Never Have I Ever...

... baked with COCONUT!! 

Usually all of my blog posts are me raving about foods, and tastes and flavours that I love - but not this time!!!  It was time to bake something that I wouldn't even be tasting.  All for my sister-in-law's 25th birthday :-D

Not a fan of anything that tastes, smells or even resembles coconut - this was a big adventure.  I've never used it in any recipes but luckily I found a recipe that used both lemon rind and shredded, sweetened coconut in it, and we all know I really do love lemon!

I used the same real raspberry buttercream as in these cupcakes back in May... some issues with too-soft butter and consistency, I think from the fruit, led to some (... by some I mean a lot) of frustration but the buttercream still worked out and tasted good, even if the piping was not favourable in my eyes!

I baked a double batch of these cupcakes, taken from a Canadian Living recipe (using only the cake part not the frosting) - with a dozen being the coconut ones, and a dozen without the coconut to be a delicious lemon flavour to accompany the raspberry frosting!  I'll write out the recipe for 12, the original with both lemon and coconut and leave it up to you whether to include the coconut or not - each to your own :-P

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup shredded, sweetened coconut
4 tsp lemon rind (for me this was the rind of one large lemon)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 350°F and line cupcake tray with liners.

2.  In a mixing bowl, beat the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

3.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

4.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, lemon rind, baking powder, salt and coconut.

*** N.B. When I did my double batch, I actually added in the coconut after everything so that I could use half the batter as only lemon, so that's why the picture of the coconut is into the wet mixture - not the dry ***

5.  Stir the dry mixture into the butter mixture, alternately with the milk in between - making 3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of milk.

6.  Using a cookie scoop, spoon into the cupcake liners and bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes.  The top should be lightly browned, springy to the touch and a cake tester should come out clean.

I noticed that without the coconut the cooking time was 18 minutes for me, but in the second batch that had the coconut inside as well - it was quite a bit longer, at around 24 minutes. 

7.  Remove from the cupcake pan and let them cool completely before frosting on a wire rack.

8.  In the meantime you can make your desired frosting - try the real raspberry buttercream I used to complement both the coconut and the lemon flavours :-)  Click here for the recipe!

So, even with meltage of butter causing a meltdown - the cupcakes were piped, and coconut ones were "labelled" with white pearls as decoration (I did NOT want to bite into a coconut cupcake by accident!) and taken to the birthday celebration!

The cupcakes were shared with lots of family, and then friends at the start of this week too!  They lasted quite well, and the coconut was appreciated by fans of the strange flavour!!

If you're a coconut fan like them, do give the recipe a try, or if, like me, do NOT like it - try the same recipe with only the lemon rind for the flavouring, that part was well worth it too!!  Enjoy this Summer treat :-D



Triple Lemon Cake for my Birthday!

Hello there - nice to see you again this year.  As I did last year, I made Hannah a delicious (?) birthday cake again this year, so here is me blogging about what exactly I did.  If you all remember, last year I tried to make a cake based on Hannah's favourite things - specifically Cadbury's chocolate and Tetley's tea.  So this year both those flavours were out, because I will not be a flavour repeater.  Hmmm what does Hannah like... LEMON!

This year's cake was a delicious triple lemon cake based on a recipe by Martha Stewart.  Why triple lemon?  Because it is a lemon sponge, doused in lemon syrup, and covered in a creamy gooey meringuey lemon frosting. YUM!  Let's get down to it.

Ingredients (Serves 12): 

 

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pans
2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks (save the whites for later!!)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
2 cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 lemon, thinly sliced and seeded (this means very thin! Thinner than I did!)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F.  Butter and flour two 8-by-2-inch cake pans, tapping out excess flour.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer (trusty Kitchenaid!) beat butter and 1 1/2 cups of sugar until light and fluffy.  With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time.  Beat in 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture (I did 3 additions of flour, 2 of buttermilk).  Mix just until combined.

3. Divide batter between pans; smooth tops.  Bake until cakes pull away from sides of pans, 32-35 minutes. (This was really cool and easy to know when it was done, because it did clearly and visibly shrink around the edge a bit where I could see a gap between cake and pan.  Great foolproof plan for novice bakers.)  Let cool in pans 10 minutes.  Run a knife around edges of pans and invert cakes onto a wire rack.

4. While cakes are baking, bring remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan.  Add lemon slices and simmer for 25 minutes.  Using slotted spoon, transfer lemon slices to a waxed-paper-lined plate.  Stir remaining 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice into syrup.

5. Using a toothpick, poke holes in warm cakes on rack.  Brush with lemon syrup.  Let cool completely.  Frost cakes (more on this coming!) and top with candied lemon slices.

