Strawberry and Cream Cupcakes

I absolutely love the orange cupcakes recipe Mel posted just over a year ago, they are so light and fluffy. I had a wee play with it and adapted it to make these cupcakes since strawberry season is starting! Mel’s Strawberry Shortcake muffins are an awesome Summer time treat too.  What are your favourite summer flavours?
Ingredients:
Cupcakes:1 ¾ cup flour
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons of freeze dried strawberry powder
2 large eggs, separated and whites beaten until stiff
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup kiwifruit and strawberry juice
100g butter, softened
Frosting:
100g cream cheese, softened
75g butter, softened
1½ – 2 cups icing sugar
2-3 tablespoons hot water
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease, or line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cups.
Combine butter, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla in a mixing bowl and cream together thoroughly.
Mix flour, salt, strawberry powder 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 kiwifruit and strawberry juice 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.
To make the frosting, beat butter until light and fluffy. Add cream cheese and icing sugar with 2 tablespoons warm water. Add more warm water or icing sugar to soften or thicken your frosting.

Olive, Salami and Cream Cheese Muffins

These muffins were created out of stuff we had left over in the fridge.  I wanted to make something savoury that we could take as morning tea to work.  There was a container of olives and half a block of cream cheese left over from various salads we had made and I had a packet of salami waiting to be used in a pasta dish I kept putting off making because it needed tomatoes and they have been so expensive lately!  So, I made these muffins and they were a hit.  Simon loved them.  I couldn’t lazily put off photographing them because we both wanted to eat them!

Ingredients:
1 egg
220ml skim milk
¼ cup olive oil
1 ¾ cups self raising flour
½ cup Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
½ cup salami, chopped into small pieces
½ cup cream cheese, broken into small chunks

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin.
Beat together the egg, milk and olive oil.  Mix through the flour.  Fold through the olives, salami and cream cheese.
Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared muffin holes.  Bake for approximately 15 minutes, or until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre a one of the muffins can be removed cleanly. 

Raspberry and Lemon Cake

This cake is the taste of summer! I first made it for my sister Meredith’s birthday in mid November but didn’t get a chance to photograph it to share with you, it has been requested several times since then and I have been happy to make it. This was my sweet contribution to our High Tea Picnic. Don’t you just love the bunting Melissa made for the top of the cake?! I think it’s gorgeous!

Ingredients:
Cake
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1½ – 2 cups raspberries
250 grams sour cream
½ cup milk
zest of 1 medium sized lemon
225 grams butter, room temperature
1½ cups sugar
4 eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla paste

Cream Cheese Frosting
250 grams cream cheese
50 grams butter
2 - 2½ cups icing sugar

Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 180°C and grease and line two 23cm round cake tins.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and set aside.
In a smaller bowl combine milk, sour cream and lemon zest and set aside.
In the bowl of your mixer beat butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time combining well after each addition. Add the vanilla paste before you add the last egg.
Mix in flour mixture alternating with milk mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture.
Gently fold in raspberries.
Divide mixture evenly between your cake pans and cook in your pre-heated oven for about 25-30 minutes or until the top starts to turn a golden brown colour and a skewer can be removed cleanly.
Remove from oven and place pans on cooling racks for about 20 minutes before turning the cakes out to cool completely.
Once completely cool place cream cheese frosting between the layers and on top.
To make the cream cheese frosting mix cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar gradually one cup to start with and then half a cup at a time. Add vanilla and mix to combine.
*** If using frozen raspberries thaw first and coat with a dusting of flour before adding them to your mix.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

I was after something a little bit different to my ‘easy peasy chocolate cake’ (which is fab, I just wanted something a little richer) to try with some chocolate cream cheese frosting after Shane’s Aunty V mentioned it to me a few weeks back. I hadn’t had chocolate cream cheese icing since I was quite young - occasionally Mum used to top her banana cakes with it. I’d seen a few Chocolate Buttermilk cakes on Pinterest and decided to give one a go. It is fabulously moist and even though it uses a little bit of coffee (which I detest) it still tastes fab!

Now the ingredients below will make you two 20cm cakes that you can sandwich together, however, you may notice that pictures are of a single layered cake… I’m going to be honest, I had a bit of a baking fail! I ran out of cooking spray to grease my tins and I did not do a good enough job of greasing the second tin the ‘old fashioned way’ and no matter how much tapping I did there was no way that baby was coming out. The cake still works perfectly well as a single layer cake, in fact it is actually quite rich so you could halve the recipe if you wished.

