Lemon Cupcakes with White Chocolate and L&P Ganache

Everyone seems to be going wild for the new Whittakers L&P chocolate (have you tried it? Thoughts?…) so I decided to give it a go and use it in some baking. I wanted a light, fluffy lemon cupcake and to use the chocolate as frosting. The ganache was a little trickier than I have found it in the past due to the consistency of the chocolate compared to white chocolate melts, if I was making these again I might try a light lemon butter cream and topping each cupcake with finely chopped L&P chocolate, that way the popping candy will really POP!

To make my cupcake base I decided to adapt one of the most popular posts on the blog – Orange Cupcakes – the cupcakes were perfect and even a little lighter that the standard orange cupcakes thanks to a special ingredient…

Ingredients:
Cupcakes
1 ¾ cup flour
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g butter, softened
2 large eggs, separated and whites beaten until stiff
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup L&P
Zest of one lemon

L&P White Chocolate Ganache
250grams Whittakers L&P White Chocolate, roughly chopped
150mls cream

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease, or line a 12 hole muffin tray with cupcake papers.
Combine butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon zest and vanilla in a mixing bowl and cream together thoroughly.
Mix flour, salt, and baking powder together in a separate mixing bowl.  Add dry ingredients to creamed ingredients ⅓ at a time  alternating with adding portions of the L&P to the creamed mixture.
Fold in beaten egg whites.  Spoon batter into cupcake holes until ½ full.
Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.
Cool cupcakes completely before frosting.
To make the ganache put the white chocolate and cream in a glass bowl, place bowl over a pot of simmering water, stirring occasionally until the chocolate is melting and cream is hot (but not boiling).
Remove from the heat and stir to combine into a smooth consistency.
Refrigerate to cool and thicken, this will take at least an hour or two so is best done ahead of time.
Beat the ganache with an electric mixer until it becomes pale and fluffy so that you can pipe it.

Enjoy your Kiwiana cupcakes!

P.S – A big welcome home to Mel and Simon who are back from their OE!

Meet The Pretty Baker!

We have been really lucky to have some wonderful sponsors supporting the work we do here with our blog.  To say thank you, show our appreciation and highlight to you how awesome they are, we are going to have a couple of posts sharing a little bit more about some of the business that have jumped on board to help with the Baking Makes Things Better journey. Last month we posted about The Vintage Table and today we want to let you know all about The Pretty Baker, if you haven’t checked out out all the amazing supplies available on Lisa’s too pretty website, you must!

Who runs (are the people behind) ‘The Pretty Baker’?

Me!  My name is Lisa Courtney. I’m a mum to three little monkey’s; 7, 5 and 2, so you’ll often hear yells of “Muuuuum” in the background when I’m fielding calls, posting orders and kid-wrangling at the same time.

 

Where did the idea for your business come from?

It really all began when I had my first daughter (how cliché is that?!).  After scouring the net for her parties I discovered there was a need for nostalgic party supplies and things that are...well pretty of course!  A friend and I started the search for products we knew other mums would love too and it has just grown from there.

You have an amazing range of products what would you say is your favourite product?

Oooh this one is a tricky one for me, I find it hard to choose just ONE thing.  I would have to say our Ice It Pretty! Icing Kit.  It gives the average home baker confidence to take their cakes and cupcakes to the next level.  I literally use it every few days.  The jumbo tips make icing a breeze and we include our favourite icing recipe so your creations will taste as good as they look.

What are your favourite things to bake?

I definitely bake a LOT of cupcakes but I actually really enjoy making pies.  There’s something therapeutic about making pastry I’m sure!My ‘go to’ cake would be a white chocolate mud cake with Italian meringue frosting.  I like to add freeze dried fruit powders to my icings too.  They look good, are natural and taste amazing.

 

What do you most enjoy about your business?

Gosh there are many things I love about The Pretty Baker.  It never feels like work for a start so that’s a bonus.  I find it exciting to watch it grow, I love interacting with my lovely customers – especially when they’re showing me what they created with our products.
It works around my family so I get the best of both worlds really.  I can play ‘Mum’ but have my own ‘work time’ when no one needs peanut butter removed from their hair.

Where do you go for baking inspiration and ideas?

