Cookie Dough Cupcakes

These are easy and very, very yummy! I used this recipe as a base for the cupcake and filled the cases to about half way with the mix, and placed a teaspoon sized blob of cookie dough on top - I used this ‘Betty Crocker’ cookie mix.

 
The cookie part kind of sunk towards the bottom, I had envisioned it sitting up the top and cooking on the top and being semi raw on the inside but it still worked even though it sunk.

Yummo!!!

I frosted them with a vanilla butter cream and added a couple of tablespoons of the left over cookie dough to the mix (you can add to taste).
*NOTE: If I was doing this again I would remove choc drops or use a mix that has choc chips opposed to drops, as it was quite hard to pipe with such large bits blocking the nozzle.

Vanilla Buttercream:
125g butter
3-4 cups sifted icing sugar (depends on the consistency you are after)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons milk

Beat the butter until it is light and fluffy.
Add your first two cups of icing sugar, vanilla and 1 tablespoon of milk and beat.
Continue to add icing sugar and milk until you get the right consistency.

While I was putting this together I was thinking about ‘Cookie Monster’ – I mean who loves cookies more than him! So I used the same cupcake and made these…

  Nom, nom, nom!

To decorate the cookie monsters I topped them with vanilla buttercream, dipped them in blue sugar crystals, rolled fondant to shape the eyes and dotted them with a chocolate fudge pen. I used a chocolate chip cookie for the mouth. Not too bad for a first attempt and a very cute idea for kids.

Free New Zealand wide Farmers’ Market Cooking demonstrations

Farmers' Markets New Zealand, in conjunction with the REAL New Zealand Festival, are running a national series of FREE Farmers' Market cooking and producer demonstrations.  The aim is to highlight the very best of local Farmers' Market food, along with NZ's top chefs.  New Zealand’s first ‘master chef’, Brett McGregor and Julie Biuso are just a couple of the chefs involved in this programme which is runs from September 4th to October 23rd.

Check out the schedule of events on the official website or have a look on facebook to find out what chef is going to be cooking near you.

Awesome idea huh?  Go watch and become inspired by the chefs (there will be live video so you won’t miss anything), then everything you need to get creative in the kitchen is at the farmers’ market ready for you to take home :)

Chocolate Berry Cheesecake

My mum made this Chocolate Berry Cheesecake the other day and bought around some slices for my flatmates and I.  Love.  The top of it is a little dented up from the tin foil she wrapped it up in, but that didn’t stop it tasting damn good.

I’ve got the recipe; it’s a pretty easy one as it uses a store brought pre-made filling :)

250 grams sweet plain chocolate biscuits
100 grams butter, melted
425 gram can boysenberries in syrup
500 gram pottle cheesecake filling (mum used the Tararua brand stuff)
2 teaspoons gelatin

Process the biscuits to fine crumbs in a food processor.  Stir in the butter.  Press into the base of a 23cm loose-bottom flan tin.  Refrigerate until required.

Drain and reserve the juice from the boysenberries.  Beat together the drained boysenberries and cheesecake mix until smooth.  Spread into the prepared biscuit base.  Refrigerate for one hour.

Sprinkle the gelatin over the reserved boysenberry juice and when it has been absorbed, warm in the microwave for 2 minutes on high and stir until dissolved.  Cool.  Pour over the chilled cheesecake and refrigerate for a further hour before serving.

Thanks for the cheesecake Mum!

Chocolate Beer Cake

It is Father’s Day next Sunday (4 September) and after a bit a playing with a couple of different recipes I found on the net, I bring you the perfect ‘blokey’ cake to make for your Father, Husband or Partner to say “thanks for being a great Dad!”  Apart from the fact that this cake uses two of most Dad’s favourite things to consume (beer and chocolate), it is absolutely delish and will be enjoyed by the whole family.
Ingredients:1 cup of beer (I used some of Shane’s homebrewed beer – he is becoming quite the brew master, but I’d recommend using your Dad’s favourite)
120g butter
¾ cup cocoa
2 cups sugar
75g sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Method:Preheat your oven to 180˚C, and grease a round bundt pan (You could use a normal pan, I’m sure it would be fine).
In a large bowl sift flour and baking soda together and set aside until needed.
Whisk the sour cream, eggs and vanilla together in a small bowl.
Pour one cup of beer into a large saucepan over medium heat.
Dice up the butter into chunks and drop them into the beer to allowing them to melt slowly while stirring occasionally.
Once butter is melted, whisk in the cocoa powder and white sugar until you have a rich, dark, chocolaty mixture.  Add your egg, sour cream, vanilla mixture to the chocolate mixture and whisk together.
Combine the liquid with the flour and baking soda until mixed.
Pour into your greased bundt pan, and bake for about 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Take the pan out of the oven and cool for about 15 minutes in the tin before turning it out on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Check out how beautifully dark and chocolaty looking the cooling cake is!

