Heart Attack Cupcakes

Hi Blogosphere!
This post comes with a health warning: If you're a doctor, a dietitian or a personal trainer, look away now... if not, read on.
Here are some heart attack cupcakes. So called not only because they're not so good for the old pipes, but also because the eater will be struck by cupid's arrow as soon as they sink their teeth into these little beauties. I'm going to work backwards in photos... because once you've seen the finished product, you wont be able to resist reading on! Okay - so here is the heart attack:

I told you so! I'm still a little star struck that I managed to pull this off, and also still enjoying the sugar high from licking the spoon. When you sink your teeth into the lovely cakes, look at what you'll find:

"Why would anyone do this to their arteries?" I hear you ask... Well, if you've asked that you're reading the wrong blog.

So, on to the how to:

Ingredients:
50g cocoa powder
100g dark muscovado
250ml boiling water
125g butter (softened)
150g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

Frosting:
125ml water
30g dark muscovado
175g butter
300g dark choc (best quality you can afford, but don't worry if its only Sainsbury's basics)
125g icing sugar

Caramel:
1 tin condensed milk


Method:

preheat oven to 180*C

First step: fill a large saucepan with cold water and put unopened tin of condensed milk in it. Make sure the water covers the tin. Put the pan on high heat to boil for no less than 3 hours. While this is going on you can do all the following.


Mix cocoa and muscovado in a bowl, and add the boiling water, mix well until all one colour.
Mix flour, bicarb and baking powder in separate recepticle.
Cream butter and sugar until pale and then add the first egg. Add half a cup of the flour mix and then the other egg. Add the vanilla and then the rest of the flour mix. Then add the cocoa mixture, mix well, being sure to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl. The mixture might look a bit runny but don't worry... that is how it should be.

Half fill cupcake or muffin cases in the tins and bake for 15 minutes (cupcake size) or 18 minutes (muffin size)
You may have to do this in more than one batch. No trouble, its only going to prolong the lovely smell in your house. Take out and cool etc.

For the frosting, put the water, muscovado and butter in a pan over a low heat. When the mixture begins to bubble take it off the heat and add the chocolate. Stir it like mad until its all glossy and gorgeous. Allow to cool down, stirring periodically. At this point it will be quite bitter from all the dark chocolate, and still quite loose. Add icing sugar to taste and to thicken. As much or as little as you like.

Once the cakes are cool, flatten the cakes by cutting off the tops, and then scoop out a little crevice in each cake.

Once the condensed milk is boiled to caramel, allow it to cool and then either spoon or pipe into the cake crevices. Then pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.

Then give to the object of your affection and enjoy the rewards (in my house, that means lovely David swoons over the cupcake and then dutifully does the washing up... of which there is A LOT)

Oh, and P.S, there will CERTAINLY be a lot of off cuts and plenty of extra icing so be sure to save the crumbs to have as "the cook's share" x

Festive Shortbread

Christmas can never come too early. Selfridges might be pushing it a bit opening their Christmas store in August, but as far as I'm concerned mid-November is a perfectly acceptable time to start getting into the Christmas spirit.
I've charged up my iPhone with carols and songs to make me feel festive and it is certainly helping me to get through the Autumn slog. Anyway, I was listening to my iPhone on shuffle the other day and "Once In Royal David's City" came on. It's the best carol and there is nothing else to it. I had to decorate, there was nothing else for it. I did, however need some festive food to get me in the true spirit. I whipped up some cinammon shortbread!

130g butter (mmm healthy!)
55g caster sugar
180g flour,
tsp ground cinnamon (or more if you like)
Tbsp icing sugar for sprinkling

Cream butter and sugar, then add flour and cinnamon
Turn onto lightly floured surface an roll until about 1cm thick. Cut into desired shape (I was too lazy to bother with gingerbread man cutter so just went with fingers) and pop onto a lined baking tray. Chill for 20 mins. Go and put up your Christmas Tree (optional)

Bake for 15mins at 190*C

Go and decorate a Christmas Tree (optional)

If you can resist, allow to cool on a wire rack... or not... whatever.

You should get this:

And if you're really following the recipe well, you should get this too:

Merry Pre-Christmas!