Occasionally I’ll search the web but I’m pretty old school and love a great baking book.  Some of my favourites would be Hummingbird, Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery, Sprinkle Bakes, The Caker, and Home Baked by the trusty Women’s Weekly of course.  I also love to try out new cafes and bakeries, there are so many talented and crafty people putting their own spin on old favourites.

You have thrown your fair share of parties , what is your favourite?

Well this is even harder to choose just one!!  I honestly LOVE kids parties, it’s one of my favourite things to do.  Even when I’m stressing about it, the cake is failing and the cookies haven’t been started (we all have those days) I still love it.  Seeing them come together and watching all the kids get really into the theme is just awesome.  It helps too that I have some super talented friends, one of which is a party planner that could create a fabulous theme out of chicken wire and feathers.  It’s a good trade – I bake cakes for her parties and she helps make mine look great!
I think my favourite would be our most recent.  The theme was “School Days” to celebrate our daughter Meg’s fifth birthday.  Lots of The Pretty Baker products came to the party (so to speak) including cute apple picks for the cupcakes.  A bookworm cake, pencil place settings, individual lunch boxes filled with delicious treats and paper planes for the kiddies to throw made it a really fun celebration.  The little guests were thrilled to take home school stationery supplies in our gorgeous treat bags.  (You can check out even more parties here on The Pretty Baker’s blog!)

Your products add the special touch to events, what are your 3 must have decorations?

Jumbo balloons always make a great visual impact with little effort required.  Tissue fans in matching or clashing colours.  Mini milk bottles for drinks, flowers or straw holders - so versatile!

Do you have a recipe you’d like to share?

Easy Peasy Rhubarb, Strawberry and Apple Pie

Ingredients:

8 stalks of rhubarb

1 orange

300g of frozen or fresh strawberries

2 Granny Smith apples

¼ cup of sugar

Freeze dried strawberry powder

Sweet short crust pastry (make your own, or store bought is fine!)

Method:
Preheat oven to 180˚C on fan bake. 

Chop rhubarb into 3 cm chunks.  Peel and chop apples into chunks.  Add all your fruit, sugar and juice of one orange to a small pot and simmer till slightly soft.  Set aside to cool slightly. 

Roll your pastry out between two sheets of baking paper (about 1 cm thick) and place in a 22 cm tart tin.  Blind bake for 10 minutes. 

Fill your pastry case with fruit filling.  Top with second sheet of pastry (or get fancy and create a lattice effect).  Brush the top of your pie with a little melted butter or egg wash and sprinkle sugar and freeze dried strawberry powder on top. 

 

Bake for 25-30 minutes.  Serve with vanilla ice cream, or a dash of cream drizzled on top.

For more information and to keep up to date with The Pretty Baker, check out The Pretty Baker on facebook or their website. 

Thanks Lisa for answering our questions and all the support you have given us!

Chocolate Beetroot Fudge Cake

I made this recipe up, but the chef was Simon.  He was pretty pleased with the final result.  I must say, it ended up a pretty impressive looking cake and he did an excellent job. 

I don’t like beetroot, but I can eat this cake.  Simon reckons he can’t notice the beetroot.  I can, but only as an earthy, hard to describe flavour.  I think the beetroot makes this cake taste really rich, like there is lots of melted chocolate in it, when there isn’t, there’s just a bit of cocoa powder.

Our cake is two cakes layered together with chocolate cream and iced with chocolate ganache (recipes are below the cake recipe).  We made two different cake batters, but I think if we were to make a double layer cake again we would make one giant one so that the cakes are the same texture.  The bottom layer of our cake had more beetroot in it (large beetroot) and is more fudgy than the top.  I’ve given the recipe for one cake, so double the quantities if you want to make a layered cake. 


Ingredients:
50g cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
150g brown sugar
175g flour
1 teaspoon salt
160ml sunflower oil
3 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 beetroot, peeled and grated (I recommend wearing gloves to avoid staining your hands)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 170°C.  Grease and / or line a 22cm tin.
In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.
In a medium sized bowl, whisk the wet ingredients together, excluding the beetroot.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined.  Fold through the beetroot.
Bake for 45 – 55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake can be removed cleanly.


Chocolate Cream:
1 cup cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
Beat all the ingredients together until you are happy with the consistency; you do want it quite thick.  Add more icing sugar or cocoa to taste.


