lemon buttercream frosting

This frosting goes perfectly with the lemon cupcakes listed below. It's lovely and quick to make, which is often a bonus if you haven't got hours to spend baking.


Ingredients enough to frost 15 large cupcakes


zest of 1 lemon
300g icing sugar
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
125g cream cheese

1) Beat the icing sugar and butter together until well mixed.

2) Add the cream cheese & lemon zest and beat for a few minutes until your mixture is lovely and fluffy.


If you find the frosting too sweet, just add a bit more cream cheese, or vice versa if it's too cream-cheesy! 

3) Fill a piping bad fitted with your nozzle of choice and pipe away, starting at the outer edge of the cake & swirling inwards. Or, spread onto the cake using a small pallette knife.

This basic cream cheese frosting is pretty forgiving in terms of quanitites - you can add a bit of this and a bit of that without it going too wrong.

lemon cupcakes

These little zesty bites made up the other half of the cupcake team for the wedding that I baked for last weekend.

They are incredibly simple - essentially a basic sponge recipe with some lemon zest & juice.

Here we go...

Lemon Cupcakes makes 12 large cupcakes, 24 small

ingredients  

225g / 8oz butter at room temp
225g / 8oz caster sugar
225g self raising flour
3 eggs
zest of 1 lemon (if you like super-lemony, use 2!)
a squeeze of lemon juice

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line muffin trays with paper cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.


3) Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a little flour (sieved) after each addition.

4) Fold in the remaining flour & lemon zest.

5) Stir in the lemon juice.

6) Spoon a heaped dessertspoon of mixture into each case, being careful not to overfill to allow space for the frosting.


7) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 - 20mins until going ever so slightly golden around the edges.


8) Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack, ready for frosting.

Cake Count :: 800

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

As promised, here's the recipe for the chocolate buttercream frosting that topped the chocolate wedding cupcakes...

This recipe is originally from joythebaker, who is a most excellent baker & blogger. I highly recommend visiting her little spot in cyberspace.

I have converted the quantities from American measures to metric for those of us who don't work in cups. (For those of you who do, follow the link to joy the baker's blog & they'll be right there for you.)

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting 

makes enough to frost about 40 small cupcakes or 25 large cupcakes

ingredients

170g butter at room temperature
75g cocoa
400g icing sugar
110ml milk
110ml double (heavy) cream
50g ovaltine (or other malt based drink)
2tsp vanilla essence


1) Beat together the butter & cocoa. (It will be quite stiff.)

2) Sieve in the icing sugar & beat to combine.

 

3) Gradually add in the milk & vanilla extract, beating well after each addition to create a smooth consistency.

4) In a measuring jug, stir together the cream & ovaltine.

5) Add a small quantity of the ovaltine mixture to the buttercream and beat to combine. You might not want to use all of the ovaltine mixture, so just keep adding it until it reaches your desired consistency. 
(I was piping the frosting so needed it to be thick enough to keep its shape, but if you're going to be spreading it on & like malty chocolate, add the whole lot!)

6)  Once your frosting has reached the desired consistency, either spread straight onto the cooled cakes, or fill a large piping bag fitted with either a star or round shaped nozzle and pipe away!


7) If using hundreds & thousands, or any other sprinkle to suit your fancy, now's the time to sprinkle away.


photo credits :: Ben Currer

wedding cupcakes

Weddings & cakes, cakes & weddings. These words are music to my ears.

Weddings & cakes & 'Hannah, will you make some cakes for my wedding?'

Well, that's more like an orchestra reaching its crescendo in my ears.

A few months ago, I had the joy of hearing this crescendo which culminates in one thing.

Baking. 

So here's how I rolled for the wedding at the weekend....

The order:

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (like you've never tasted before)
Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

For both types of cake I used very simple & straightforward recipes - the kind you know like the back of your hand. 

The frostings are the most time consuming element for both, but they're worth the effort, promise. So as not to overwhelm you with recipes, I will post them in separate posts.

Chocolate Cupcakes: recipe: from my Mother's kitchen

ingredients

225g / 8oz butter at room temperature
225g / 80z caster sugar
200g self raising flour
25g cocoa
4 eggs

NB: I had been asked to make relatively small cakes for the wedding, therefore these quanities yielded far more than if I had used cupcake cases & trays, but you can use whatever size you like, depending on how little or large you like your cakes to be.

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line your bun trays (whatever size you like) with cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in one egg.

