useful websites such as Pinterest can be, and I'm flattered that people enjoy my photography, but it does bother me when I find my photographs on there without any reference or link back to me. It would take far too long to go through all my previous photographs but I think this is something I'm going to do from now on, even though I find it difficult to include text which is visible but hopefully not detracting from the photograph. Does anyone else feel uneasy about the whole Pinterest/copyright issue?

Awards, facts and muffins.

A big thank you to Gem from Cupcake Crazy Gem who nominated me for two awards last week. Two awards? Lucky me!

Rules for both the awards are:

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and link back to them.

2. Share 5 random facts about yourself

3. Spread the joy by nominating other bloggers

4. Convey the blogger about the nomination.

My facts are:

1. Last week somebody asked if our cat, Jimi, was pregnant. No, he is just incredibly fat!

2. I've discovered that I own 33 dresses. Some wintery, some summery, a couple for special occasions (weddings) and nearly all of them are floral.

3. My current TV obsession is Once Upon A Time (channel 5 on Sundays). It's like a cross between Heroes and Disney fairytales. Anyone else watching it?

4. I'm pretty sure I could win an Olympic event for sleeping. With no alarms or wake up calls, I can easily sleep for 12 hours straight. My personal best is 14-15 hours.

5. I think Jimmy Carr has the best laugh ever, closely followed by David Mitchell.

The people I'm passing the awards onto are:

1. Miss Cakeaholic 

2. Laura Loves Cake

3. The Baking Bee

4. The More Than Occasional Baker

5. The Pursuit of Domestic Goddess-ness

I hope you check them out, they're all great, exciting bakers.

Now onto the muffins! (Phew! This post is getting long!) I actually made these last month but didn't get round to posting them. Better late than never as they say.  I divided my batter so I could make two flavours. The first lot are apple and cinnamon muffins. I wouldn't hail these as a brilliant success, but they certainly weren't bad. I think they would have benefitted from more apples or maybe an extra flavour/texture. Walnuts or pecans perhaps.

My other batch were white chocolate and raspberry. These were the clear winners as there was only one left when I got round to taking photographs. They were much juicier and I loved coming across the half melted chunks of white chocolate, but then again I am a white chocolate fiend.

The recipe came from my first ever cookbook, Children's Quick & Easy Cook Book by Angela Wilkes. Despite no longer being a child I still occasionally use this cookbook!

115g (4oz) butter

285g (10oz) plain flour

1 level teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

2 eggs

85g (3oz) caster sugar

220ml (8 fl oz) milk

225g (8oz) raspberries

85g (3oz) white chocolate, chopped.

Set the oven to 200C/400F/Gas mark 6. Put the muffin cases in a muffin tin. Melt the butter in a pan. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then add the sugar, milk, and melted butter. Add the flour mixture and fold it in. Fold the raspberries and chocolate into the muffin mixure, then spoon it into the cases (I halved the raspberry and chocolate quantities so that I could add cinnamon and a large apple to one half of the mixture). Bake for 25-30 minutes until they have risen and are firm and brown. Put them on a wire rack to cool.

100th post: cake balls!

That's right folks, I've finally reached triple figures! I'm still baking, eating, photographing and talking about cake.

When I baked the sponges for my sister-in-law's birthday cake last weekend they rose magnificently, so magnificently that I had to do a fair bit of trimming to make them level, which left me with a lot of cake crumbs. I also had some left over chocolate icing, so in my determination to not waste such tasty left overs I created some cake balls!

I blitzed the cake crumbs in a food processor and stirred in chocolate buttercream icing until the mixture formed a consistency which could be shaped into little balls. I laid the balls on a baking sheet and set them in the fridge for about half an hour.  Once they had hardened I melted some white and milk chocolate in two bowls for dipping the balls into.

I must admit now that I have a new found appreciation for people who make cake pops (which I think are made much the same way). How they manage to coat the balls evenly in chocolate I have no idea! I initially tried to dip them on a fork, which didn't work as they just fell off, so I ended up using my fingers. My cake balls looked a bit sad and messy so I decided to disguise this by rolling them in cake sprinkles. My theory is that all cakes look prettier with sprinkles.

My cake balls still looked a bit messy and uneven, but I like to think of it as part of their overall charm. The main thing is that they tasted amazing. They're small but pack a powerful punch of chocolate. I fear these are quite deadly to waistlines.

I think cake balls would make really cute gifts. I would certainly make them again as it was a great way to use up scraps and I got to use tiny cake cases. However I am loathed to bake a cake only to crumble it for cake pops or balls. Perhaps it's fun to HULK SMASH cakes, but to me it feels like cake murder. What are your opinions on cake pops/balls and cake destroying?

I also want to say hello to the new followers I've noticed over the last week and a massive thank you for all the wonderful compliments on my last post. You're a lovely bunch!