Sunshine Cupcakes

I work hard, I have a pretty much full time job, and I study full time too. Mostly, I love it, it's flexible and I get to split my time between doing things that I (largely) enjoy, and spend time outside during the day as I commute between places. Of course there are times when that gets a bit much, and gets me down, but someone has to pay the bills. At these times, the people that sit around me at the office generally are in the same stressed out boat as me. Especially at this time of year, when you're getting into the office before sunrise and leaving before sunset, I get the feeling that everyone needs a bit more sunshine in their lives. So I make what I call "Sunshine Cupcakes". Normally, they're iced yellow, but Dolly Mixtures were on special at my local Tesco so I used all sorts of colours to make them look scrumptious. The Recipe is below. It includes a sugar syrup which was news to me when I made them. If you're going to make these, please please please don't forget the sugar syrup, and put lots on, quickly. It might make your pretty cupcake cases a bit less pretty but it makes the cakes so so moist and so vanillovely. Oh, and on the vanilla point: I know they're expensive, but there really is no substitute for Vanilla Pods. I bought a huge amount on Amazon (now doing groceries) and the price was 1/10th of the supermarket, for the same product.

Ingredients:
CAKES:
200g butter, softened, unsalted
200g caster sugar
200g plain flour
4 eggs (large, free range)
1tsp vanilla extract
2tsp baking powder
--------------------
VANILLA SYRUP
200ml water
100g sugar (granulated or caster)
1 vanilla pod (whole)
--------------------
ICING
300g butter, softened, unsalted
750g icing sugar
seeds of 1 vanilla pod
food colouring (yellow for sunshine- or whatever you want)

Method:
Preheat oven to 160*C, line cupcake tin.
Cream together butter and sugar, add vanilla. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between.
Add the remaining dry ingredients - mix.

Bake for 25-30 mins

Meanwhile... make the vanilla syrup: put all ingredients in a pan over low heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Crank up the heat and boil for 1 minute (keep an eye on it). Then turn off the heat.

When the cakes are done, brush the cakes with the syrup... the more the better, I sometimes just pour... This makes them so lovely and moist.

Leave the cakes to cool for a good 20 minutes (impatience is always my weakness).

For buttercream: beat together the butter, sugar and vanilla until desired consistency. Add colouring if you want.

The rest is up to your creativity.

The Nutty one goes on holiday

I like to get away just before the fall starts- I find it gets me through the winter, a bit of a Vitamin D booster, if you like. So this time, it was Barcelona. I was looking forward to some good Spanish food. I went with my Mum and Dad, and between the 3 of us we managed about 6 words in Catalan, 6 words in Spanish, and we didn't know which was the difference. I generally tried speaking French, which sometimes worked.... but mostly didn't. That's right, we became THOSE people, you know, the ones that point very loudly and say English words in a Spanish accent. I hated it. I felt so powerless. Frustratingly, via some French and common sense, I could manage to understand what was going on, just not communicate anything. Anyway, back to the food: first stop, Paella. We went straight to Las Ramblas, wondered around the back streets and found a stunning little church square with little restaurants. One looked significantly busier than the other, and despite the moans of our hungry hungry tummies, we took it as a sign and waited for a table. Well, that was DEFINITELY the right decision. The mark of a good paella is a nice crusty bottom, well cooked mussels, no rubbery seafood, and some good meat. Oh My Goodness. This was a box ticker. I've since made it at home and discovered that chicken thighs and chorizo is the risk free way to go. Something to not forget: Lemon. You might think it'll be fine without it, you're wrong, it won't.

Next stop, dessert. Now when I'm on holiday I like a good ice cream, but on our walk towards the sea front we found this place. I couldn't believe the displays... firstly, if I had to make THAT many macaroons, brownies, cookies... I would not want them to be put into a big plastic tube. Those are for eating! We had some macaroons, and then I decided that 2 desserts wasn't at all excessive, so I had ice-cream too. I was, after all on holiday. I'm making macaroons next weekend so I'll let you know how they turn out

Final stop on day one - the seafront, for some Sangria, in a bar that had full size beds instead of seating booths. On our way there, we saw someone walking down the promenade wearing sandals, and nothing else. I just hope he'd never been to that bar. 

The below is a selection of fab things I saw while there, that just need to be shared:
This was on the service cart, say it out loud, you'll get it.

I didn't try this, it was in La Bouqueria, not to mention, I was with my parents. If it lived up to its name, I might have been a bit embarrassed.

These were also in La Bouqueria, and how cute are those golf balls? I bought some for my golf loving boyfriend. They were as delicious as they look.

This was an eggy exhibit (an egg-xhibit?) and the Fundacio Miro. I love eggs, I love Miro... I needed to take the photo

And these were delicious towel cakes. Yes, you read correctly. Cakes, made from towels. I would have bought one if I didn't know that the moment I took it home it would lose its form.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed reading about a trip that inspired me to cook lots. I'll be sure to show you the Macaroons as soon as I've perfected them

Face Cake Party!

