Carrot Cupcakes in Japan (aka. "ninja cake")

Sometimes what you need is a sea of carrot cupcakes in your kitchen. These ones were toasty brown, and just a little crisp on top - just the way I like them. You can find a link to the carrot cake recipe I use in a previous post --> here.

I'm pretty much a stickler for the recipe, but I've become a bit less concerned as I've done more baking. Approximately accurate is usually good enough (though it pays to be a little careful when it comes to rising agents ;). My cream cheese icing was about 85 grams of butter, a bit more of cream cheese, about 3 cups of icing sugar and a good shake of cinnamon, because I felt like it. And cinnamon is awesome.

The pale, uncoloured icing doesn't make for particularly spectacular photos, but in real life these looked pretty appealing. Carrot is ninjin in Japanese, but a slight translational error resulted in these being dubbed ninja cakes at our dinner party. (They do conceal three and a half carrots with a good deal of stealth.)

If you bake in a small oven and don't turn the cupcakes at the appropriate time you may end up with nicely slanted ones, like this. Not that you really notice much once the icing's on top (or with Anpanman and a penguin sitting on the table...).

Carrot Cake

I didn't use up all of my cream cheese icing on the gingerbread cupcakes so felt the need to use it on something else. I figure the most obvious candidates for cream cheese topping are banana cake or carrot cake. It was with some horror, though, that I realised I didn't have a go-to carrot cake recipe at hand, and decided I must remedy that!

I don't know why I like photos of freshly grated stuff. Just do. It looks new, bright.... something.


Layer cake! I used a recipe for "Most Wonderful Carrot Cake" from justapinch and just added my own already-made icing (see previous post). The recipe said to use 9 inch pans, but my only matching set is 10 inches... and I've had too many experiences of unevenly sized cake layers, so 10 inches it was!

First layer "plastered."

And second layer on. Size matching success = win.

I opted not to ice around the sides because it tends to just get messy and drip everywhere any time I try that sort of thing. I also kind of like being able to see the middle layer of icing peeking out.


The recipe said it was "very important to serve this cake at room temperature." But, dear recipe, I must disagree with you. I had my first piece at room temperature, and then another piece the following day out of the fridge (it just doesn't feel right leaving cream cheese out in the heat to melt...) and I say the cold one was better. Awesome even. How I wish there was some left!

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Gingerbread sounds like it should involve cookies, but it turns out it's just fine as a cake flavour too.

My friend Rachael picked these out of my copy of Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes for me to make. So it's rather a pity that she wasn't around to try them... Next time hey, Rach? (We can say this was a practice run.)

Cream cheese icing ingredients, complete with cinnamon, ground ginger and mixed spice...

Most interesting icing ingredient: lemon rind. It works suprisingly well!

You can find the recipe for these cupcakes here, on Betty Crocker's website. But pay no attention to the photo - cream cheese icing does NOT sit that neat and firm in Queensland summer heat! It looked sloppy when I piped it with the open tip so I ended up just spreading it on.

Review from Jess:

Hint of lemon in the icing - brilliant. The base wasn't very gingery, but was still deliciously soft and moist.

Review from Bec:

Jess has said everything I had to say.

Strawberry-Cream Cheese Cupcakes

It was so nice to have a week off work over Christmas/New Year. Time to relax and do whatever. I organised an afternoon tea with friends so that I "had" to do some baking.

This is another delight from Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes - Strawberry-Cream Cheese Cupcakes.

You start with a yellow cake base, add a little square of cream cheese and spoon in a little jam... bake to produce amazingness (<-- anyone who has tasted these cupcakes knows that amazingness is, in fact, a real word).

I was mildly concerned that the jam would bubble and explode and go everywhere. But it didn't. The cupcakes greedily gobbled up the filling as they baked. Less so the mini cupcakes, but that's probably because I gloriously overfilled them.

Now. Cream cheese icing. And swirl.

If you've forgotten the joy of strawberries, you need to remember. Here's something to jog your memory.

A-mazing.