3) Add another egg & sieve in a little flour then beat together. Repeat this for the remaining eggs,

4) Fold in the remaining flour & cocoa (sieved) with a metal spoon. 

(If you are fortunate enough to have a free standing mixer, then you probably just want to mix in the flour on a low speed. If speed is of the essence in your baking, just use electric beaters to mix in the flour. I am still a little old fashioned and like to follow my mother's technique.. She does everything by hand, but I only apply this to folding in where adding air is the main aim to get well-risen cakes.)

5) If your mixture is a little stiff, I would recommend adding a little slosh of milk to loosen it up nicely.

6) Spoon generous desertspoons of mixture into your cupcake cases. If you are using smaller cases, I would suggest using a teaspoon's worth of mixture instead. Be careful not to overfill the cases as you want to allow room for the icing. 

7) Bake in your pre-heated oven for 15 - 18 minutes (smaller cakes will require less time). A little trick my Mother taught me for telling when your cakes are baked is to listen to them. Yep, you read that correctly. Take your tray of piping hot buns and put your ear near to the tray (don't burn yourself though!!). If you can hear a little crackling sound emanating from them, they need a few more minutes. 

Alternatively, you could use a skewer, which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake, but I think this is too much faff for little cakes.

8) When your cakes have had their time in the oven, remove and place on a wire cooling rack. Leave in the tins for a few minutes and then place onto the rack to cool completely before icing.

The recipe for the frosting will be coming soon...

Cake Count :: 753 

heart melters

If I told you that these chocolate bitesize beauties are practically good for you, would you think I was lying to you?

Well, worry not, I would not lie about chocolate, would I.

Last Saturday afternoon, I felt like baking & I felt like chocolate. I remembered the beautifully named chocolate full stops from one of my newest recipe books & thought that now was the perfect time to bake them. 

As I perused the pages of Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache my eyes fell upon the recipe for an August Wedding Cake & my mind wandered to thinking through the practicalities of baking my own wedding cake. I reminded myself that now was not the time to be having such crazy thoughts, I was on a chocolate mission.

Here are a few lessons I learned along the way of my baking journey to making chocolate full stops & how they came to be known by me as heart melters.

:: adapting recipes is a fine & fun thing to do, if you know what you're doing. usually, just changing the kind of tin you bake in is perfectly acceptable. usually, but not always.

:: it really is possible to bake something chocolatey that also boasts a vegetable ingredient.

:: rather than trusting your instincts & cutting out the vegetable ingredient because it seems ever so slightly mad, trust the beautiful woman who designed these recipes & enjoy the feeling of baking rebelliously

(NB: rebellious in this context means not using any butter but using butternut squash instead. Sure, they both have 'butter' in their name, but one is most definitely not butter.)

:: don't mistake an ice cube tray from ikea for a clever silicone tray. it might just melt in the oven.

After reading my lessons for the day, if you feel like you trust me enough to try this, I would highly recommend heart melters as part of your daily diet.


choocolate heart melters

ingredients makes 24

150g peeled, diced butternut squash
50g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
1 egg
60g caster sugar
20g rice flour (or plain flour if you don't have any - I used plain)
20g ground almonds
20g cocoa
2 tsp baking powder

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 / 350. Line two mini muffin trays with petit four cases. If you happen to have silicone mini muffin trays, use these - no greasing or cases required. If you don't have any of the above, just use a baking tray and line up your petit four cases (or any small kind of cake case you can find) in neat little rows.

2) Place the diced butternut squash in a saucepan & cover with water. Bring to the boil & let them bubble away for 6 mins. Drain the water and add the chocolate chunks. Stir together then leave for a couple of minutes before stirring again. The chocolate melts wonderfully from the heat of the squash.

3) Whisk the egg & sugar together in a large mixing bowl for 3 minutes. Add the flour, ground almonds, cocoa & baking powder, and whisk until everything is combined.

4) Having stirred the chocolate & butternut squash together, puree the mixture using a hand held blender, or food processor. Whisk the puree into the egg mixture until combined.

5) Using 2 teaspoons, carefully dollop small amounts of the mixture into each case, then bake in the oven for 12 minutes. (if you use larger cases, they'll probably need 15 - 20 minutes baking time.)

6) Remove from the oven & leave on a wire rack to cool. Or, if you're really desperate to see if this recipe has actually worked, eat them straight out of the oven.


Cake Count :: 703
 

marbly meringue

Why am I stuck on a marble theme at the moment? I have no idea, so I'll just roll with it until something else comes along.