Once cooled completely I recommend icing it with a cream cheese icing and decorating with some chocolate shavings.

Enjoy and ‘Happy Father’s Day’ to all the fantastic Dad’s out there, I hope you all have wonderful days with your children and grandchildren next week.  I would like to wish Shane a very happy first Father’s Day – he is an amazing Dad and Max is extremely lucky. Also Happy Father’s Day to my Daddy – I love you.

Shane and Max

My Dad with Max

Celebrities In The Kitchen!

Sylvia Park shopping center (in Auckland) and PlaceMakers are offering shoppers the chance to win a $10,000 PlaceMakers kitchen and $5,000 worth of Parmco appliances, as well as some other smaller kitchen related prizes. You can find out more by clicking here.

As part of the promotion a number of celebrity chefs/bakers will be running demonstrations in the PlaceMakers kitchen at Sylvia Park.

Dates and Times of Celebrities in the PlaceMakers Kitchen are as follows:

MARK TILSON - INTERNATIONAL CHEF FOR WAGAMAMA
Saturday 20 August and Sunday 21 August 2011
11.30am - 1.30pm - 3.30pm

ANNABEL LANGBEIN - THE FREE RANGE COOK
Saturday 27 August 2011
1.30pm to 3.30pm.

EMMA FREEMAN - NEW ZEALAND'S HOTTEST HOME BAKER, RUNNER UP
Sunday 28 August 2011
11.30am - 1.30pm - 3.30pm

BRETT MCGREGOR – WINNER NZ MASTER CHEF SEASON 1
Saturday 3 September 2011
11.30am - 1.30pm - 3.30pm

NADIA LIM – WINNER NZ MASTER CHEF SEASON 2
Sunday 4 September 2011
11.30am - 1.30pm - 3.30pm

Sylvia Park will upload all the celebrities recipes on a weekly basis, you can find the recipes here and have a go at cooking/baking them at home yourself.

So if you are in Auckland and are looking for something to do (for free!!!) over the next few weekends head along to Sylvia Park and check out the demonstrations and if you decide to shop up a storm you might even find yourself the winner of a new kitchen!

Cookie Dough Brownies

A few weeks ago I saw a cookie dough inspired post on ‘Love From The Oven’, a blog I follow – it reminded me of these amazing but incredibly easy brownies my idol ‘Bakerella’ made a couple of years ago,  I hadn’t attempted them as yet as we didn’t have some of her “cheat” ingredients here in New Zealand.  Sure enough Bakerella’s brownies were featured further down the post so I went back and looked at the original and decided that I could definitely make them (by swapping out the ‘Hershey’s Brownie Mix’ with another Betty Crocker mix – I used ‘Triple Chocolate Fudge’) and so can you!  They are super easy but sure to impress, all you need is:

 
Follow the instructions on the boxes, making the brownies first, pouring the mix into your tin or dish then placing blobs of the made up cookie mixture on top.  If the cookie dough doesn’t sink into the mix just give it a gentle push down.

 Pre cooking

Then place in the oven and bake according to the boxes instructions for temperature and about 30-35 minutes.

Baked Brownie (sorry about the photo quality – it was night time).

Now at this point you could allow your brownie to cool, cut it into slices and eat by itself or dusted with icing sugar.  Me, I took a lead out of Bakerella’s book and covered mine with a chocolate ganache – the hardest part about doing this is waiting for the ganache to set!

Chocolate Ganache:
1 Cup Cream
50 grams Butter
120 grams Dark Cooking Chocolate (cut up roughly)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before the boiling stage.  Pour over the chocolate.
Let stand about 30 seconds and stir until smooth.
Pour over brownies and let set before cutting (to help mine along I put the dish in the fridge to set).

Next time I make these I think I will try using ‘Natalie’s Brownie’ recipe, which I’m sure will only make them better!  Give them a go and if you get around to making them using Natalie’s brownie recipe before me, let me know how they turned out by leaving a comment.

Thank you Bakerella and thank you Betty Crocker!
(You will all be thanking me too – once you give them a go)

It’s someone else's half birthday…

Ours!  Just like Max the other day, Baking Makes Things Better is celebrating a half birthday.  We are one and a half!  Yep, back in February 2010 I set up this blog, told Courtenay, made her my co-author and Baking Makes Things Better was born.  I had the idea of writing a reflection kind of post a while back but I had missed our actual birthday in Feb – I was starting back at work for the year and Courtenay was just a little bit busy with having a baby.  A lot has happened in a year and a half!