So this is a triple lemon cake.  That means the frosting needs to be lemony as well, so I took Martha Stewart's whipped frosting and added lemon juice to lem-it-up!
 

Whipped Frosting:
 

3 large egg whites (remember them from before?)

3/4 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1/3 cup water

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (or in our case 2 tablespoons lemon juice)

 

Directions:

1. In a heatproof bowl set over (not in) a saucepan of simmering water, combine egg whites, sugar, salt, and water. 

2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar has dissolved, 3-5 minutes. 

3. Transfer to a large bowl.  Using an electric mixer (Kitchenaid again, with whisk attachment), beat on medium-high until glossy, stiff peaks form, about 3 minutes.

4. Reduce speed to low, add vanilla (lemon!), and beat until just combined.  Use immediately.

So there you have it.  Lemon cake, with lemon syrup to make it moist and delicious (even a week later), and lemon whipped frosting on top.  Word to the wise, be sure to whip the frosting until the peaks truly are stiff.  I don't think I went quite far enough with that, so the nice fluffy frosting you see below was a bit less fluffy when Hannah got home from work to eat the cake, and had almost dissolved completely by the next evening.  Magical disappearing frosting!
 

The only other advice I would give would be to slice the lemons with a mandolin, if you have one, so that they candy properly and stack more prettily on top of the cake. I did it as thinly as I could with a knife, and it wasn't quite thin enough.

See you next year!



Summer Grillin' - Cupcake Style!

 

Summer is here and it is most definitely BBQ season!.. More than it usually is in our house anyway!

 

We celebrated our friend's 30th birthday the other day with lots of delicious bbq food and a great evening, topped with a donut tower birthday cake (what a great birthday when it lands on National Donut Day!), cake and then also more cupcakes from me!  Perfect!

 

I went with the BBQ theme seeing as that's what we were going for, and it is the season after all! 

 

 

 

Using the same recipe for Coca-Cola Cupcakes as my New Home Cupcakes over a year ago, I thought it was time to use this recipe again, especially as the birthday boy is a fellow coke lover.  They're a little different to regular "cupcakes", with a super dense cake part, and a delicious glaze - with no swirl of buttercream.  This meant I wanted cupcake toppers that were flat, 2D rather than 3D ones so it would lay flat on the surface of the cupcake glaze.

 

So I got to work creating the BBQ themed fondant cupcake toppers.  First up were the burgers.  These were my first idea, and the one I definitely knew how it should look.  I coloured small amounts of fondant a brown colour for the burger, and then a yellow-brown colour for the bun, and used a sharp end of a cake decorating tool to make little "sesame seed" indents.

 

 

Next was the ketchup and mustard!  A little out of scale compared to the burger, but who wouldn't rather have a big burger!?

 

 

Then the choice was between making a '30' cupcake with some birthday decorations, or doing a third BBQ topper.  I went for a third design on the same theme, tying it all together with some corn!  Green and yellow fondant coloured and then cut out with various parts of cookie cutters to get the shapes and sizes I wanted.  The green part came from a maple leaf cutter, and the corn part from the little finger on a high-five hand cookie cutter.  Just using what I had instead of free-styling the cutting!  Then I used the end of a cake decorating tool that looks like a scalloped shell on the end to create the texture of corn.



 Fondant cupcake toppers all done - giving them a little chance to dry out/harden slightly through the morning.  This was some seriously early cupcake prep - after not getting back to sleep at 5.30am on a Friday where I wasn't working, I decided the only way to be productive that day was to just accept that sleep was done for the day and I might as well start baking!

 

So, with the Coca-Cola cupcakes baked, and cooling, and the glaze deliciously smooth ready to be spread over the cupcakes - see the recipe here - it was time to decorate!

 

The great thing about decorating with cupcake toppers when they are already made is that, once the cupcakes are baked up, everything is ready to go!  Assembly is nice and easy, and in fact, it made the early baking wake up worth it!

As the recipe is already on an old post, all that is left to share are some close ups of the cupcakes, and more photos!

Which is your favourite design of the 3?  I think I still love my original idea of the burger, but I also am really pleased with how the corn turned out!

 

 

Perhaps you'll give them a bake this weekend for Father's Day, or for a BBQ Birthday coming up this Summer!  Have fun with fondant cupcake topper prep - and then enjoy how easy everything is to put it together once you're done baking :)   I'd love to see your BBQ cupcakes if you try them!!

 

Happy BBQ Season!!

Double Vanilla Cupcakes and Real Raspberry Buttercream!

