Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

Last Sunday was such a glorious day in this part of the world (a welcome hiatus to all the Spring rain we're having), that when the need to go out for a coffee hit (as it regularly does), I decided that it had to be at an equally gorgeous outdoors venue. Thankfully we have quite a few in this area - but one is fast becoming a favourite: Makaranga.
Originally designed to cater for wheelchairs, its paths and ramps have now become just as well suited to prams. A tranquil Japanese garden, waterfall and labyrinth are just a few of the attractions. And when the children have tired of exploring the gardens, the jungle gym and kids activities area situated just off the restaurant/ deli will keep them occupied for just enough time for mom and dad to get their caffeine-fix.

But...this isn't a restaurant or hotel review ; )
The point I'm getting to, eventually, is that while I opted for nothing more exotic than a decaf cappucino, the friend that I was with had a Cookies & Cream Milkshake. How deliciously decadent! (She's allowed to - she's breastfeeding!) I especially liked the way it looked - all speckled; and the tasty tiny crunchy bits in the thick, creamy shake. Mmmmn mmmn!

So, when I was thinking what to do with some cream I had left over from making ganache, the idea to make Cookies & Cream Cupcakes arrived in my head ... and just wouldn't leave ...
I could, of course have just added the cream to some soup, or frozen it...but what fun would that have been?!

So, this is what I did:

Cookies & Cream Cupcakes:

2 cups cake flour
120g butter in small cubes, at room temp.
1 cup white sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup cream (whipping cream / the 35-36% fat kind)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg whites (oh, dear...have to find more ways to use up egg yolks)
8 Oreos, finely crushed (I used my blender)

Method:

Heat oven: 180'C
Prepare 2x12-hole muffin trays with cupcake cases.

Sift together dry ingredients. Use a hand whisk to mix.
Add in butter, and beat with paddle attachment of mixer until combined.
Add in the cream and vanilla and beat for about a minute; then the egg whites. Beat for another minute - until well combined.
Stir in the crushed cookies.
Spoon into cupcake cases in muffin trays (about 1/2 - 2/3 full).
Bake at 180'C for approx. 20 min, or until a skewer inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.

Cookies and Cream Icing:

250g cream cheese (the denser kind - like Lancewood, Woolworths or Philadelphia)
1 1/2 cups cream (whipping cream), cold from the fridge
3 Tbsp caster sugar
4 Crushed Oreos for garnishing.
1 tsp vanilla extract.

In a cold mixing bowl, beat together the cream cheese and sugar. Add the vanilla, blend.
Then, slowly pour in the cream, and continue to beat until the mix can hold a peak.

Pipe this onto the cooled cupcakes, and garnish with the crushed cookies (if finely crushed, the cookies can also be gently folded into the icing,  but I liked the contrast between the speckled cupcakes, white icing and dark crumbs on top.)

I hope you enjoy eating them as much as I enjoyed creating them!

xxM 

Packaged Macarons

Finally...I have filled and paired up the macaron shells that  have been accumulating in my freezer over the past month. Now their flavours can mature over a couple of days before being given away at Grandparents Day. 

(Pink: rose water with white choc ganache centres. Blue: vanilla with dark choc ganache. Choc - with Nutella centres).

It took dozens and dozens to get some good-looking ones : [

I did the chocolate batch today. 

My first attempt at chocolate macarons this weekend was an out-right failure: I'd followed a suggestion to replace a third of the icing sugar with cocoa. Way too much cocoa! It was such a sticky, heavy mixture that it had no chance of rising. Nice chewy chocolate biscuits though!

Still using the macaron recipe I posted before here,  this time I  replaced just 15g of the icing sugar with 15g of cocoa powder - bearing in mind that the cocoa powder I favour is a very dark, rich kind (kapong - mean anything to you?!) that I get from Bake-a-Ton. If you used regular supermarket cocoa, you'd probably have to use more. 

The first tray came out the oven looking good, the second tray were all cracked. All. 

It was probably the temperature - which I'd fiddled with between trays. 

Yikes, these things are fussy!