Awww, our old banner!

Anyways, I am pretty proud of what we have achieved with our blog during this time and what it has become.  We’ve picked up a few new skills on the computer, experimented with our photography and tried loads of new recipes.

During our year and a half we tried baking things we have always wanted to attempt.  Courtenay gave Red Velvet Cake and Macaroons a try and I experimented with making Lemon and Chocolate Tarts and Whoopie Pies.

Courtenay made many, many cupcakes in lot of different flavours – all decorated with beautiful icing.

And I developed a love for baking that involves lemon :)

We’ve also hosted a couple of High tea’s.

And Courtenay has started making a cake a month to hone her icing skills for Max’s first birthday cake!

I still love the first recipes that I posted about; I think Mint Chocolate Truffles are something I will always go back to making time and time again (and Courtenay still loves Red Velvet Cake).  Although, the Chocolate Hazelnut Slice has become a bit of a rival…

One thing I think we have both enjoyed during this time is seeing the blog grow.  We’ve had visitors from all over the world, we have gained new followers on blogger and facebook, and it is awesome reading all of your comments.

Your favourite posts have been anything to do with cupcakes, brownies, Oreos, Mars Bars and cheesecake!  Or recipes that are a combo of these things!
Over our first year and a half some of our most viewed posts by you, our readers, have been…

Marshmallow Brownie Cupcakes

Mars Bar Cupcakes

Baileys and Mars Bar Cheesecake

Oreo Cupcakes

Raspberry Macaroons

Oreo Cheesecake

Caramel Brownie

Thank you for following our blog and we look forward to bringing you many more recipes!

Tropical Muffins

Hello, I'm Melissa's flatmate, Ashley.  Usually I benefit from Melissa's baking hobby, but last week the tables turned.  I needed to use up a mango that was a ticking time bomb of ripeness.  After searching online for "mango recipes", I found quite a few variations on muffins and decided to cobble one together. The results were great! They didn't stick around for very long. Here's the recipe I used, with my variations in brackets:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (thanks Melissa! I borrowed some from you :)
½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, lightly beaten
¾ cup vegetable oil (Holy crap that seems like a lot! You can replace some of the oil with applesauce. I didn't have any so I used all the oil. I also didn't have any plain vegetable oil so I used extra virgin olive oil. Me Gusta. If you were my mom, you might use mayonnaise, which sounds weird but is actually delicious in baked goods.)
1 tablespoon lime juice (I didn't have any so I used lemon juice instead)
2 cups diced ripe mango (my mango was very ripe, so I pureed it instead)
1 medium ripe banana, mashed (my mango only yielded 1 cup, so I used a large banana, and added enough orange juice to bring the total amount of fruit up to 2 liquid cups)
½ cup raisins (ew, gross. I omitted these)
½ cup chopped walnuts (my husband in allergic, so I replaced the walnuts with shredded coconut instead)

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  In another bowl, combine the eggs, oil and lime (or lemon) juice; add to the dry ingredients just until moistened.  Stir in the mango, banana, raisins (Yuck. Omit.) and nuts (substitute with coconut to avoid killing your allergic loved ones).

Fill paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.  Bake at 350˚F (175˚C) for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.  If you're anything like my husband and you hate paper muffin liners with an irrational passion, you can do what I did, which is to grease the muffin pans first with butter, then coat them with shredded coconut instead of the typical flour.  It results in a tasty and cute alternative.  The recipe yielded about 20, but I wish I did them a bit bigger, so I would recommend condensing it into 18 cups max.

Enjoy!

Auckland’s Newest Dining District: Wynyard Quarter

 Part of North Wharf – Wynyard Quarter

Today Shane, Max and I took a family trip to Wynyard Quarter – an area of the waterfront in inner city Auckland, which has been redeveloped just in time for the upcoming Rugby World Cup.  The area opened to the public last weekend and there are plenty of places to dine along North Wharf and Jellicoe Street, whether you felt like picking up a gelato and exploring the area or sitting down at a cafe for a bite, or perhaps something more substantial from one of the bistro’s, gastro-pubs, ethnic restaurants, or the Auckland Fish Market where you can pick up the kiwi classic fish n chips if that is more your thing.  Whatever your tastes, I’m sure you will find it (if you would like to check what is on offer in advance of your trip you can find out here or here) .

