Snowflakes on Peach and Cinnamon

I just finished this box of liners, so I guess that means I've made about 120 cupcakes in about 10 months. A dozen cupcakes a month isn't too bad an average considering how busy we get in Japan!

We had some friends over for dinner recently, and while the dinner itself was cooking I set them to work decorating cupcakes with icing sugar.

We just used regular paper to make the snowflake templates and sprinkled the icing sugar over it.

Larger shapes seem to come out clearer.

And our newest resident, Johnasaurus, seemed pretty keen to try them.

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...).

Big Cake, Small Oven

My little Japanese oven can handle cupcakes quite well, although they tend to rise more evenly if I turn the tray part-way through baking.

The first time I cooked a larger cake was a learning experience. Fruit is pretty expensive here, but I can still buy peaches in a can so I decided to try making my fruit and cinnamon cake recipe (also delicious with apple, but apples are pricey in Japan!).

Peach!

I put it in to bake and all seemed well. I thought I was done. I let the cake cool a bit and then went to remove it from the pan... but alas, it wasn't cooked through and collapsed all over the place! Not to be defeated by a rebellious cake, I squeezed it back into the tin and put it back in the oven.

A bit of icing sugar helped to disguise its disfigurement and it still tasted good. Next time I bake a big cake in a small oven I'll be watching it a bit more carefully!

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.

Gluten and dairy-free apricot and spice cupcakes

We got a new camera! I know absolutely nothing about it yet, but thankfully it takes pretty good photos even on auto-settings.

This is a gluten and dairy-free version of the apricot and spice (sometimes apple and spice) cake that I usually make. The apricot version amuses me because they look kinda like eggs with big fat yolks.

These sank a bit. I think I should have baked them a little longer and/or used a little extra baking powder.

Apricot & Cinnamon Cupcakes

the gluten and dairy-free version

Makes 12-15 regular sized cupcakes

150g Nuttelex, melted

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups gluten-free plain flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon ground ginger

6 teaspoons baking powder

Tinned apricots (400g tin is probably enough, an 800g tin is way too much!)

1. Prepare your tin/s and preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

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

3. Lightly press batter into each cupcake case.

4. Press an apricot half into each case of batter.

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

These were a bit grainy (I blame GF flour) and a little bitter for my taste (I blame the Nuttelex). But they were edible AND free of both gluten and dairy. So, that works OK.

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.

Christmas Snickerdoodle Cupcake Duo

Thankfully it turns out that a baking project won't necessarily fail just because it starts out looking like a batch of play-doh.

Especially not if it's helped along by the wonder of cinnamon sugar. See it sparkle.


Anyway, for the Christmas bake-off at work I decided to create a Christmas version of the already-super Snickerdoodle Cupcake Duo (which I originally posted about here). I wasn't sure I could achieve a genuinely red icing without using a toxic amount of food dye, so I opted instead to colour the snickerdoodle cookies themselves. The coating of cinnamon sugar makes them look kind of dirty and gross before baking, but fear not - they rise and spread enough to fix this.


To aid the survival of Christmas party grazers I made this whole batch into mini cupcakes. Depending on how big you make them, you can get around 40 little cupcakes and little cookies out of Bakerella's recipe. (I ended up with 42 cakes and 44 cookies - pleasantly close to even!)

Here's before decorating...

...and here's after decorating! (mostly :p)


I was relieved to end up with actual Christmas colours rather than the pink and vomit-green shemozzle which I more than half expected. Take THAT pessimism.

Merry Christmas!!!

Brown Sugar Cookies

Any recipe that contains brown sugar and cinnamon immediately grabs my attention.

Also, I'd been on a bit of a "cupcakes and nothing but cupcakes" roll, so I thought some simple cookies were probably in order.

As I reported to a friend, these brown sugar cookies that I found at Joy the Baker's blog (<<< link here) are kind of a lighter, lazier version of snickerdoodles, with the sugar and cinnamon (plus a little ginger) on the inside.

I didn't read the recipe very well and accidentally put in baking powder instead of soda... so then I added a little baking soda as well for good measure (about a teaspoon on top of the original two of powder). This no doubt contributed to their lightness. Next time I'll try the suggested amount and see whether it makes much difference.

Although I expected darker, moister cookies, these were cute and very more-ish. In the future I'd probably make them bigger so people (aka. me) don't feel the need to eat a few at time!

Snickerdoodle cupcake duo

I know I've said this before, but this really IS my new favourite recipe. And once again it comes from Bakerella. The Snickerdoodle Duo (link to Bakerella's post here) is a delicious combination of cupcake and cinnamon cookie with frosting and cinnamon sugar to hold them together and decorate.

Snickerdoodle cookies were made known to me by my friends Rachael and Tim, and all the people who kept talking about Rach and Tim's Snickerdoodles. Amazingly this was the first time that I made them myself. They puff up really nicely and the texture is great.

The cupcakes pulled away from their cases a little (anyone know what causes that?) and they seemed a bit soft, so I thought maybe I under-cooked them, but they went perfectly with the cookies and icing.

Speaking of icing, Bakerella made a meringue icing, but didn't highly recommend it, and I have an aversion to recipes that use only parts of eggs. Seems like such a waste. So, using my growing knowledge of Australian ingredient equivalents (aka. baking nerd status), I fashioned a nice firm buttercream icing instead, using a magical ingredient... Pavlova Magic. The main ingredients are sugar and egg whites, and it seems you don't need much to get fantastic results :) (much cheaper than ordering purpose-made meringue powder from the US!)

This is my new, Australian-ified buttercream recipe that holds its shape beautifully. It makes enough to ice about 3 dozen cupcakes (or 6 dozen mini cupcakes). If you have some left over you can keep it refrigerated in an air-tight container and re-whip to use it later, but I'm not sure exactly how long it's good for (I used the last of mine within 5 days).

Semi-firm Buttercream Icing

(based on Cupcake Gal's recipe and an eHow post by Shelby Winchell)

125g unsalted butter, softened

125g cooking margarine, softened

6-8 cups icing sugar, sifted

1/2 cup of milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon Pavlova Magic powder

1. Beat the butter and margarine in an electric mixer until smooth and creamy (roughly a few minutes).
2. Add 4 cups of icing sugar, the milk and vanilla. Mix on low speed until combined.
3. Add 2 more cups of icing sugar and mix until light and fluffy. Only add the last 2 cups of icing sugar if you need to.
4. Add the Pavlova powder and mix on low speed for a couple of minutes. You'll see it start to thicken.
5. Use without delay (or get it into an air-tight container to store).

My cupcakes didn't rise right to the top of the patty cases, but I like how the cookies looked kind of like muffin tops and they're kind of compact and neat like this. Also really delicious. Really.

See? So pretty.

Yum. Thanks Bakerella.

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.