I know, I know, I'm rubbish at blogging. I promise to update more regularly in future. For now I'm going to share one of my favourite baking expeditions with you: the face cakes. It was the birthday of 2 of my colleagues, and they decided (in their quirky way) that they wanted some face cakes. They asked a few people to bake for them and nominated us each to make a particular celebrity cake. One girl was tasked with Mike Tyson, one was tasked with people in the office, and I was tasked with Gregg Wallace. They did ask for a buttery biscuit base, but I went instead for my never fail Vicky sponge (recipe in older blog post). Well, it might need to be renamed. Taking my inspiration from Duff Goldman, Ace of Cakes, I decided to bake the whole batter as a sheet cake and then carve it. Well, silly me, I didn't adjust the cooking time, and it sunk a wee bit in the middle but that wasn't the end of the world (Gregg Wallace totally has a concave face). While cake was cooling. I sketched out a template from a photo I found online:

Then came the fun bit. I used my Art GCSE which is something I wasn't sure I would use past the age of 20. I mixed up 4 or 5 different colours for the cake, including 3 flesh tones, rose for lips, brown for brows, blue for shirt... the hours I spent was just plain old fashioned commitment to a cause. Anyway, the below is the result.  

 Needless to say I was quite delighted by the amateurish success of it. I know he looks a bit stripey so maybe next time (yes, there might be a next time) I'll try fondant. He looked nothing like the template though:

The birthday boy and girl were thrilled, and got a great stash of cakes. Mine was clearly the tastiest, but see below for the Mike Tyson chocolate fudge cake, with actual fudge pieces. Also see if you can spot the Lady Gaga cupcake and the Krusty the Clown cupcake. The other cakes are all people from our office, so I won't bore you with the likenesses. A pretty good birthday spread if you ask me. Thankfully - our office is home to 100 hungry workers, and they all love cake.

Eton un-mess

I'd planned a big roast dinner today for 3 hungover Scotsmen, and asked my housemate what he fancied for pudding. "Eton Mess" (I know, not in season). I decided to be pretentious and fancy just for the sake of it and deconstruct it... a sort of DIY Eton Mess. I was a little concerned that I wasn't going to be able to let the meringues rest in the oven for long enough but that issue resolved itself nicely. Will say how later.

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

1/2 cup caster sugar + maybe a few extra tablespoons

Small tub double cream

Seasonal berries (2 punnets)

Method: 

Pre-heat oven to 150*C

Whisk up egg whites to really stiff peak stage - people have all sorts of weird speed combinations for whisking up egg whites but to be perfectly honest, I just whisk them up fast and it works fine for me. 

Add caster sugar one tablespoon at a time and whisk the life out of the mixture until it is glossy and firm.

Spoon 4 mounds onto lined baking sheet and bake for 30 mins at 150, then turn off the oven and LEAVE the meringues in the oven for as long as possible. This is to dry out the meringues. I needed to get my birds in the oven for the Sunday Lunch, so I had to take them out, which meant that the inside had a great squishiness to it! 

While the meringues were cooling down, I whipped up a quick coulis. I don't know if it was technically a coulis, but it was bloody lovely. I halved just over half of the berries and popped them in a wee saucepan with a glug of water and a few tablespoons of caster sugar. I just let the pot do its thing over a medium heat, every now and then giving it a vigorous stir. The smell is just gorgeous. I was using strawberries and the smell was just so sweet. I let it simmer for about 30 minutes, which seems like a long time, but I just didn't want to stop the smell. I sieved out the pulpy bits and piped the saucy goodness into the bottom of the meringue nests (with some left for decoration). 

I whipped up the double cream and plated with the remaining berries. I must say, even the most manly Scotsmen were oohing and aaahing over this pretty pink pudding. Even if strawberries aren't in season. 

Chilli Jam

This Spring I planted some chilli, with a view to doing I-don't-know-what with the finished products! They're such a cheery plant to have in your home/on the balcony and are remarkably low-maintenance. Anyway, when the end of September came I needed to harvest my crop, so on went the wellies (to venture out onto my Inner London rooftop) and I managed to pick about 50 chillies from my 6 plants. So what to do with this? The Nigella recipe called for red chillies to make a lovely red glow, so I searched high and low for one which used green chillies. http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/1217/spicy-chilli-jam.aspx AllRecipes saved the day (again). Next challenge: Pectin. Oh. My. Goodness! Why so hard to find? Finally managed to find a supermarket that sold it and off I went. I had such fun making the jam, and I love it. It works really well on burgers, sausages, with cheeseplates and savoury pies. I made a quadruple batch, so I have lots and lots of jars which are going to all sorts of lovely people as their Christmas presents.