Chocolate Ganache:
250ml cream
250g dark chocolate melts

In a medium sized pot heat the cream until bubbles start to form around the edge of the pot, but the cream is not boiling.  Stand for two minutes.  Add the chocolate to the cream and mix until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.  Refrigerate until you are happy with the consistency; we left ours to go reasonably thick but you might like yours to be more runny and drizzle down the sides of the cake.

Cheese and Carrot Crackers

These crackers kind of remind me of some thing my friend Anjana’s Mum bakes.  She’s Indian and my group of friends used to love it when Anjana brought in her Mum’s baking to share with us at school.  I have no idea what any of the things she made were called though, and I think her Mum sometimes reads this blog, so now I am a bit embarrassed.  These might not be anything like her baking and I might be making a fool of myself with my rambling.

Right, moving on.  These crackers are packed with carrot, but you actually can’t tell.  The are soft crackers too, which seems a bit strange at first because they look crunchy, so they aren’t what you are expecting.  However, they are quite addictive.  We had friends over the night I made them and everyone kept reaching for another one to munch on.

Makes about 90 crackers.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon dried mustard
125g butter
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 cup finely grated carrot (about 2 carrots)
¾ cup grated tasty cheese
1 egg yolk

Method:
Place the flour and mustard into a large bowl.  Rub in the butter, pinching it with the flour until it resembles a fine breadcrumb.  Stir in the seeds, carrot, cheese and egg yolk.  Mix until a firm dough has formed.
Knead thee dough on a lightly floured surface until it is smooth.  Cover with cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Prepare some baking trays by lining them with baking paper.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is about 3mm thick.  Using cookie cutters, cut shapes out of the dough and place about 2cm apart on the prepared trays.  Bake for approximately 12 minutes or until lightly browned.  Leave to cool completely on the trays before serving.

Snickers Cheesecake

This was a special request from the youngest of my three baby sisters, she turned 21 a few weeks ago and I wanted to make her a special birthday cake, one of her favourite chocolate bars is Snickers and she loves Oreos –YUM! I have made it for another special occasion since and it was well received, I really perfected it second time around and am feeling rather proud of myself that I have mastered baked cheesecake and using a water bath!

Ingredients:
Crust
1 packet of Oreo cookies
25 grams butter, melted

Cheesecake
500 grams cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 tablespoon cornflour
4-5 full sized snickers bars, cut into 1/2 - 1cm slices
1/4 caramel sauce
1/4 cup peanuts

Method:
Preheat oven to 170ºC and grease a 20cm round springform tin or PushPan.
If using a springform tin you will need to wrap the bottom and sides with tin foil to protect it in the water bath, if you are using a PushPan the rubber seal means that this step can be omitted.
Pulse cookies in a food processor until crushed. Pulse in butter.
Press into an even layer in pan. Bake until firm, 5 to 8 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Place a roasting pan filled with 2-3cm of hot water on oven's centre rack, this is your water bath.
Beat cream cheese until smooth.
Add sugar and beat for approximately 1 minute, until well combined.
Beat in eggs one at a time.
Scrape down sides and bottom of bowl before beat in vanilla and cornflour.
Place Snickers evenly over crust.
Pour batter over the Oreo crust and place in water bath.
Bake until cake is set around edges but still jiggles in centre, about 50-60 minutes.
Remove cake from roasting pan and if you need to remove foil.
Place cake on a rack to cool.
Once cool, cover and chill in the fridge until firm – at least 4 hours or up to 1 day.
When ready to serve, drizzle top with caramel sauce and top with chopped peanuts and the remainder of your Snickers pieces.

Turkish Pide by Kenrick Rhys Photography

Hi, I’m Kenrick.  I am a photography and food lover from Auckland, New Zealand, where I run Kenrick Rhys Photography, specialising in Wedding and Portrait Photography.

This is my second post on Baking Makes Things Better.  If you didn’t catch my last post, 5 Minute Microwave Fudge Brownie, you can check it out here.  Today’s recipe is one for Pide; a broad, round and flat bread made of wheat flour originally from Turkey.

