Red Velvet Cupcakes

Right, I'm back! Since I moved to Ballarat I've been struggling to find the time to do my blog. I have no idea why that is because I probably have more time on my hands than I ever have! That and I guess I don't have as many excuses to bake anymore. But anyway... I'm back and I hope to get back to posting regularly!

As promised - here are the Red Velvet Cupcakes I made for our Girls' Weekend in Daylesford. I didn't go with the traditional frosting (because I wanted to make them pretty!) so I'm not sure if these still qualify as Red Velvet or if they're just chocolate cakes coloured red!

Cute cupcakes for my girls!

THE RECIPE

This one is a Nigella Lawson favourite. Start by preheating the oven to 170c and lining 2 x 12 hole muffin tins. Combine 250g plain flour, 2 tbsp cocoa, 2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarb soda in a bowl. In another bowl (I used an electric mixer), cream 100g soft unsalted butter and 200g caster sugar. When the mixture is soft and pale, beat in 1 tsp red food colouring (I know it seems like a lot but that's what makes these so special!) and 2 tsp vanilla extract. Keep the beaters going and add 1 spoonful of the dry ingredients followed by 1 egg, then the rest of the dry ingredients and another egg. Finally, beat in 175ml buttermilk and 1 tsp vinegar. If you can't get buttermilk, just use normal milk, remove a teaspoon of it and replace it with another teaspoon of vinegar. Divide the mixture between the cases and bake for 20 minutes.

The colour of the mixture is incredible!

Make sure you let the cakes cool completely before you attempt to ice them. I made my own chocolate buttercream but like I said, you may want to use a cream cheese frosting to be true to the idea of Red Velvet Cupcakes!

Two of the best - choc-chip biscuits

A good choc chip biscuit is one of life's simple pleasures. I'll admit that you can get good ones at the supermarket and bakery but there's something about a good homemade biscuit that you can't go past. For me it's getting them out of the oven, carefully transferring them to the rack and then watching them crisp up as they cool. All of that said, it's taken me ages to find a good recipe and I've learnt that you have to watch them like a hawk when you bake them - a couple of minutes too long and you can wreck a whole batch.

So here are two of my favourites - Janelle Bloom's condensed milk choc chip biscuits and Nigella Lawson's totally chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

Janelle Bloom's condensed milk choc-chip biscuits



These ones are from a recipe book I bought my Mum for her birthday one year. We had a bit of a tradition when I was doing uni of sitting down at lunch time and watching Ready, Steady, Cook and Janelle always made the most incredible baked treats and desserts. These biscuits are just one example!

THE RECIPE
Preheat your oven to 180c (170c if using the fan) and line four big baking trays with baking paper - we're making around 40 biscuits here, depending on how much mixture you eat on the way!

Grab your electric mixer and pop into the bowl 250g butter (softened and chopped), 1/2 cup caster sugar  and half a tin of condensed milk. Beat until pale and creamy. Sift 2 1/2 cups plain flour and 3 1/2 tsps baking powder over the top of the butter mixture and mix until just combined. Add 375g choc chips and stir until well distributed.

Roll heaped teaspoons of the mixture into balls and place onto the baking trays, leaving a little bit of room for them to spread. Flatten a little with a fork.

Bake two trays at a time for 9-12 minutes. Stand for five minutes on the trays and then transfer to wire racks to cool.

Nigella Lawson's Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
 ( minus my good camera :(

Ok, so these biscuits right here are the definition of comfort food! You could not possibly get any more chocolate into them if you tried - even I had trouble getting through a whole one in one go (I did manage though - tough gig but someone has to do it). When I saw Nigella making them on her show, she was making them for a girlfriend who had just broken up with her man - like I said, perfect comfort food.

THE RECIPE

Preheat your oven to 170c (remember to lower it a bit if you don't have the option of turning the fan off in your oven - I forgot and had the fan on and they cooked a bit too quickly). Line two large baking trays with baking paper.