Anyway, a pretty ribboned box disguises all manner of defects ; )

(These boxes were custom made for me by Cutting Crew in Pietermaritzburg. Email me if you'd like their details.)

xxM

Secret Centre Cake Pops

Last week I was chatting to a friend who was battling to find an important email she had been drafting on her iPad. The final conclusion was that it was probably irretrievably lost. I was feeling bad for her, and at the same time quite relieved that it wasn't me (sorry, Lauren!). Little did I know that at the exact time we were having this electronic conversation, my iPad was downloading the latest software and systematically deleting all the photos and recipes that I had accumulated, albumned and archived over the past 9 months. Grrrr!!
I was using an app called Photo Manager Pro, which had a great filing system. But no back-up. I'm quite technologically naive, so I didn't ever consider doing a manual back-up. And the software upgrade deleted the entire app - photos, recipes, tutorials, everything - including the app itself, off the iPad. Grrr grr!!

So, I was feeling a little gut-punched last week: in need of some serious chocolate solace.
Chocolate cupcakes, chocolate cake pops and chocolate macarons. (The latter didn't turn out looking much like macarons, more like chewy choc biscuits. But they were good enough to be eaten!)

And I decided to be a little decadent with the cake pops: rich chocolate cake with creamy caramel secret centres.

I will share the chocolate cake, and creamy caramel icing recipes with you shortly, but for now - just a quick how-to for the cake pop secret centre:

First, take 1/2tsp-fuls of caramel, and place on a baking tray; put this in the freezer for an hour, or until solid. (This just makes the blob of caramel much easier to work with.)

Use a basic Cake pop recipe  , scoop up your cake pop mix and make a small well.
Put the blob/ nugget of caramel in the well, then compact the cake pop mix around it.

If the caramel starts getting too soft to work with, then just re-freeze.

Put the cake balls in the freezer for 15minutes, then continue with the rest of the cake pop assembly as normal.

Chocolate makes the world a sweeter place : )

xxM

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Many cake batters seem to work out just as well as cupcakes. This carrot cake is no exception. 

It's a real 24 karat recipe ; ) 

Moist, yet not too heavy. 

And just the right amount of nuts and spice, and all things nice! 

Carrot Cake Cupcakes
Ingredients:

2 cups cake flour
2 tsp bicarb. of soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon, or 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp mixed spice
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 cups shredded carrots
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecan nuts
1 can crushed pineapple, discard excess juice

Preheat the oven to 175'C
Prepare 2x 12-hole muffin pans with cupcake cases.

In a large bowl:
Sift together flour, bicarb, baking powder and spices.
Mix in sugar.
Make a well, pour in oil, lightly beaten eggs, and vanilla.
Mix.
Add in pineapple, carrots, coconut and nuts.
Mix until smooth.

 Spoon batter into cupcake cases - about 2/3 full.
Bake for +/- 20-25min, until a skewer comes out clean.
Take cupcakes out of the muffin pans, and allow to cool.

(These cupcakes freeze well).

Cream Cheese Icing:
(this cream cheese icing pipes very well!)

100g butter, at room temp
3/4 cup sifted icing sugar
250g Low fat plain cream cheese - use the denser kind (Woolworths, Lancewood, Philadelphia) - chilled
1 tsp lemon zest

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Add the icing sugar, mix thoroughly.
Add the cream cheese and lemon zest. Blend together.
...and pipe onto the cupcakes when they are cool.

Enjoy!

xxM

Simply Cake Pops

After all my failed batches of macarons, I've been feeling a little skittish about trying something new.
But cake pops are something that you just can't avoid for very long, aren't they?!

The idea of a piece of cake on a stick never really appealed to me. Especially not cake that has been man-handled into dense balls...
But I'm an inveterate re-cycler at heart. That applies to food, too. (Sorry for you if you don't like left-overs in this household!) So, cake pops are actually right up my alley...

I tried a new chocolate brownie recipe this weekend. I already have 2 great recipes for brownies, but one uses Lindt dark chocolate - which doesn't hang around for long in our cupboard, and the other requires Bar-Ones - which I didn't have.
I do, however -  for a reason I can't clearly recall - have blocks and blocks of baking chocolate at the moment.  So I wanted to use it up. Well, some of it...

That new brownie recipe isn't one that I will bother to share.
And by today the cake (because it was definitely more cake than brownie) was really only good for one thing - crumbing up and re-inventing.

Enter the Cake Pop.
I'm sure that that is actually why they were first invented -  a parsimonious baker just had to come up with a cool way to use up left-over or off-cut cake.
I mean, would you really take a perfectly decent, fresh whole cake and demolish it??

