Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Icing!

Since I got the cupcake book for Christmas, I have been quite keen to make as many different types of cupcakes as possible. My cupcakes used to be quite tasteless but with these new recipes, everything is turning out delicious. I have baked the carrot cupcakes twice, once for a friend's birthday, and both times were just as good.

These chocolate and orange cupcakes also turned out really light and delicious. The orange cream cheese icing complemented the cupcakes very well but they were yummy without as well. In this instance, my boss was quick to grab one early in the morning, especially since the boys in my team were back!

I also used my new silicone heart-shaped cupcake cases but they were not as non-stick as expected. In the end, some of the cupcakes got stuck and did not come out of the cases intact. Must remember to grease them next time!

There was only 1 cupcake left at the end of the day out of 12! A pretty good result considering there was chocolate cake as well which means everyone was high on chocolate that Monday!

Chocolate & Raisin Cake!

Chocolate cake candidate No. 3!

This was originally meant to be a chocolate and date sandwich cake but I substituted the dates for raisins as I personally find dates a tad too dry. The filling was meant to be made from double cream and fromage frais. Unfortunately I could not find any fromage frais so used quark cheese instead.

Quark cheese is basically almost zero fat cheese and I have to say not that tasty compared to regular cream cheese. But of course, things that are not good for you i.e. full fat cream cheese are always delicious! The cake itself turned out delicious and really moist but I definitely got marked down for the filling.

This cake scored 3.89 out of 5!

Lemon & Raisin Cupcakes!

These are really delicious lemon and raisin cupcakes! They were originally meant to be plain lemon cupcakes but I could not resist adding 80g raisins to make them yummier. Icing is a mixture of lemon juice, water and icing sugar which complemented the cupcakes perfectly. As 3/4 of my team were out of town, I decided to feed some cupcakes to clients who were visiting for a meeting with us and happily, they seemed to like them. Also, because I only had 10 cupcakes, I did not 'advertise' them as usual and the next thing I know, my boss was asking 'these are not the advertised chocolate cake!' but he ate one all the same. These cupcakes were finished in 2 days!

Top Layer Chocolate Cake!

This is the chocolate layer cake recipe from 'The Primrose Bakery'. The exact recipe is twice the height of this cake as it is meant to be a layer cake but I halved the recipe just to make one layer. I was very glad I halved the recipe when I saw the size of this finished cake. The buttercream icing has melted chocolate in it which makes it quite yummy and not so sweet.

This is Chocolate cake candidate No. 2 for my friend's little girl birthday. I chose to decorate this with sugar yellow and purple stars but of course you can decorate it with anything you like. I saw a fabulous princess cake topper in Lakeland which would look great as well.

Will update on taste tomorrow!

Update - The cake has been well-received and the buttercream icing raved about. Interestingly, the Husband is the only person who thought last week's cake was better as the icing is not chocolaty enough! This cake has been rated 4.25 out of 5!

Carrot Cupcakes!

These are seriously yummy carrot cupcakes without icing! This recipe is from 'The Primrose Bakery' book given to me for Christmas. Although I have only tried 2 recipes, I think it is a really good book with gorgeous pictures of the finished products and all kinds of icing suggestions to make the cupcakes even yummy!

The glisten on the cupcakes is definitely not grease but the moistness of the cupcakes from carrots and raisins. The hardest bit is grating 225g of carrots which took quite some time as well as spooning the runny mixture into the cupcake tins without dripping everywhere! I wonder if I can find an automatic grater at some point. The recipe stated I would get 15 cupcakes but I ended up with only 10, which I was not too disappointed with as they are big muffin-size ones!

I chose not to make the icing as the Husband has kindly requested for me to reduce his calorific intake. :) The Husband had one for dessert at lunch today and pronounced it 'quite good'.

Another hit with the office! Everyone loved them!

Update: I baked another 14 carrot cupcakes for a friend's birthday cake just enough to form her first name initial. I topped them with orange cream cheese icing and they went really well together. I managed to convince my dinner guests to take 2 each home with them so that I would not get fat eating the reminder all by myself!

A Day at Cookery School!

Despite my ability to bake, I have to confess I have no idea how to cook. My new year resolution is to find out if I can cook and if I actually enjoy it. Hence, the decision to sign up for a one day course at the Edinburgh School of Food & Wine, unsurprisingly named Panic Free Entertainment. To make sure I knew what I was signing up for, I emailed the School to find out if it was appropriate for a complete beginner which they assured me it was for.

I have to confess I was really apprehensive on the day itself and I turned up to a class of 11. The menu for the day was chicken casserole with puff pastry to start, pork tenderloin 'espana' for the main and orange cinnamon creme brulee for pudding. The idea behind this menu is all the dishes can be made in advance and just reheated on the day of entertaining.

The day started with a demonstration of how to make the creme brulee and then we were paired up to do it ourselves. I think making the pudding was the easiest dish out of 3 with the boiling of cream, milk, cinnamon and orange zest and then add in egg yolks, sugar & vanilla extract. The final mixture was then baked for 20 mins. Fortunately, I didn't need to light the blowtorch myself but I did caramelise the creme brulee.

Next, we had the demonstration for the chicken casserole. The puff pastry was ready-made so just had to cut and bake. The chicken casserole turned out very yummy with chicken, bacon, mushrooms, shallot and carrots with cream. It is easily scalable to main course portions and I think it can be accompanied with rice if I cannot be bothered with the puff pastry. To reheat, just add more cream.

The main course was the most fiddly. We started with dauphinoise potatoes which were not that tasty probably due to the fact that I forgot to add salt and pepper to season. :) I think I will stick to buying them from the supermarket. We then started with braising the red cabbage, which boiled happily away on the stove for 40 mins.

As the cabbage was braising, we started work on the chorizo which was fried with peas and shallots. The tenderloin was butterfly-cut and stuffed with the chorizo mixture before getting wrapped up in parma ham and then cooked in the oven.

Lessons learnt
1) Remember to season - salt and pepper really makes all the difference.
2) Ingredients are substitutable - tarragon can be changed for basil/thyme & grain mustard can be changed for horseradish.
3) It is very much easier when you have all the ingredients weighed and measured before you start cooking. One of my biggest fears is having to search for ingredients in a supermarket and not being able to find them!
4) The best thing about these dishes were that you can leave them longer than timed in the oven and they will still survive the experience.

The only regret is that I forgot to take pictures of the dishes to show off! Maybe the idea is to reproduce the dishes at home and then I can take the pictures for show.

Now....maybe I should start thinking about a Thai Cookery class....

White Chocolate Cherry Brownies!

I bought 800g of glace cherries during the sale and so decided I need to bake something with them as they do take up lots of space in the cupboard! I found this white chocolate and cherry brownie recipe online which lookd tasty enough. It is made up of melted white chocolate, butter, sugar and flour and the glace cherries were folded in as the last stage. Will let you know how it taste in due course!

This has turned out really yummy and the Husband had 2 pieces for dessert last night!