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon dried yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
500g flour
1 ½ cups warm water
1 teaspoon salt
Olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 teaspoon nigella seeds / black sesame seeds
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
1 egg yolk

Method:
Mix the yeast, sugar, a little of the flour and a little of the warm water in a small bowl.
In a large bowl or on a clean bench, mix the bulk of the flour and salt together and make a well in centre.  Add the yeast mixture to centre of the well and mix with a wooden spoon or using your hands.  Add in small amounts of the water, continuing to mix until a dough has formed (the consistency you are after is like a slightly sticky play dough).
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured clean bench and knead for 15 minutes or until smooth and elastic.
Grease a large bowl with a little olive oil and place the dough in the bowl.  Cover with a damp tea
towel.  Leave in a warm, draft free place for 1.5 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and cut it in half.  Flatten the dough slightly with your hands.  Place the dough onto some non-stick baking paper.  Cover with a damp tea towel and place in a warm draft free place for 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 230°C.  Place a baking tray in the centre of the oven.
With floured hands, stretch each piece of dough into a long skinny rectangle approximately 20 x 40
cm.  Leave on the non-stick baking paper.  Cover with damp tea towel and leave aside for 10 mins.
Combine seeds and cumin seeds in a small bowl.  Make indentations with floured fingers on the top of the dough, brush on egg yolk, sprinkle seeds and cumin on top.
Remove the hot baking tray from oven.  Still on the baking paper, slide loafs onto the baking tray.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden.

Kenrick’s Tips:

• When making dough, mix the yeast with a little flour, water and sugar before anything else.  This gives the yeast a head start and helps your bread rise faster.
• The best place to rise your bread can be your car of all places.  It’s usually the warmest place around, just make sure it’s not too hot, about 30 - 37 degrees is perfect.
• When making bread in a hurry, you can mix and knead your dough and then place it covered in the refrigerator for a day or so (or the freezer for longer), then leave it on the bench for a few hours to thaw/warm up, then shape and rise again in a warm place as usual.  This is great if you make too much dough or don’t have the time to do the whole process in one go.
• To check if the bread is cooked all the way through, turn it over and gently tap on the bottom of the loaf, it should sound hollow if cooked inside.

Check out the Kenrick Rhys Photography website and like them on facebook.

Vanilla ‘Gender Reveal’ Cupcakes

One of the cool things about going back to work and starting at a new school has been making some awesome new friends! One of my lovely new friends Ashle is expecting her first baby in a couple of months, after her 20 week scan I whipped up some ‘gender reveal cupcakes’ for a bit of fun and shared them with colleagues at an after school meeting. If you are expecting or have a friend who is this might be a neat way to reveal the sex of your baby to friends and family.

Ingredients:
Cupcakes
3 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons vanilla bean paste
½ cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk

Buttercream:
250g butter softened
5 cups icing sugar, sifted
4-6 tablespoons hot water (warm icing makes the colour take better)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
blue or pink food colouring

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180°C. Prepare two cupcakes/muffin pans by lining them with (gender neutral!) cupcake papers.
In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set flour mixture aside.
In another bowl/bowl of your electric mixer add the butter and vanilla paste. Using the paddle attachment, beat the butter and vanilla mixture on a medium-high speed. Until light and fluffy
Add the sugar to the butter mixture, one cup at a time. Beat for about 1 minute after each cup.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Add about one third of your buttermilk and mix to the butter mix before adding your a third of your flour mix flour mixture ensuring it has been incorporated properly after each addition. Continue to add the liquid and flour mixture until it all has been added to the cupcake batter.
Pour the batter into the prepared baking cup liners about two thirds of the way through.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes, or until a skewer can be inserted into the centre of each cupcake comes out clean or they ‘spring back’ when touched.
Allow to cool in the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. Let cupcakes cook completely before decorating.

Decorating instructions:
To make the buttercream, cream butter in or with a mixer until pale. On a low speed add icing sugar alternating with hot water and vanilla essence. Continue to beat until light and fluffy or until it’s reached a consistency you are happy with. At this stage you can either add the colouring to your mix and beat it in or divide your mix and colour so that you end up with a variety of colours.
To make the cupcakes ‘gender reveal cupcakes’, remove about ¾ of the vanilla frosting and add it to an icing bag. With the remaining ¼ of the frosting, add either blue or pink food colouring for the cupcakes’ centre filling. Once completely blended, add blue/pink frosting to a second icing bag.
Using a cupcake corer tool (if you are lucky enough to own one) or a small sharp knife, cut a hole on the top centre of each cupcake.
Remove the cupcake ‘core’ and fill with blue or pink frosting.
Add cupcake core back to the top of the cupcake and pat it down.
Frost the top of the cupcake with the white vanilla frosting, to get the swirl look that I achieved I recommend  Wilton 1M tip.