We also devoured other cool stuff, but that will have to wait till next time. Did I mention that I enjoyed my time off work? Happy new year :)

Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

I've had a bag of mashed banana in the freezer for at least a couple of months and decided it was finally time to use it, but it still felt pretty extravagant to make banana cake again when banana prices have been so horrendous for so long.

I used a recipe that my friend Jenn gave me at my hen's high tea before I got married. It's super easy and all done in the food processor. It also happens to taste extremely good.

The plain white, large patty pans I've been using to date are an odd size and tend to crinkle up annoyingly. At the supermarket the other day I came to the delightful realisation that coloured cases are exactly the same price per unit AND it turns out that they're actually the right size for my muffin pan :)

It was my intention to decorate these with cream cheese icing in my usual fashion, but I had friends over and they were of the opinion that bright colours would be better.

I provided the cakes and the icing. They did the decorating.

And I was actually quite impressed by the results!

I usually just use one colour of icing because I figure it cuts down on the cleaning up afterwards, but the extra colour is pretty cool, I must say.

The colours reminded us of the food fight scene in Hook (the Peter Pan movie starring Robin Williams). See the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPCzjHPS--U

Here's one by Domestic Cowboy.

Banana cake is just as good as I remembered it being, and this time it was also rather pretty :)

Apricot & cinnamon cupcakes with cream cheese & apricot icing

Cinnamon. Apricots. Cream cheese. Three things that are awesome. I hope that these cupcakes will prove to you that they can be awesome in partnership.

This recipe is adapted from one that a friend of my parents wrote on the back of an envelope for me. I'm sure there are similar versions around but I feel like I've played with this one enough to not reference further than the back of an envelope.

Lightly press a thin layer of batter onto the bottom of each patty case and top it with an apricot half. I think they look disturbingly like egg yolks here.

Then cover the apricot over with another layer of batter. I tend to press it down to make it smoother, but you don't really need to do this (see looser packed cakes on the right, below), especially if you're going to frost over it later anyway. You can put as much batter as you want on top really, but be aware that the cakes will rise and you don't want them spewing out over the rim (I've overloaded muffin tins with similar cake before and they looked rather ugly).

These came out just about the size I was aiming for :)

This cake tastes fine without icing. In fact, I think my dad would be horrified to learn that I heaped "sweet stuff" on top of this particular cake recipe. But we had a lot of cream cheese left over in the fridge and I didn't want it to be wasted. Thus, I decided on cream cheese icing.

I used the cream cheese frosting recipe that Bakerella posted with her Red Velvet Cake (which is also delicious), but only made half a batch, and also added 8 mashed up apricot halves (ie. equivalent of 4 apricots), mostly to see what would happen. It made the icing runnier, but I liked the little flecks of colour and texture. I think it made minimal difference to the taste, but I was happy enough with it.

Anyway, the cake recipe. I used to use 2 teaspoons each of baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice and ground ginger, but decided to tone it down a bit, so went with one generous teaspoon of each (except the baking powder which I didn't dare alter, leaving it at 2).

Apricot & Cinnamon Cupcakes

Makes approximately 12 muffin sized cupcakes and 15 mini cupcakes

150g butter, melted

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons baking powder

Large tin of apricots (will have some left over from an 800g tin)

1. Prepare your tins and preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients (except apricots!).

3. Put a layer of batter on the bottom of each cupcake case (using about half the total amount of batter).

4. Lightly press an apricot half into each case of batter. Use a quarter of an apricot for mini cupcakes.

5. Use the rest of the batter to make another layer on top of the apricot.

6. Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on your oven). Test with a skewer.

Cream Cheese Frosting (based on half batch of Bakerella's recipe)

Makes more icing than you'll need for these cakes!

125g cream cheese, room temperature

125g butter, room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups icing sugar, sifted

8 apricot halves, well mashed

1. Beat cream cheese and butter on high until creamy and add vanilla.

2. Add icing sugar a cup at a time and blend in.

3. Add apricot puree and mix until just combined.

4. Ice your cupcakes once they're cool.

This recipe is also great with apple instead of apricot, and, as mentioned, it's really not essential to add frosting. Also makes a lovely loaf cake.