Ingredients:
Cake:
3 cups flour
2 ½ cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 cup canola oil
1 cup buttermilk
3 large eggs
1 cup of hot instant coffee (I put 1 teaspoon of Moccona coffe to one cup boiling water and left it to cool for a couple of minutes)
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting:
200 grams cream cheese, softened
100 grams unsalted butter, softened
½ cup icing sugar
¼ cup cocoa
2-5 tablespoons milk (depending on how soft your creamed mix you will need more or less milk to loosen your frosting).

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C, grease x2 20cm round cake tins.
Place flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder into the bowl of your stand mixer (or a large mixing bowl). Using your paddle attachment (or an electric mixer), mix on low to combine.
Keeping the mixer on low , add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, then your eggs one at a time.
Add hot coffee in a thin stream, try to pour it down the side of the bowl. And mix until you have a smooth mixture.
Divide into pans and bake for 30-35 minutes until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs.
Once cooked remove your cakes from the oven and place on racks to cool for 15-20 minutes before removing from tins. Cool completely before frosting.
To make your chocolate cream cheese frosting you need to cream your butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy, sift in icing sugar and one or two tablespoons of milk. Sift in cocoa and beat until it is well combined, if you are finding the consistency to thick keep gradually adding milk until it reaches a consistency you are happy with.
Place half the frosting on the top of the bottom layer of your cake and the other half on top.

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

Spiced Apple Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

I made a cake and I am pretty damn proud of it.  I don’t make cakes all that often and this one is a mix of different recipes that I found.  Because this is a mix of different recipes, there are a few extra ideas mentioned after the recipe below.  This cake is lovely and moist and the cream cheese icing is delish!

125g butter
1 cup cooked apples (about 2-3 apples) or 1 x 225g can apples (I used this apple pie filling stuff)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 ¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon each nutmeg, allspice and salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
icing sugar (for dusting if you don’t want to make the cream cheese icing)

Preheat oven to 160°C.
Melt butter in a medium-large saucepan.  Remove from heat and mix in apples and sugar.  Stir to combine then stir in egg.
Sift dry ingredients into the apple mix.  Stir just enough to blend ingredients evenly.  Spread the mixture into a greased 20cm cake tin and bake for 45 minutes.  When cool, you could dust with icing sugar, or coat the cake with the lemon cream cheese icing from the recipe below.

Lemon Cream Cheese Icing:
250g cream cheese
50g butter
2 cups icing sugar
Rind 2 lemons and the juice of ½ – 1 lemon

To make the icing, place all the ingredients in a large bowl and beat with an electric beater until thick and creamy.

You could also add in ½ cup of sultanas if you like, when you mix the dry ingredients into the apple mix. 

This recipe can also be made into muffins.  Divide mixture among 12 large greased muffin tins (allow ½ cup per muffin).  Bake for about 35 minutes, until risen and set.  Stand for 5 minutes before turning out.

Angel Cake For My Angel

 
So I finally got around to trying something different for Max’s 5 month cake (in case you have missed previous posts – I am making a cake each month for my son Max in order to try out new recipes and decoration techniques in preparation for his first birthday).  This month I tried and ‘Angel Food Cake’, I found the recipe in ‘Gorgeous Cakes’ by Annie Bell.  To be honest, I thought the icing (which I made to suit my tastes) was the best part, but I was quite proud as the cake is a type of sponge and it turned out pretty well!  I think I’m more of a ‘Devil’s Food Cake’ kind of girl.

Ingredients:
Cake:
8 medium egg whites
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
250 grams icing sugar (sifted)
140 grams plain flour (sifted)

Filling:
200 grams mascarpone
100 grams raspberry jam

Frosting:
120 grams butter
2 – 2 ½cups icing sugar (sifted)
200 grams cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
M&M’s or Smarties for decoration

Preheat your oven to 150°C and grease two 23cm round tins.
Whisk the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar until they have risen.
Sprinkle in the icing sugar two tablespoons at a time while you continue to whisk, ensuring that you whisk well after each addition.
Fold in the flour in three separate additions.
Divide the mixture between the two cake tins and bake for 30-35 minutes or until lightly golden, springy and shrinking from the sides.
Once removed from the oven, run a knife around the edge of the tin and leave the cakes to cool in the tins for 30 minutes before removing them and cooling further on wire racks.