Bread & Butter Bakery and Cafe

I was scrolling through instagram the other weekend and spotted a friend of Mel and mine had been at Bread & Butter in Grey Lynn. The food looked delicious and the place looked funky so I had to check it out! I was not disappointed, we were lucky enough to get a seat in ‘the plate room’ (I am so in love with the wallpaper it is verging on obsession, Shane isn’t convinced but I am certain it would make a fab feature wall in our kitchen area), the food was fantastic, there were five of us so we got a selection of brunch and lunch and Max (2) was catered for on the kids menu and entertained by the selection of kids books and colouring activities offered to patrons with kids.

Bread & Butter specialise traditional European and naturally leavened sourdough breads. All breads are made from certified organic ingredients – as you can see in the wall art that is right outside the door of the bakery. At Bread & Butter shops you will find a selection of traditional German sourdoughs, French crusty baguettes, wheat free sourdoughs, and seeded loaves. The selection is huge and the quality is top notch.

Their breads are baked directly on stone tiles, which gives them a robust and tasty crust that seals in flavour and keeps them fresh for longer. The cakes and pastries are displayed beautifully in the cabinets and made according to traditional recipes that place utmost importance on taste and original style. Bread & Butter don’t use any premixes, additives or off-the-shelf-filling and they strive to use as much local New Zealand produce as is feasible. Practically all the cabinet items are made on site - this is one cool cafe!

If you are in Auckland I would definitely check them out in person or on Faecbook:
Bread & Butter Bakery and Cafe
34 Westmoreland St. West
Grey Lynn
Ph. (09) 378 9111
Website: http://www.breadandbutterbakery.co.nz

Cookies and Cream Marshmallow by High Tea With Dragons

Hi everyone!  It’s Kirsten from High Tea with Dragons here - I’m beyond honoured to be guest posting on Baking Makes Things Better today!

Marshmallow is one of my absolute favourite treats to make and once you get the hang of it, is unbelievably easy too!  If you haven’t tried making marshmallow before then you’re missing out - homemade marshmallow is totally different from its store-bought cousin; it’s super soft, packed with flavour and melts away in your mouth.

This recipe for cookies and cream marshmallow is perfect for beginners – the flavours come from a little bit of vanilla bean paste (or vanilla essence) and crushed Oreo cookies, not additional sugar syrups like some more complicated marshmallows.  This marshmallow is absolutely delicious – the crushed Oreos are a crunchy surprise when you bite in, perfectly balanced by the smooth vanilla marshmallow.  I’m sure you’ll love it – enjoy!

Note: While the mixture itself takes around 30 minutes to prepare, keep in mind that marshmallow needs to set for 24 hours before you slice and dust it.

Ingredients:
500g sugar
4 teaspoons glucose syrup
2 tablespoons gelatine powder
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
¾ cup Oreo cookies, crushed
½ cup icing sugar (to dust)
½ cup corn flour (to dust)

Method:
Grease and line a rectangular tray with baking paper.  Lightly spray top of baking paper with non-stick spray.
Place 200ml of water in a bowl and sprinkle with gelatine.  Set aside.
Place sugar, glucose and 200ml of water in a large saucepan.  Place on low heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.
Increase heat to medium-high and insert sugar thermometer.  Boil for 3-5 minutes until the mixture reaches 120°C.  Remove from heat and carefully add gelatine mixture.  Whisk until gelatine dissolves and no lumps remain.
Place egg whites in a large bowl and beat with a whisk attachment on high until foamy. Gradually add hot sugar syrup while mixing.  Continue to beat on high until white and glossy – about 5 min with stand mixer, 10 with hand mixer. Fold vanilla bean paste/vanilla essence through mixture.
Add crushed Oreos and gently fold through mixture until evenly spread.  Pour into prepared pan and allow to set for 24 hours.
In a small bowl, sift together icing sugar and corn flour. Dust large knife with icing sugar mixture and slice marshmallow into squares.
Roll each square in icing sugar mixture, ensuring all sides are coated, and place on cooling rack. Leave to dry for at least 3 hours. Store in an airtight container.

*For more amazing recipes, check out Kirsten’s blog High Tea With Dragons.  We love it.  Thanks for sharing this recipe with us Kirsten!  -Melissa and Courtenay xx.