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.

Easter Baking Ideas Round-up

Here’s a roundup with links to Easter Baking recipes we have shared on the blog this year.  You can check out last year’s round up post here where we shared some cupcake and biscuit ideas.  We hope you have a great Easter weekend and take some time to relax and catch up with friends and family.

Easter Chicken Cupcakes

Easter Blondies

Easter Nest Cupcakes

Easy Creme Egg Cupcakes

There’s also been some great baking ideas being shared on some of your fave blogs.  I wanted to share some of my favourite finds with you.  For more inspiration check out:

• Lydia’s awesome Creme Egg cupcakes – she shares how to make a Creme Egg centre for your cupcakes over at Lydia Bakes.
• Kirsten has made a delicious and decadent looking Chocolate Cheesecake with mini Easter eggs mixed through the filling over on High Tea With Dragons.
• Julie made her own Chocolate Egg-shaped toppers to decorate some cupcakes – you could get creative and make other shapes too.  Take a squiz at them on her blog A Slice in the Life of Julie.
• Over the ditch, Steph from Raspberri Cupcakes has made Easter trifles decorated with the cutest Chick Macarons.
• Cakepop queen Bakerella has done it again, this time with her Easter Bunny pops.

Happy Easter and Happy Baking!

Christmas Baking Ideas 2012

Wow, it’s December already! It was at about this time last year we shared some Christmas baking inspiration with you made up of things we had previously posted.

You can find that post here, it contains links to the recipes pictured in the above collage and more.

Last year we added few new things to our Christmas baking repertoire. I just love these Candy Cane Cookies Mel made last year!

These Mini Chocolate Cupcakes with Santa Hats were a real hit:

These Christmas Tree Cupcakes are so simple but effective!

The Sand Art Brownie Jars are gorgeous gifts and the brownies produced by its contents are divine!

Mel and I are already in the Christmas spirit, I was at her place today and she has the cutest DIY tree up! I have a few new recipes to share with you over the next few weeks and we are incredibly excited about our Christmas baking class next weekend.

Have you got any Christmas baking lined up yet? Are you trying something new this year or sticking with the old faithful's?

Mothers Day Baking Ideas

Here in New Zealand it is Mothers Day this weekend on Sunday, so why not bake Mum some treats.  Here’s six ideas that are sure to be a hit…

1. Make Mum a beautiful box of handmade biscuits.

Pictured above: Neiman Marcus Cookies, One Dough Hundreds of Biscuits, Midnight Cookies, Gluten Free Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter Cookies, Choctastic Cookies.

2. Bake a cake!

Pictured above: Sour Cream Lemon Cake, Carrot Cake, Spiced Apple Cake, Banana Cake, Red Velvet Cake.

3. Treat Mum to brunch or afternoon tea.

Pictured above: Kumara and Bacon Savoury Slice, Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins, Mini Vegetable Frittatas, Ham, Cheese and Broccoli Quiche, Herb and Cheese Muffins, Marshmallow Brownie Cupcakes.

4. Fudge is always good!

Pictured above: Triple Chocolate Fudge, Fran’s Fantastic Fudge, Five Minute Fudge, Chocolate Hazelnut Slice, Caramel Fudge.

5. Make Mum dinner and then spoil her with a delicious desert.

Pictured above: Oreo Cheesecake, Passionfruit Custard Pots, Lemon Tart, Lemon Meringue Pie, White Chocolate Tart covered in berries, Salted Caramel and Chocolate Tart.

6. Put together a jar of sand art brownie mix as a gift for Mum.  We made these as Christmas presents and they were very popular.  Why not decorate the jar with ribbon and in colours more suited for Mothers Day?

There are heaps more brilliant recipes on the blog so have a look around.  Check out our Recipe Index for more ideas.  Whatever you end up doing, I hope you spoil your Mum and show her how much you love her.

Happy Mothers Day!

Christmas Baking Ideas

No doubt you will see some more Christmas themed baking up here before the 25th, but I thought I would write up a summary of the recipes we have previously shared incase you are already in the mood!

It’s always nice to put the time and effort in and make something as a gift for someone else.  Baking is also a great gift idea for kids teachers too!  Courtenay used to always put together packages of shortbread for our colleagues at work, which went down a treat!

For a twist on traditional shortbread, I quite like this recipe which includes pecans.  It tastes delicious.

Courtenay has also tried making Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread :)

If you want to make biscuits but aren’t keen on Shortbread you could always make some cookies and decorate them in Christmas colours, like the ones pictured above – this recipe yields quite a few biscuits.

Or, give baking some Cranberry and White Chocolate Biscuits a try.  They look quite festive with their flecks of red and white.  One of our readers has suggested swapping the pecans with pistachios to add in some green!

Something else that would make an awesome gift are these Mini Chocolate Christmas Puddings.  They are marshmallows covered in chocolate, which are super yummy and easy to make. Also, I think they look super cute!  Courtenay made something similar using my Mint Chocolate Truffle recipe (which would also make an awesome gift without the jazzing up).  Yum!

You could always make some fudge (try my caramel fudge – super easy; no sugar thermometers or fancy ingredients needed) or coconut ice (pictured above with the Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread) too.  Wrap it up in some festive coloured cellophane finished with a bow.

Red Velvet is the perfect colour for this season – make some cupcakes, a cake or whoopie pies.

Speaking of whoopie pies, try decorating the Double Chocolate ones that I’ve put on the blog to suit the season – add white icing to the top with red and green sprinkles to make them look like mince pies or roll the sides of them around in crushed candy canes.

And, if you want to give some baking as gifts but don’t have the time, put together some beautiful jars of Sand Art Brownies ready for someone else to make!

Keep checking back for more Christmas recipes.  In the mean time, I hope this post gives you some ideas and inspiration.  Merry Christmas!