Carrot Cake

My dear old friend Caitlin recently came back from a European trip away with her boyfriend Alex, she asked us if she could crash in our spare room. We obliged and when they arrived, she was wearing an engagement ring! Well pop went the champagne, and as I do, I went into a baking frenzy. I had some carrots to use up so bingo: 

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/512793/lorraine-pascale-s-big-fat-carrot-cake The recipe here calls for 3 layers of carrot cake but my batter managed to make 4 layers (because I was using 20cm tins), and I usually make 50% extra icing as well which was a good job because the silky, billowy loveliness of the cream cheese icing MADE the cake. (Call me immodest, but I think mine looks better than hers). My friend Caitlin was so impressed by how effortlessly I managed to whip up the cake (more a virtue of the recipe than a virtue of my skill) and has since commissioned me to make her Wedding Cake. Exciting!

An Autumnal Apple Adventure

I love Autumn, so much. It is the best season by far, the nights drawing in, the leaves changing, the Rugby (this year anyway), and best of all, the run up to Christmas. One of the best things about Autumn, and so underrated, is all the pie. I love pie. Sweet pie, meat pie, pie pie pie. So I was delighted with the below story. I was staying at my mum and dads a weekend in September this year, and my dad's colleagues invited us all around for breakfast and to watch the Rugby. They had such a lovely home and had invited heaps of people over. One of the couples that they invited over made their own homemade apple cider, and would get their friends to donate apples, in return for some cider (a few weeks later). So, after the rugger (New Zealand won... obviously), we all donned our wellies and went into the garden to "pick" apples. "Picking" apples involved shaking branches with a massive plank, and it was literally raining apples. I'd never seen anything like it. We spent well over an hour collecting apples and when we needed to get to branches that we couldn't reach, my dad (57 years old) rediscovered his inner 7 year old and climbed up to shake the top branches. See if you can spot him:

 I was amazed by how many apples we got from one tree only. I can only imagine the amount of cider, and the amount of good days spent drinking that cider. We filled up an entire trailer, I couldn't believe it! Apples as far as the eye can see:

Anyway, we all got invited to go to the cider makers home to help making cider. My mum and dad went along, but sadly, I had to come back home to London, so I got sent away with some delicious apples to do my best with. Well, my lovely David loves apple pie, and he's getting really good at making it too. I love to add cinnamon and soaked raisins or sultanas, and hey presto: the easiest, yummiest, most autumnal pudding. And all with apples that rained down from a tree with my 57 year old dad on it.

Whoopee, it's a Woopie!

Woopie Pies- what a flippin' revelation! This little baking excursion was inspired by Simon Rimmer from Something For the Weekend, find the recipe here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_whoopies_67418
The marshmallowy goodness on the inside... mm, mm, mmmm! And you can't beat a handful of rasps to freshen things up!

My 21st Birthday

21st, a coming of age. For me, I've always been 64 at heart, but I threw myself into the spirit of saying goodbye to my kiddie years by throwing a Pirates and Princess party. I managed to get my paws on a brand spanking new copy of the Australian Women's Weekly Kid's Birthday cake book. It turns out it was an institution in all of our childhoods... My brothers and I loved it as kids, and I found a "well used" copy in David's mum's kitchen too! When I found the new edition in Homebase (of all places?) I just about did flick flacks. So here is a Pirate Ship and a Princess Castle from the book... and because I needed to take something in to the office, I made a little martian for good measure. As a testament to my immaturity: don't miss the dead flowers, drying shorts and bottle of carpet cleaner in the background (I learnt from this mistake)

Easter Time

I can't quite remember what it was that inspired me to make this Easter cake, maybe a surplus of mini eggs. Or maybe it's because I LOVE EASTER! It is by far the best holiday of the year. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas: the warm inside, the cold outside, the shopping, the food, the family... but it also has the expectation. After all the buildup, Christmas day is a bit of an anti-climax, I tend to have an argument with my mother/brother/boyfriend/alloftheabove. Easter has none of that. It's all about new starts, chocolate and chilling out with whoever you want to. No stress involved. The below was a choctastic overload with chocolate sponge, chocolate ganache filling, a vanilla buttercream and some mini-eggs (always a winner) to decorate. It was a bit of a sickly sweet overload, but you'll never catch me worrying about my bikini bod!