Rushworth cafe (pictured centre) is where I will be heading on my next trip to sample their selection of home baking

Urban Turban had very funky decor

 Sanford and Auckland Fish Market offer an array of delights for seafood lovers 

Unfortunately, we were so busy looking around the area and checking everything out that by the time it came to walking back past the eateries it was bang on lunch time and everything absolutely packed so we decided it was best to pack Max (who was also due for lunch) in the car and head off.  However, we will definitely be going back and I think it is a must see/do for visitors to Auckland and Aucklander’s  alike.

Besides the food some of the other neat things Wynyard Quarter offers are tram rides that allow you to explore the sights and save your feet, a playground for the kids, a viewing bridge that offers great views of the marina, harbour and silo park (which will host markets, outdoor cinema and live entertainment over the summer months).  You can even make your way from Wynyard Quarter to the Viaduct via a new bridge that links the two.

Viewing bridge – Silo Park

Playground – Silo Park

 Functional sculpture – Silo Park

Tram

 Walk to the Viaduct

So if you feel like a day out and don’t know what to do, I would recommend heading to Wynyard Quarter.  If you do let us know what you thought and where you ate – it may help me to be more decisive next time.

Banana Biscotti

I made this as a treat for the babies at Max’s 6 month birthday party, it went down an absolute treat and is able to be enjoyed by teething babies and anybody else that fancies a piece.  If you're worried your baby may bite off a piece you could wrap the biscuit in muslin.

Ingredients:
½ cup ripe mashed banana
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 large egg yolk
2 (packed down) tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup self-raising flour (sifted)
pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons water if necessary

Turn the oven on to 160˚C.
Mash the banana with a fork on a board, once mashed place it in a measuring cup to ensure you have the right amount – I found one small banana was about right, then put into a medium-sized bowl with the egg yolk, vanilla and brown sugar.
Sift in the flour and salt.  Fold everything together until the flour is dampened, without over mixing, adding water if the mixture seems thicker than a muffin batter.
Line the long sides and bottom of a loaf tin with a strip of baking paper, then spoon in the mixture. Level its top with the back of a wet spoon.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes, until a skewer or toothpick comes out cleanly, then take your loaf from the oven, remove from the baking tin and cool on a rack.  The loaf should be a pale colour, not golden brown.
Turn down the oven to 125˚C.
When the loaf is cool or cold, cut it into 5-10mm slices (depending on how thick you would like your pieces) with a sharp, serrated knife (they don't taste very good at this stage).
Lie the slices in one layer on a cooling rack or oven rack and bake them again at the lower temperature for 20 minutes, or until the slices are golden brown and crisp right through (you will need to take one from the oven and cool it before you can check that it is dry in the middle).  Watch carefully, since the flavour is spoilt if the biscotti brown too much.

Store in airtight jars for up to two weeks, but, if your baby is anything like Max or the others we had around here it won’t last that long!

 Max and his friend Kaitlin enjoying some biscotti together

Max’s 6 Month Cake!

My little dude turned six months old yesterday!  We had a little party with our coffee group friends to celebrate.  It was lots of fun and a great excuse to make another fun cake.  When I turned six months old my parents bought a birthday cake and cut it in half to celebrate, subsequently this was done when each of my little sisters turned six months old and was a tradition I thought I’d continue.  I had seen this cake in ‘The Australian Women’s Weekly – Kids Birthday Cakes’ book (which by the way is a must have if you are a Mum!) and had actually made it for my nephew when he turned six months old (five years ago) and thought crescent moon = half moon = half cake = cute nursery shape = PERFECT!  So instead of cutting a cake in half I basically decorated half a cake.  However, I completely forgot to pick up some licorice for the eye and mouth decoration as well as the border that the book suggests using, so I ended up putting together some black icing and piping it on.

Although Max and his friends were a little young for cake the Mum’s enjoyed it on their behalves and I made a batch of banana biscotti for the kids to enjoy which went down a treat (recipe to follow).

Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

 
I made these by adapting the ‘Banana Cake’ recipe that I posted last year. They were delicious!

Ingredients:
150g butter (softened)
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 large ripe bananas (diced into small pieces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons hot milk
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ cup of chocolate chips

Icing:
50g butter
2 ½ – 3 cups icing sugar (sifted)
200g cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
Add bananas one at a time, again beating well after each addition. 
Stir baking soda into hot milk and add to mixture. 
Sift flour and baking powder into mixture and fold. 
Pour in chocolate chips and gently stir through.
Place mixture into a cupcake papers (filling to just over half way) and bake at 180˚C for 15 minutes or until the cupcake springs back when lightly touched (or until you can insert and then remove a skewer cleanly). 
Cool and ice with a cream cheese icing and decorate with extra chocolate chips.