As you will be layering the cakes remove the top of the cake that will become the base, do this by using a serrated knife and starting at the lowest point on your cake, ensure that the cake is level as you will be sandwiching it. 
For the filling blend the jam and mascarpone and smoother the top of the bottom layer of your cake, leaving about half a centimetre at the edge as the filling will spread when you place the top layer on.

For the frosting combine the butter and cream cheese together, when it is well mixed and fluffy, add the vanilla and gradually add the sifted icing sugar until it reaches a consistency that you are happy with.
Use a palette knife to spread the frosting all over your cake and chill in the refrigerator, remove when you are ready to serve and decorate with M&M’s (I chose them because of the M for Max) or similar, for a bit of fun.

Mars Bar Cupcakes: They are out of this world!

These were absolutely delicious!  To make them I adapted this muffin recipe, so that I got the wonderful taste of the brown sugar but a more “cup-cakey” texture.

Ingredients:
1 ¾ cups flour
½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
⅓ cup sugar
½ teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
⅔ cup milk
2 eggs
150g butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
10 “fun sized” Mars Bars

Method:
In a large bowl mix together the flour, sugars, baking powder and the salt.
In a separate bowl mix together the milk, eggs, butter and vanilla.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the milk mixture.  Stir to combine.
Spoon the batter into prepared muffin pans, filling the casings just over half way, place ½ a fun sized Mars bar in the centre of each and then cover the Mars bar chunk with a spoonful of mixture.

Bake at 180˚C for 15-20 minutes or until the tops bounce back when touched and a skewer can be removed cleanly.
To decorate ice with a cream cheese icing and ⅓ of a fun sized Mars bar.

Just scrummy! Enjoy :-)

Rainbow Cake for Courtenay’s birthday!

It was Courtenay’s birthday this Sunday just been, so I made her a cake to have at school on Friday.  The recipe comes from an old Donna Hay magazine – I only kept the page so I don’t know what issue, but it does say ‘Spring’ at the bottom of the page if that helps anyone.  Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Serves: 10

8 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1 ⅓ cups self raising flour, sifted
100g butter, melted
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted
¼ teaspoon pink food colouring
strawberries to serve

Cream Cheese Frosting:
100g butter, softened
500g cream cheese
2 cups icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Place the eggs and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8–10 minutes or until the mixture is thick, pale and triples in volume.

Gently fold through the flour and butter.  Divide the mixture between three bowls.  Add the cocoa to one mixture and gently fold through.  Add the food colouring to another mixture and gently fold through.  Spoon each mixture into a lightly greased, shallow 19cm round cake tin, with the base lined with baking paper.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the cakes are springy to touch and come away from the sides of the tins.  Cool on wire racks.

To make the cream cheese frosting, place the butter and cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 6–8 minutes, or until pale and creamy.  Add the icing sugar and beat for a further 6-8 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

Spread ¼ of the frosting on the cocoa cake.  Top with another cake and spread with another ¼ of the frosting.

Top with the final cake and spread the whole layered cake with the remaining frosting.  Serve with strawberries (which I didn’t because Courtenay doesn’t like them :P)

 
Happy Birthday Courtenay!  Hope you had a good one!

Banana Cake

 
Recipe:
130g butter (softened)
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 large ripe bananas (diced into small pieces)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoon hot milk
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

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.  Place mixture into a 20cm greased cake tin and bake at 180˚C for 50 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched (or until you can insert and then remove a skewer cleanly).  Leave cake in the tin for 10-15 mins before turning it out on to a cooling rack.

Banana cake is best served with chocolate or cream cheese icing. Enjoy!

Blueberry Jam & Cream Cheese Muffins

 
This is an old ‘food in a minute’ recipe (a little TV advertisement segment we get in New Zealand).  You can make these with whatever flavour jam you like – I’ve experimented and haven’t found a bad flavour yet.

Makes 12.

2 ¼ cups self raising flour
½ cup caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
¾ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
100g butter, melted
2 tablespoons golden syrup
6 tablespoons blueberry jam
¼ cup cream cheese

Sift the flour and sugar into a bowl and make a well in the centre.
Mix egg, milk and vanilla essence together.  Stir into the dry ingredients along with the melted butter and golden syrup.
Half fill 12 well greased muffin tins.  Place a heaped teaspoon of jam and a teaspoon of cream cheese into the centre of each muffin.

Carefully cover the jam and cream cheese with the remaining muffin mixture.  Bake at 220˚C for 12 – 15 minutes, or until well risen, golden and firm to touch.
Cool in the tin for 5 minutes.  Serve warm, dusted with icing sugar.