So, this is my latest marbly creation, an adaptation of the Divine Chocolate Book chocolate meringues.

These are meant to be served as mini meringue mountains, but Eaton Mess was the order of the day & I wanted to do something a little more exciting than plain meringue. Knowing that this meringue was going to have a meeting with a rolling pin as soon as it had cooled, I didn't bother with making mini's, I just blobbed it right out of the bowl, onto the tray.

With a little bit of necessary fiddling with oven temperatures during cooking, the meringue couldn't have turned out more perfect.

Now, I don't know about you, but both John & I love meringue that it as chewy as possible - the joy is in the chew rather than the crunch - wouldn't you agree?

Unwittling, adapting the temperature during cooking & changing the cooking times seemed to be the perfect little trick for getting the texture right. In the recipe, I'll give you the official times stated & the Hannah times, so you can choose, depending on what you prefer.

chocolate meringue
ingredients
100g chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
3 egg whites
a pinch of cream of tartar
175g caster sugar
1. Preheat the oven to 120C / Gas mark 1/2 / 250F

2. Break up the chocolate & melt in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave. Once melted, remove from heat
3. In a clean mixing bowl, whist the egg whites until almost stiff, then pour in the sugar & cream of tartar & whisk briefly until stiff. (my mixture was not particularly stiff, which might also have affected the overall texture)

4. Drizzle the chocolate over the meringue mixture, then fold in using a metal spoon. To make the most of your marbling, only fold 3-4 times.
5. Scrape the meringue mixture onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, in one big old heap. Or, if you'd like to make smaller meringues, dollop dessertspoons-full onto the tray, evenly spaced.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for two hours until firm. (the official way.)

or...
Bake for 30 minutes at 120C then increase the heat to 140 and bake for a further 60 minutes, putting the meringue on a low rack in the oven, then remove after this time. (the Hannah way.)
I then smashed up the meringue in the most loving way possible, and ate it with strawberries & cream. Yum.

Cake Count :: 679

italian chocolate marbled cheesecake

This little number is a beauty. 

Until I discovered this recipe, I was rather wary of cheesecakes that called to be baked, having had a run-in with one of Nigella's recipes where you put the cheesecake tin in a basin of water while it baked in the oven. The results were disasterous & inedible.

Having never been let down by the Divine Chocolate Recipe book, I decided that I would brave the baked cheesecake route once again, sans water.

The only quibble (note to self: use the word 'quibble' more frequently - it's fun) I have with this recipe is the quantities for the base ingredients. The last time I baked it, I doubled the quantities and it still was not quite thick enough to compliment the dense height of the cheesecake. The great thing is about making biscuit bases is that if, when you put your crumbly buttery mixture into the tin & it doesn't look like enough, it takes hardly anytime at all to blitz up a bit more. I'll give you the doubled quantity that I used, but I would recommend doubling again!

italian chocolate marbled cheesecake

ingredients

base

100g butter

200g digestive biscuits (feel free to substitute for ginger nuts or butter crunch biscuits, or any crunchy thing you like!)

cream mixture

250 g marscapone

100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

chocolate mixture

300g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

150g unsalted butter, room temperature

3 eggs

100g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 150C / Gas mark 2 / 300F

2. To make the base, crush your biscuits in either a food processor, or, using a rolling pin and a sealable bag to avoid crumbs flying everywhere. Melt the butter in a saucepan or the microwave (being careful not to boil) then stir the two together& press onto the base. Leave in the fridge to chill until it's needed.

3. To make the cream mixture, put the marscapone, sugar and vanilla into a bowl & beat well. Add the egg & beat until smooth. (It will be a very runny mixture, fret not.)

4. To make the chocolate mixture: Break up the chocolate & melt, either in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave. Once melted, stir in the butter (diced) until melted.

5. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence for 3-4 mins until lovely&frothy. Add the melted chocolate mixture to this and whisk to combine.

6. Remove the base from the fridge & spoon 3/4 of the chocolate mixture onto the base. Pour the white cream mixture on top, then dollop the last bit of the chocolate mixture on top of this. Lovingly swirl it all together to create a marbled effect.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 mins until just firm to the touch. Turn the oven off, leaving the tin inside & allow to cool. Once cool, remove from the oven, cover, and leave to chill in the fridge until it's needed.

If you're short for time, as I was when I last baked this, leave in the oven to cool after the cooking time for as long as possible, then remove & just enjoy it at whatever temperature it's at!