Melt 125g dark chocolate in the microwave and set aside to cool a little. Put 150g plain flour, 30g cocoa, 1 tsp bicarb and 1/2 tsp salt into a bowl. Use your electric mixer to cream together 125g butter, 75g brown sugar and 50g white sugar until pale and creamy. Add the melted chocolate and mix to combine. Then add 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 cold egg. It's interesting that the recipe calls for a cold egg because all good bakers know that all your ingredients should be at room temperature but the lady that taught Nigella this incredible recipe says the egg is to be cold, so cold it is!

Mix in the combined dry ingredients and then finally 350g dark choc chips. Scoop 12 equal mounds onto the trays - one of those ice cream scoops with the release handle works best but I just used my 1/4 cup measure. Don't flatten the mounds.

Place the trays into the oven. It should take around 18 minutes for the biscuits to cook - check them from time to time. You should get some fudgy cake crumbs sticking to the tester but no raw mixture. You'll have to try and avoid the hundreds of choc chips to get an accurate idea!

Remove from the oven, leave to cool on the trays for 5 minutes or so and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely (minus the one that you HAVE to eat while it's still warm - incredible!)

Nigella's Molten Chocolate Baby Cakes

So Nigella calls these Molten Chocolate Babycakes. The chefs would call them Chocolate Fondants. Some people call them Chocolate Lava Cakes or Soft Centred Chocolate Puddings. Whatever you call these little gems, they have one thing in common - they are incredible!

I'd have to say this is my favourite dessert. The first time I made these, my sister and I talked about them for days. They were so delicious; I think I made them three nights in a row!

So here I go again with my chocolate and raspberry combo. For me, you just can't go past it. It's the bomb. End of story.

THE RECIPE

For something so tasty, these things are fairly easy - I don't do difficult! Start by getting 6 ramekins, greasing them and lining the bottoms with some baking paper. Preheat the oven to 200c. Melt 350g dark chocolate using spurts in the microwave. Nigella says to use the best quality dark chocolate you can get but it can be pretty expensive - I get one block of the good stuff and mix it with the cadbury old gold. Set it aside to cool.

Cream together 50g butter and 150g caster sugar then add 4 large eggs, beating well between each addition. Mix in a pinch of salt and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Add 50g plain flour, mix until smooth and then scrape in the chocolate and mix gently to combine.

Resist the temptation to eat the mixture!

Divide the batter between the ramekins and sit them on a baking tray. Nigella doesn't do it in her recipe, but I learnt somewhere that you should put them in the fridge at this stage for half an hour or so. It helps them to set a bit and hold their form. The whole idea with fondants is that they're still squishy in the middle so putting them in the fridge helps that outer crust to sit a little firmer. From the fridge, pop them into the oven for 10-12 minutes. I sometimes leave them a little longer because I get scared that they won't come out of the moulds properly but if you want a true fondant, 12 minutes will do it!

Now, you can serve them however you want - cream, ice-cream, some mascapone with vanilla would be nice. You know me though... I put some vanilla ice-cream and some raspberries with it! I used to cook the raspberries up with caster sugar and sieve it to make a coulis but now I just pop the raspberries and sugar in the microwave for a minute or so and pour them straight over the top - just as tasty and much less effort!

Enjoy!

P.S - first recipe in my new house! The oven works well :)

Nigella's chocolate cloud cake

I saw Nigella cook this on her TV show while I was home sick recently and knew I had to try it! The end result didn't disappoint - my sister honestly ate a half of it and the rest disappeared very quickly!



It lasted just long enough for me to get a photo...

 THE RECIPE

This one is surprisingly easy. Nigella gives it an orange twist with zest and Cointreau but I've never been a fan of the whole choc-orange thing so I left it out and just used vanilla extract instead.

As usual, preheat your oven to 180c and line your cake tin (I used a springform tin).

Melt 250g of dark chocolate in the microwave, being careful not to let it burn. I used one block of good quality 85% cocoa chocolate and made the rest up with Old Gold (the good stuff is damn expensive!) Get 125g unsalted butter and stir it into the melted chocolate until it's smooth and glossy and looks delicious!

Place two whole eggs and four egg yolks (save the whites for later) into an electric mixer with 75g caster sugar and beat until the mixture is light and creamy then slowly add the chocolate mixture and 1 tsp vanilla extract and keep beating until combined. In a separate bowl beat the four egg whites until they're foamy and then gradually add 100g caster sugar. Beat until the whites are holding their shape but not too stiff.