Uh oh!  It's Tuesday and I'm only just getting round to writing this weekend's blog post.  But, although it was all the busy this weekend I did get some time to do some baking for a friend's birthday :-) 

 

After making a lot of cake recently, all seeming to be lemon flavoured, I wanted to try something new this time.  But what?!  ...  I toyed with the idea of incorporating some kind of chocolates or candy into the cupcakes, but I REALLY wanted to use these super pretty Spring cupcake wrappers I was given!  I love the pastel colours, and the small pretty flowers... so I felt the chocolatey colours wouldn't work with them.  Instead I needed to think of a pretty colour to go with them!

 

 

And so, the idea of a real raspberry buttercream came to me!  I baked a basic vanilla cupcake, but upped the ante with my usual buttercream by adding raspberries!  I'm so happy that the beautiful Spring pink colour was made without food colouring and was a totally fresh feel to my usual buttercream!

So here's how it went! ... The recipe below will make 9 cupcakes (there were 9 of us bowling for my friend's birthday and they fit SO well in a cake box for her!!) and we have a TONNE of baking at home leftover from the youth group's 2nd annual Fun(d) Fair that we didn't need any more for just us!  But do double up the recipe to make more, especially if you're treating your Mum this Sunday!

Ingredients:

4oz unsalted butter
4oz vanilla sugar (or regular sugar for slightly less vanilla flavour)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 self-raising flour

Method:

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 375°F/190°C and line cupcake tray with cupcake cases. 

2.  Cream together the butter and the vanilla sugar.  A long while ago, after baking with vanilla pods, I thought about using the leftover pod and adding it to a mason jar full of sugar.  Since then I hadn't used the vanilla sugar, but when I opened up the jar on Sunday the smell was perfect!  An extra hit of vanilla to make these a double vanilla cupcake :-) 

 

3.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition, and then add in the vanilla extract.

 

4.  Sift the flour and beat well until combined.

 

5.  Scoop the batter into prepared cupcake cases.  I used a small OXO cookie scoop and needed 2.5 scoops per cupcake for it to rise to the perfect level.

 

 

6.  Bake for 10-14 minutes, until slightly golden brown on top, springy to the touch and when a cake tester comes out clean.

 

7.  Leave to cool on a wire rack and in the meantime, prepare your buttercream!

 

Ingredients:

 

4oz butter, softened

8oz icing sugar

1 cup raspberries - fresh or frozen

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon milk

 

Method:

 

1.  Measure out your raspberries (this time I used frozen as obviously, as usual was on a time crunch in the baking!  But next time for sure I will try fresh and see if it changes the taste... But fresh or frozen, whichever you choose - it's still a delicious real raspberry fresh flavour for the buttercream!)

 

2.  Add the lemon juice and puree the raspberries with a hand blender, and then strain through a sieve to eliminate the thousands of seeds.  From this I got about 2 and a half tablespoons of raspberry puree which all went into the buttercream.

 

 

3.  Cream together the soft butter, icing sugar and milk until light and fluffy.

 

4.  Add the raspberry puree and watch the colour go a beautiful shade of pink!  The more puree, the deeper the colour.  For me, I could have kept adding raspberries - not for the colour but for the tart taste... However my love for lemon and other tart fruit flavours isn't shared as much as everybody and my number one taste-tester husband said he could definitely taste the raspberry flavour in the buttercream so I stayed put and didn't go too crazy!

 

5.  Pipe your buttercream and enjoy your pretty in pink real raspberry cupcakes!

 

I used a Wilton tip 1M to pipe the buttercream onto my cupcakes.  With the liners already looking like they had flower petals, I wanted to pipe a low flower like swirl on top of the cupcakes.  Here's how they turned out!

 

 

Some quick photos before we headed downtown to The Ballroom in Toronto to have a delicious dinner and some fun bowling ~ even if I did lose!

 

 

The buttercream was a really great texture to pipe - I think the raspberry puree contributed to this and can't wait to try some other natural flavours and colours in future cupcakes!



 

Did you see this Sneak Peek on my Facebook or Instagram?  If you love baking, then please do follow me!  Those are the two places I update to most of all... and even if the blog post was a little late, I was glad to still have had time to post a little preview last night!!

 

I hope you get to try doing some baking with fresh or frozen fruit! ... It made a great change for me than just using lemon juice and lemon zest (although real fruit as well), or extracts and I can't wait for something to try next... Maybe strawberry...mango...blueberry... Mmm Summer is coming and so are the great fruit flavours that come with it :-)

 

Do send a picture of these if you make them for Mother's Day this weekend ♥