I'm such a good friend

Yes I am. I made this cake for my friend Cansu (pronounced Jan-sue) who was mega-devastated about saying goodbye to her teenage years. I can confirm - 18 months later, that nothing has changed since her birthday. The hours I spent tweezering these little dragees onto the cake were some of the most frustrating in my life. I have learnt, however, that it is these very tasks that are the most gratifying. I gave her the cake in a lecture and she squealed so loudly that we got a really stern look from our lecturer.

For the sponge I used my never fail Vicky Sponge recipe which you can find in my earlier post. I made your classic chocolate buttercream and then used some surplus Toblerone Minis to decorate. Things I learnt with this cake: Patience is a virtue: don't ice too soon. 

Ice Cream Cake

This is another one which was inspired by the other women in David's life. This time: his Auntie Kit, an incredibly devoted mother to 3 boys, one of whom was conveniently born 2 days after Christmas, which is pretty cool because he has all of his family around at his birthday, but kind of sucks as well, because we're all still suffering from the Christmas Food Coma Hangover. Anyway, I think it was his 12th birthday when I watched as his mother and cousins whipped up a delicious looking ice-cream cake. It looked so good I could barely wait until his birthday to eat it, and once I'd seen how easy it was, I HAD to make it at the next available opportunity. My housemate's birthday! He LOVES ice-cream so it was an obvious option. I got some honeycomb icecream, some vanilla ice cream and I stuck in bits of toffee, bits of chocolate, bits of caramel, hunks of flake and some jellybeans. Now this comes with a caveat. DO NOT use toffee or jellybeans in ice cream cake, unless of course you need a cheap tooth extraction (that was sarcasm... just don't). But it really is dead easy. See below

Ingredients:
2 litres of whatever icecream you like best
200-400grams of your favourite confectionery (nothing that will break your teeth when it's cold)
A bag of chocolate fingers

Method
Line a cake tin (pref. springform) with clingfilm
Leave the ice cream out for 30-60 minutes so that its soft but not soupy (cream cheese texture - so you can mix it)
Mix the ice cream together with chopped up bits of your confectionary
Pour it into the clingfilm, and chuck it in the freezer.

After at least 2 hours, take out. Turn out of cake tin. Wash your hands and smooth over the crinkly bits in the cake. Line with lovely choc fingers: I have a more elaborate recipe for this but you'll just have to keep reading to find out what that is.

:-)
Enjoy
CJ

7 layer Vicky Sponge for MB Bake off

Well, I couldn't quite leave the blog blank, So here's some oldies. I was inspired to make this Victoria Sponge for the Millward Brown office bake off, where about 7 of us made sponges in competition with each other, for glory, nothing else. Well, competitive CJ came out of her shell and this bad boy was a 7 layer mastepiece: cake, buttercream, sliced strawberries, double cream whipped, raspberries, cake... and icing sugar (if you count that as a layer). Well needless to say, some lazy baker ditched technique and went for "nutella icing", which inevitably won the popular vote, but I came a solid second, and the adulation from my at-the-time-manager was quite something. It remains the lightest, moistest sponge he has ever eaten. See recipe below

Ingredients:
3 eggs (room temp)
180g caster sugar
180g softened butter
180g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
+ Whatever you want to stuff in the middle.

Method:
Preheat 180. Grease and line 2x 20cm pans (the wee ones)
Beat all ingredients together (no order necessary) for 3 minutes, making sure you scrape down the bowl twice.
Scoop into tins, level, bake for 20 mins. Cool for 10... you know what to do next

Enjoy CJ

Hello Blogosphere!

I have just spent an hour deliberating on what to call my blog. As I'm a bit "Johnny come lately" to the business of blogging, all the good names were taken, so no "For Goodness' Cakes", no "The Way to His Heart", no "Storm in a G Cup"... but then I realised that all of these were far too sensible for me... I must admit, I have been accused of being "Nuttier than a Pecan Log" by my lovely David, so what better name for my brand new food blog? About me (apart from the nuttiness), I was shamed into learning to cook when my lovely David's younger sister casually whipped up dinner for 25 one new year's eve. That was 3 years ago now, and I'm a bona-fide foodie and cooking and baking addict, so much so that (despite my 22 year old student status), I forwent nights out and new clothes for 2 years to save up for Bertha, my lovely KitchenAid Artisan mixer. This blog will share the highs and lows of my journey through cooking. From the shoddy attempts of the early days to some of my more recent, more polished creations. Enjoy, xCJ