Frangelico Cupcakes

Last weekend I made some Frangelico cupcakes for my fiancé's sisters birthday lunch (for those of you that don't know Frangelico is a hazelnut liquor - great with coke or on it's own!) I was inspired by Natalia's recipe: http://www.how2cakes.com/frangelico.html and I will HAVE to try her Jaffa cupcakes one day soon!

This recipe was so quick and easy and I found the texture of the batter to be quite different from other chocolate cakes. It had a mouse like consistency and I was eager to see how they tasted.

As there were 5 of us for lunch I made one for each of us in a large purple baking cup and with the remaining batter filled pink paper cases.

In the oven they rose beautifully and I iced with Nigella's nutella buttercream frosting:

Nutella Buttercream

125g butter, room temp

75g dark chocolate, melted

2 tbsp Nutella

2 cups sifted icing sugar

Cold milk

- Cream the butter until fluffy, slowly add the melted chocolate (in a thin stream to make sure the butter doesn’t melt).

- Add the Nutella

- Slowly beat in the icing sugar, ½ cup at a time until the buttercream is fluffy and not too thick – if it thickens too much add 1 tablespoon of cold milk at a time and beat.

(Instead of milk I added Frangelico!)

I had some mini chocolate 'cigarettes' which I cut in half and stuck in the cake for decoration to resemble a chocolate sundae!

On tasting these cupcakes I think those cooked in the baking cups were a little dry - perhaps because the moisture was not trapped during cooking by a patty tin but was free to escape. But the icing was so delicious one hardly noticed the dry sponge if you got a load of icing in the bite!:-)

When I make these again I will check more frequently as I may have slightly overcooked them. And I will add an extra tbsp of Frangelico to the batter mixture to give an extra kick!:-)

Tip - add the cigarette's at the last minute as if stored in an airtight container they go soggy!

Enjoy!

The perfect mudcake

Ok, i've had enough! I just want to be over the testing and practicing and move on to the pile of exciting and delicious recipes that i have yet to try!

My engagement party is in april and i'm making a 2 tiered exploding hearts cake, top tier 6" choc mud and bottom 8" carrot with white chocolate ganache.

Planet Cake have a delicious choc mud recipe but it is renowned for sinking. After receiving many tips from the amazing cake decorators on the PC tea party forum - i used baking strips to keep the sides from rising to fast (resulting in the middle sinking) and covered the top of the cake to keep it moist, left it in the over for OVER 2.5hours(!?) and let it cool over night before turning out of tin.

This is a small cake and i'm amazed at how long it took to bake. Despite testing it with a skewer, i believed it was ready. However, when i came to trim off the crusty top it was incredibly gooey - yummy but too gooey to carve. Freezing it first may help but i think the 3 hours of baking will now just be used in cake pops.

So... i have to try again!

Although the PC is my favorite to taste, i have a 6" exclusively foods choc mud in the freezer so i will test that this weekend.

Once this is over i'm going to go cake crazy and make something new every weekend!

1st being using that sponge to make peanut but pops or truffles - crumble the sponge and mix with smooth peanut butter, roll into balls, stick on lollipop sticks and dip into melted milk chocolate! Mouth is watering! Will then wrap in cello wrap and give to friends or omit the lollipop stick and use as truffles and give as gifts.

I know a few people who would like fudge chocolate cake peanut butter balls!:-)