Bye Bye Australia Cupcakes

Dear blog,

It's been a while. A really long while. But since I lasted posted I have moved to Japan, so I'm hoping you'll cut me some slack.

These are the cupcakes I made for our farewell party.

The pink ones had Turkish delight chunks and rosewater icing. The green ones were melon flavoured with gold glitter (because lovely friends had given me melon oil and edible glitter and I wanted to try it all out before I left the country!).

I also made gluten and dairy free chocolate and strawberry cupcakes. Because they're still awesome.

I have been baking in Japan, but you'll have to wait until next time for that. Let's face it - this is progress!

Banana Cake with Chocolate Ganache

Getting ready to move house is not hugely conducive to blogging. Or baking for that matter. But I did recently make banana cake with chocolate ganache - I had some very ripe bananas and some fresh cream that I wanted to use up!

This is the moment when you start to question whether your food processor can actually deal with a double batch of banana cake batter...

Thankfully, it turns out, mine can.

The other half of this batch went into cupcakes but I didn't get any photos as they were a bit messy once I'd scooped out the middles and dolloped in the delightful chocolate mixture.

Something I've learned about chocolate ganache (which is made by melting chocolate into just-boiled cream): if you try to make it and use it in a hurry it's almost certainly going to be very runny. This time I got smart and refrigerated the ganache overnight, which made it nice and firm, without being too hard to spread. Definitely the way to go!

Choc Mint Oreo Cupcakes

I've made these before, but I thought they looked especially cute this time.

Partly because they were accompanied by a playing child. And then partly because I put some into a cupcake box.

I think it's extra hard to make cupcakes look bad when they're packaged in white. (Hence the fact that these now appear at the header of this blog!)

I'm concentrating on presentation here, but just in case you actually want to make these: make a chocolate cake batter, distribute in cupcake wells, stick an Oreo (or similar) in the top of each cupcake before baking, top with a little piped peppermint butter cream. Devour.

When it's cold

Winter is the season for sneaky mug cake. It's not pretty. But it is warm. And chocolatey.

Tuck some apples into a bed of cake. All snug and tasty, and warm, once you get to the oven part.

Bacon and Peanut Butter Cookies

We had a bakeoff at work recently and we were supposed to make something savoury. Not really my area of expertise. So I opted for another one of Joy the Baker's novel combination recipes. 

There's the bacon...

...and the peanuts...

Mix it all together and what've you got? Bacon and peanut butter cookies of course. Recipe here <-<- and also in the very enjoyable Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes.

Somehow the little chunks of meat sticking out of the cookies look a bit disturbing, don't they?

They're rolled in a little sugar, but I maintain that these count as a savoury item. Plenty of salty bacon. And a little bit of molasses - the first time I've actually used it. Turns out it's nothing like golden syrup as I'd thought. Molasses is potent stuff; dark and sticky.

I didn't win the bakeoff. But I did win the weekly team award for "the bravest biscuits ever," and they were rather a talking point. One guy told me they'd be good dipped in chocolate, but I think that would just add another layer of crazy. Your biggest challenge in making them may be resisting the lure of the bacon when it comes out of the oven all baked and crispy and inviting. If you're not careful your bacon and peanut butter cookies may stall at the delicious snack of bacon stage. But be strong. The cookies are worth a try!

Pretty Banana Cupcakes (Gluten & Dairy Free)

I love this photo. And I didn't even take it! I was busily preparing to host an afternoon tea and Jess went to work with the camera.

I got the recipe for these out of a book, but I wouldn't say it was particularly good. I had already started when I realised it needed dairy free milk... but I didn't have any on hand so just used water instead. They were still quite edible, but a bit denser than I would've liked. I used cinnamon icing which helped them along.

Anyway, it was worth it if only for the pretty photos. Afternoon tea is a lovely thing indeed.

Chocolate and Strawberry Cupcakes

Don’t make these unless you want to eat the most awesome thing ever. I’m warning you now.

Apart from the fact that they’re utterly fantastic, these can quite easily be made gluten and/or dairy free. Also egg free, so they’re vegan-friendly. Also, no electric mixer required. Like I said – fantastic (with or without gluten - I've tried both versions and they're equally delectable).

I got the cake recipe from Group Recipes (ßsee post here). I’ve added my tweaks below (doesn’t necessarily improve it, that’s just the way I did it!).

Ingredients (makes a neat 12)

1.5 cup plain flour OR gluten-free plain flour

1 cup brown sugar

Generous 1/4 cup cocoa powder (usually gluten free but check if making GF)

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup canola oil OR olive oil (either works)

teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon vinegar (I just used white vinegar because that’s what I had!)

1 cup water

1.     Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line 12 cup muffin/cupcake pan.

2.     Sift together the dry ingredients.

3.     Add the oil, vanilla, vinegar, and water. Mix together till smooth.

4.     Pour into lined muffin cups. Bake about 25 minutes (test to see if a skewer comes out clean).

5.       When the cupcakes are cool, I suggest scooping a chunk out of the centre of each one and spooning in some strawberry jam (about a teaspoon-ish), then replacing the cake chunk. The jam will kind of soak in, and it doesn’t matter if the surface looks messy if you’re icing over the top anyway.

