Christel

Posts tagged with "cupcakes"

Eureka!

Thursday, 29. May 2008, 09:28:02

I LOVE sweet stuff...I LOVE looking at them (I have been known to take pictures of cakes and stuff in tea rooms before, sad???), smelling them but most of all eat them! But as read below, I am not the best of cooks

to my huge despair!!!! So the other day when looking for yummy pictures of cupcakes to illustrate my post, I found pictures of...

knitted cupcakes! And when I thought about them I concluded that they are 100% fatfree therefore 100% guiltyfree (even though I have a serious lack of guilt) and well down-right healthy (if you do not attempt to eat the wool of course)!

Thus, I thought instead of trying my damned hardest to make cupcakes which in the end look like...something that you scoop off pavements, I am planning to experiment with needles.... But another thought strikes me: I cannot knit. I can only do scarves.... I guess that does not make me totally useless but not an expert either, right? Otherwise, as referred to as Plan B, I can stitch and cross-stitch, so if the worst came to the worst I could do something using stitches...afterall it's still needlework, isn't it? I just feel at this very moment in my life, englued in a depressing rut, and that I need to use my creativity to put some spice and pleasure in my days. I don't want to die and think: Crap! You've been nothing but a bore and done nothing worth your while when you had possibilities. See what I mean?
Anyway, this is the type of thing I am AIMING for...

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The mystery of baking...to me

Friday, 23. May 2008, 12:39:12

Nigella Lawson, cup cakes, cupcakes, recipe

Think of me as dim, but give me a recipe and I am incapable of following it! It doesn't matter whether it is the most simple recipe on earth, I will not follow it! So the result is always something of a surprise. This is why I am so in awe of people who master baking! Making dainty little cupcakes, victoria sponge cakes or even a delicious chocolate cake that looks good and pretty!

I found a recipe by Nigella Lawson that is really good (and I bet it's even nicer when it actually look like cupcakes!)
125g self-raising flour
125g caster sugar
125g soft unsalted butter
2 eggs
Half a teaspoon real vanilla extract
Approximately 2 tablespoons milk
1 packet instant royal icing food colouring – for preference, colour pastes specialist cake decorations of choice
e.g. wafer roses, sugar flowers, dolly mixtures, and sprinkles
1 x 12-bun muffin tin
12 muffin papers

Preheat the oven to 200C and line the tin with the muffin cases.

It couldn't be simpler to make cup cakes: just put all the ingredients except for the milk in the processor and then blitz till smooth.

Pulse while adding milk, to make for a soft, dropping consistency, down the funnel. Or using a bowl and wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour.

Then add the vanilla extract and fold in the rest of the flour, adding the milk to get the dropping consistency as before.

I know it looks as if you'll never make this scant mixture fit 12 bun cases, but you will. I promise you this mixture is exactly right to make the 12 cup cakes, so just spoon and scrape the stuff in, trying to fill each case equally, judging by eye only of course.

Put in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cup cakes are cooked and golden on top. As soon as bearable, take the cup cakes in their cases out of the tin and let cool, right way up, on a wire rack.

Once they're cool, make up a big, uncoloured batch of royal icing, and then remove a few spoonfuls at a time to small bowls.

Using a bamboo skewer, add small dots of colours from the paste-tubs, stirring with a teaspoon and then adding more colouring, very slowly, very cautiously (pastel works best here, whatever your everyday aesthetic) until you get the colour you want.

Use teaspoons to coat the cupcakes with icing and leave each a moment to dry only slightly, on the surface, before sticking on a rose, daisy or whole stash of decorations.