Add a third of the whites mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir in to stabalise the mixture. Then add the rest of the whites and fold very gently to keep in as much air as possible. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes until the cake has cracked and isn't wobbly in the centre. Pop it onto a tray to cool. This is the part where I would have freaked out if I hadn't have read the recipe right through before I started - because the cake is flourless it will sink in the middle quite a bit as it cools. But it's all good!

Once the cake has cooled, whip up some cream and vanilla and fill the crater of the cake with it. Nigella sprinkles the top with a bit of cocoa through a fine sieve but I got some gorgeous fresh raspberries (surprise!) from the supermarket and popped them on top instead.

So we ate half of it straight away and then put the rest into the fridge. The next day it was even better - the cold had made it nice and fudgey in the middle - delicious!

Nigella's Swedish Summer Cake

My sister and I got my Mum Nigella's latest book for Christmas. If I'm being entirely honest, I think we've used it more than she has so far! I just love what Nigella does... everything she makes looks incredible and this was one I couldn't flip past.

It was surprisingly easy to make. I must admit, I did get a little freaked out by the photos and Nigella's comment that it didn't matter if you couldn't slice it perfectly in three - it would taste just as good if it was falling apart - I can't work like that!

The cake was absolutely delicious! It disappeared very quickly and was just the cake I needed... I happened to be going through a fairly difficult time when I made it. The only thing I would do differently next time is to use plain thickened cream (still beaten though of course) on the top instead of double cream. I found that after it had been in the fridge for a little while the double cream went a bit hard and wasn't that pleasant to eat - a shame on day two when the rest of the cake tastes even better with the strawberry flavour having gone right through!

I'm going back to put this one up - these are just photos I took on my phone because I was so impressed with the end result - but in the future I'll be sure to take photos of the steps as well.

                                                              The finished product!

THE RECIPE

1/ The custard
(You can do this in advance, even the day before. It needs to be completely cold before you use it).
Throw into a medium pot 2 egg yolks, 2 tbsp caster sugar, 2 tsp cornflour and 1 cup of full-fat milk. Stir non-stop until it starts to thicken but don't let it boil. Once the mixture has thickened (it will take between 3-5 minutes) take it off the heat and add 1 tsp vanilla essence. Transfer the custard to a cold bowl and keep stirring until it cools a little more. Cut and wet a piece of baking paper and sit on top of the custard, cover with cling film and pop in the fridge :)

2/ The cake
Preheat the oven to 180c and prepare your tin (a springform tin, just line the bottom and grease the sides). In an electric mixer, whisk 3 eggs and 250g caster sugar until 'pale, moussy and more than doubled in volume' (I found it took about 10 minutes). Turn the mixer down and gently add 90ml of hot water. Slowly whisk in 1 1/2 tsps baking powder and 150g plain flour - you might need to stop the mixer a couple of times to scrape down the sides and there shouldn't be any lumps in the mixture. Pour it all into the tin and pop it into the oven for about 30 minutes (you'll know when it's done!) Take it out of the oven, leave it to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then carefully take the outside of the tin off. Then let it rest and cool before moving onto the next (and most fun part!) - the assembly.

3/ The assembly
You want 750g of strawberries (a little pricey but SO worth it!). Set aside 250g of these. With the rest, hull them and chop them up - some in halves, some in quarters depending on how big they are. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle with a little caster sugar. They'll need a little time to get juicy and glossy before you put them in the cake - an hour is perfect. Take 500ml double cream and whisk it until it holds its shape. Fold 1/3 of the cream into the custard that you made earlier and set the rest aside. Grab a serrated knife and carefully cut the cake into three (not as hard as it sounds - I promise!) and put the bottom layer onto your serving plate. Top this with half of the custard cream and half of the sugared strawberries. Repeat with the next layer of cake, remaining custard cream and remaining sugared strawberries. Pop the last layer of cake on top, cover with the double cream and put the whole strawberries on the top - you can hull some of them and keep some whole (doesn't sound overly practical to leave the green on but it looks so pretty!)

Tah dah! Looks pretty impressive and tastes even better!

Inside of the cake - yum!