6.       Use whatever kind of chocolate icing that suits you. But if it needs to be dairy free, try mixing together the following…

• 65 grams of Nuttelex
• 1.5-2 cups of icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• A little hot or boiling water as needed to achieve good texture (the heat makes it easier to incorporate the Nuttelex)

7.       Pipe or spread the icing onto the cupcakes. Then decorate with slivers or chunks of fresh strawberry.

  

 Try not to eat them all by yourself… unless that was your plan all along.

Hummingbird Cupcakes, Muesli Muffins and Mini Quiches

Another mish-mash blog post.

I had some very ripe bananas and a tin of pineapple in the pantry so I had a go at hummingbird cupcakes. I needed them to be gluten and dairy free, so used this recipe and just substituted regular flour with gluten free. It worked OK, but I'm still not sold on that grainy texture you get from the gluten free flour, and as yet I've been too lazy to look into ways to avoid it!

I put some crushed pineapple and some juice into the icing to make it a little bit tart. Seemed to go OK.

For Mother's Day brunch celebrations I made muesli muffins using this recipe. I felt these were a bit bland, but I'd say that's mostly because I'm used to cupcakes, which are obviously a lot sweeter. These are quite nice as a snack anyway (especially warmed up with a little butter or margarine) and relatively healthy. I opted to use grated carrot instead of apple, so if I wanted to boost the sweetness I'd probably make sure I had the apple handy!

Mother's Day picnic also saw some more quiche, this time in mini form (post on the dinner sized version is here). I like the flexibility of quiche in that you can basically put in any fillings you fancy or have handy to use up. For this lot I used grated zucchini, a little diced onion, bacon and corn.

Mish mash over and out.

Carrot cake - the smaller, gluten-free and dairy-free version

One thing I really like about baking is that you can start off with elements that look rather horrible (take, for instance, this bowl of oil, vanilla essence and eggs - slimy) and end up with something wonderfully un-horrible.

An aside: If you want to know the most effective way to crack an egg, check out this post over at Cupcake Project. Nerdy yet practical.

I made carrot cake back in February and rather enjoyed it. This time I used the same recipe but with gluten-free flour and dairy-free honey icing. I also decided that I didn't need a giant cake, so I halved the recipe and just made a single layer cake in a smaller tin (I guess about 8 inches, but estimating was never really my thing!).

The icing had a lovely, almost pearlescent sheen to it at first... but before long it got tricky on me and separated out rather badly. I think it was the combination of the honey with the Nuttelex. It still tasted fine, but if I was making the same cake again I would ice it JUST before serving so it didn't have a chance for mischief!

Chamomile Cupcakes with Honey Icing

I felt a bit mischievous cutting open and emptying teabags.

But it had to be done. This recipe for Honey Chamomile Cupcakes is another of Joy the Baker's masterpieces, and I was intrigued when I first saw it on her blog (<--here, includes full recipe). I finally got around to giving it a go today.

Just the word chamomile makes me feel more relaxed. The fragrance is even better. (Though, oddly, it's not my favourite tea to drink.) The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of dried chamomile, which I now know is approximately equivalent to the contents of 6 teabags.

The honey icing is glossy and luxurious looking. As it should be considering the cream content.

And there you have it. Delightfully delicate cupcakes (actually mini cupcakes in this case - seemed appropriate for my first batch of "testers").


These are off to work with me tomorrow, but I've already had my only little taste taste, and I'm quite certain I will be making them again in the future... even if I have to eat them all myself. Lucky I got the large box of chamomile :)

Bacon, Potato, Tomato and Onion Quiche

Hold onto your hat. I baked something savoury. That's right. Dinner.

After declaring that I would make quiche I realised I had an odd selection of filling options available. I did some scouting and located some bacon bits in the freezer, one large-ish potato, a tomato and half an onion. A perfect 2 cups of filling, fried and cooled (...somewhat cooled, I'm a bit impatient) .

Eggs, milk, self-raising flour, a little melted butter. Fold in grated cheese and fillings. Look at that - I don't know how to focus my fancy camera on the batter.

Savoury has its moments.

Sweet Potato and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Joy the Baker has one of the prettiest baking blogs around so I was a bit excited when I found out she'd released a book. Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes is as pretty as can be and I like it well enough just to flick through. Now that I've actually made something out of it I like it even better! If you want your own copy you can find it here on Book Depository, or probably somewhere else.

I like the oddness of this combination, but I'm also a sweet potato person in general. And everyone's a chocolate chip person, really.


This is the sweet potato after I baked it, peeled it and mashed it. Sweet orange starch.


Chocolate to dough. Ready to go.


The recipe said to space these 2 inches apart. Inches are not my area of expertise but that sounded like a lot of space so I expected these to rise monstrously. They didn't, so next time I'll just ignore that bit.


I ate one of these warm and declared it objectively awesome. Plus, these sorta add to your vegetable count ;)

LSA Banana Bread Muffins (gluten & dairy free)

I've made LSA banana bread before from a delightful Australian Women's Weekly recipe - see my previous post here. But you know I love mini cakes, so I had to try these as muffins.

The magic of LSA.


These do work as muffins. Don't think cupcakes though - they're heavy and less sweet.


But still great. Coconutty, banana-y single-serve goodness. With a tinge of golden.