Baby Girl Chocolate Mudcakes

There are so many different chocolate cake recipes out there it can become so mind boggling. Mud cakes are good as they last longer but some find them to rich and dense. If you go for a lighter sponge then there is a higher chance that they will dry out so not suitable for large orders such as weddings that need to be decorated ahead of time.

I have found this recipe to be a winner - it isn't as dense as a mud cake but still tastes amazing after 5 days. they freeze well too. My only concern is that they don't rise very much. I fill 3/4 full and they reach the top of the paper case and then stay flat. I think the reason they don't go dry is that there isn't much air in there and that is what helps the rising process. I am to experiment with substituting some self-raising flour and see what effect that has on the rising and shelf life of the cake.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 32 small cupcakes or 24 large

- 1/2 cup cocoa, sifted

- 2/3 cup chopped unsweetened chocolate (about 4 oz/125 g)

- 1 cup boiling water

- 1 cup butter

- 1 cup granulated sugar

- 1 cup brown sugar

- 3 eggs

- 1 tbsp vanilla

- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

- 2 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1 cup milk

1. Combine the cocoa and unsweetened chocolate in a bowl. Pour boiling water over chocolate and let sit for 2 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Cool.

2. In a large bowl or bowl of electric mixer, cream butter with both sugars until very light. Add eggs one at a time. Beat in vanilla and cooled chocolate mixture.

3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add flour to butter mixture alternately with milk in three or four additions, beginning and ending with flour.

4. Fill 24 well-buttered or paper-lined muffin cups. (Fill muffin cups three quarters full; cupcakes will not rise as much as muffins.) Bake in a preheated 350ºF (180ºC) oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack before icing.

My mother suggested I try this recipe. It reminds me of a gluten free cake - lots of eggs and butter.

Chocolate cupcakes

Makes 18

300g butter

300g plain choc (70% cocoa solids)

5 eggs

125g caster sugar

110g self raising flour

- Heat oven to 160C

- Melt choc & butter.

- Whisk eggs and sugar in large bowl until pale and thick (quadruples in volume and took about 10 mins).

- Fold in sifted flour gently.

- Stir in melted choc until well blended.

- Spoon mixture into cases and bake for 15 mins until toothpick in centre comes out clean.

- May well still look gooey

- Remove from oven and cool.

- Decorate as you wish.

These cake rose beautifully - must have been all the air in that whisking! I must have left them in too long which was a shame as they were a little dry. I will try these again and check more frequently. These wouldn't be so good for a longer shelf lift due to all the air but a great chocolate cake for decorating.

I made these Baby Girl cupcakes for a friend who recently gave birth to a baby girl called Hannah. Her older sister loves pink so I thought they would enjoy eating these.

I love the sprinkles - they are from a Barbie mix from Sainsbury's in the UK and my mother is bringing lots over for me!

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 headache of cake decorating

Ganaching is a pain in the arse. I still haven't got the hang of it. I've discovered a new technique where one places a board, the same size as the supporting cake board, on top of the ganache and then the sides are slowly filled with ganache. The theory is that the cake shrinks in cooking by about 0.5-1cm, therefore, giving you plenty of room for adding ganache to give it structural support, even sides and sharp edges.

However, when ganaching my 6" cake last weekend, I noticed that it was only a fraction smaller then my 6" board. How was I meant to get my ganache in there?!

Actually in this case I was using buttercream. I was experimenting with Belgian White Chocolate paste - similar to fondant but made mainly of chocolate which tastes delicious, but chocolate paste and chocolate ganache is definitely a chocolate overload!

I used Toby Garret's decorators buttercream recipe which is 250g butter, 250g copha, 750g icing sugar sifted, 1.5tbsp pavlova magic, 1/4 water. The copha means it is very stable in the heat and the pavlova magic lends a stiffness which is good for setting on the cake.

I've now learnt from asking on the Planet Cake forum that it is advisable to trim away the cake to get that 0.5cm gap between the cake and the board and I will do this for next time (compensating with an extra layer of cake and more height). But this time, as it was just for FH and I to enjoy, I whacked it on another board and went ahead with the icing.

I tried and tried to get the straight edges without using a board (as the 6" was too small) and in doing so developed a rather thick layer of buttercream icing. I also found it went inwards towards the top of the cake. But here is a picture of the iced cake before the chocolate paste - I am proud of this as it's the best I've done so far. Maybe a hot knife would have been good? But I have only done this with ganache and didn't want to ruin the buttercream.

The chocolate paste was very difficult to handle, most likely due to the heat, so I haven't attached a picture as it looked very dimpled but the combination of chocolate mud cake, butter cream and white chocolate paste was sensational!

Next time - more cake then icing! It's a cake with icing, not icing with a bit of cake!:-) But each attempt I'm getting better and better - so I will just have to keep practicing!

Cake anyone?

40 Pink Cupcakes!

It has been a busy baking week! Today I made and iced 40 cupcakes! Dave was doing handy man jobs and I was without light at then end so iced in a head torch - would have look ridiculous! So these are for a friends daughter's first birthday party.

The theme is pink which is handy as it's also Pink Ribbon day on Monday so the duff ones are being taken to work to be sold! The extra duff ones have gone in a container for Dave and I to eat (along with the bounty mudcake - oh god...)

I am still not satisfied with my standard vanilla and chocolate cupcake recipe. I have researched loads and the chocolate one I tried today tastes nice but not perfect and until I do find one that I am happy with I will not go on to try the 100s of different, exciting and delicious looking recipes I have piled up to try. I also tried 40 swirls and some turned out just how I wanted but the rest were terrible and seeing as I can't pipe then - I’m just going to have to keep on trying!!!!!!

Thanks mum for the cupcake sprinkles - I love them! All the way from England in a box on a ship!:-)

Bounty Mudcake caught fire!

I made a bounty mudcake the other day. It was the Woman's Weekly Cherry mudcake but adapted to bounty bars as my fiance is not a fan of cherry ripe.

It requires a tall tin lined with baking paper. i went a little over the top as normal when lining cake tins but, when put on the middle shelf they were rather close to the top of the oven.

I ignored this and was faffing around with another problem. with my large cake tin, if the mixture is slightly runny it tends to leak alittle. so i was cleaning up the drips and arranging tinfoil to prevent them from falling to the oven floor. last time i let the batter drip out it burnt in the oven and filled it with smoke.

Then i noticed that the baking paper had caught fire!!! I yelled for Dave and we took it out - the cake had a ring of fire above it! I refused to put the cake in the sink 'we can save the batter!!!' and eventually the fire died out.

The baking paper had burnt all the way down to the batter and had flake off but - i picked out each and every tiny speck, albeit with a little batter too but most was left unharmed.

so in it went again and came out perfectly. i iced in ganache and you would never tell that it had nearly been to waste. if we do come accross a bit of charred baking paper, we might only assume it is coconut.

a delicious cake - next - i shall try with Mars Bars!!!!!