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.

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!

Playing catchup - caramel, banana, peach, choc mint and vanilla

Once you've found some recipes that you like, it's inevitable that they will be repeated! Here are some of my recent baked goods. (This is actually a sneaky mixed-up blog post to make me feel like I've caught up!)

Delicious caramel mudcake. The obvious option for when you're out of white sugar and too lazy to go and get some :p

I tried out my basket weave icing tip for the first time. This icing was too soft so you can't see the ridges, but I can see the potential.

I made banana cupcakes for work to farewell a colleague.

These are peach and cinnamon cupcakes, using the leftover cream cheese icing from the banana cupcakes. Icing keeps pretty well in the fridge so I often use the same icing a couple of times in a row to avoid wasting any.

This batch is chocolate wacky cake with mint Nuttelex icing - made for a friend whose little boy can't have eggs or dairy. The icing doesn't hold its shape as well, but still tastes fine.


Finally, a batch of vanilla with a mish-mash of icing flavours and colours.


My most reliable decoration methods are swirls and solid colour with a little star, so no doubt you'll continue seeing these. Hopefully over the Christmas break I'll get a chance to try some new things too :).

Peach cobbler cupcakes

Have I mentioned how much I love Willow Bird Baking? Julie, who writes it, encourages fun and creativity in the kitchen and has a fantastic recipe index going!

This time around I decided to try Peach Cobbler Cupcakes (<-- link here). I have a soft spot for fruit and also enjoy streusel (ie. crumbly topping) so these sounded pretty good indeed. The batter started out looking a bit gross - buttermilk and peach syrup just don't look pretty when you mix them together!

But, as expected, things soon improved.

I put about 5 chunks of peach into each cake but next time I think I'd try using enough to cover the whole middle layer of streusel and make a bigger deal of the peach.

The fruit is covered over with another layer of batter and streusel. (They're not the quickest cakes to assemble, but it's a tasty combination.)

And then baked.

I just made a quarter batch of cream cheese icing (see previous posts for recipe adapted from Bakerella) to put a small swirl on each cupcake.

But even a quarter batch was too much. I got a bit carried away and over-iced a few - proving, once again, that less really is more.

These were lovely and moist, and the splashes of peach syrup in the batter and icing were a nice touch.