(In my youth- ahem! - I waitressed...briefly... at a coffee shop that made bread-and-butter pudding out of old cake. The owner was very parsimonious!)


I only had 250g of crumbs, but they made 8 good sized cake pops. I used chocolate flavoured butter icing, and made it slightly softer than normal piping consistency.  (I did that by adding the cocoa powder to warm milk and beating that into the butter icing.)

This is how I did the rest:

250g cake crumbs (crumbed cake, rather...don't go gathering the crumbs off their cake plates once your guests have left!) - ideally use a food processor to get very fine crumbs
+/-2 level tablespoons of butter icing* (soft, chocolate butter icing) - to get a consistency of just-starting-to-clump-but-still-looks-crumbly mixture. Don't overdo the icing!
300g white chocolate
cake pop sticks
sprinkles
powdered food colouring, if desired.

(You can obviously double these quantities to make more pops; or use whatever amount of cake you have. Just adjust all volumes accordingly.)

Use a scoop to measure out equal amounts of mix. About 30g per cake ball is a good size

Compact them, and round them into balls in your hand. And place on a tray.

These look like they could pass off as meatballs (is it only in South Africa that we know Frikkadel?! Sounds very SAfrican, doesn't it...frrrr-rolling your tongue-rrrikkadel??).

Okay, back to the point:

Pop the pops in the fridge for 15minutes. (This step is debatable - if you are finding that your chocolate is cracking after dipping, rather omit this and accept that the chocolate will take longer to set on the cake pop).

In the meantime melt your white chocolate.
You can use a double boiler, but if you are cautious, the microwave works fine: just do it at low power for a 30sec at a time, stirring with a plastic spoon in-between.
It takes 3-4minutes in total to melt this amount of chocolate.  You want a thin, easily pouring consistency.

Add your powdered colour to all, or half the chocolate.
Don't use liquid food colouring, the chocolate may seize.

Pour the chocolate into a deep narrow container - this makes the dipping easier. I used a perspex 240ml jug.

Dip the pop stick into the chocolate, then stick the stick into the pop ; )

Now dip the cake ball...all the way in. Give it a swirl and tap it on the side of the container to get rid of excess chocolate.
 Once this coat has hardened, you can dip for a second time, or partially dip into another colour.

Sprinkle on the sprinkles, vermicelli, coloured sugar, etc immediately - before the chocolate hardens.

Stick the pop-stick into a styrofoam block to set.

That was fun!

I am definitely going to be looking for excuses to demolish cakes from now on!

xxM

Macarons #2

It is pretty ridiculous how a successful batch of Macarons can lift my mood!
No wonder there are entire blogs just dedicated to pursuing the perfection of these things.

So, needless to say I've been " macarooning" again...

My husband took our children off to the farm for the afternoon and evening.
The first thing I did was get a pedicure. Haven't had one of those in over 4 years! How have I been coping?!
I came home to a very quiet house. Very. And didn't really know what to do with myself. So I landed up in the kitchen, of course!

I've had some egg whites aging in the fridge for a few days now. Just waiting for an opportunity like today: this was the first time I've made Macarons with NO interruptions. It should be part of the list of requirements in the recipe! It obviously helps.

Really, it does: Macarons are all about ingredients, technique and timing. Okay, all baking is ; )
But it is especially so with these tricky treats.
You can't let your whipped meringue sit for too long before mixing in the almonds/ icing sugar. And then, while folding it into the meringue, don't get distracted and over-mix it! Then, you can't let the mixed batter sit for too long before piping it out. And don't over-handle the piping bag, either...

I think you've probably just got to accept that your first few (dozen!) batches will be failures. I hope they aren't, but if they are - don't be discouraged. It's a learning curve. Take heart, as long as you are learning : )

So look at the results and try figure out what needs to change for the next batch. Here are 2 links to troubleshooting tips that I found helpful: www.misohungry.blogspot.com/2011/01/troubleshooting-macaron.html and www.notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2010/08/macaron-troubleshooting-new-recipe.html


Here is the recipe that is working for me. ("Macaron Confusion").


Once you've made them a few times you get the feel for the batter, and can recognize the "ribbon" stage when it's sufficiently mixed and ready for piping.

Another factor is oven temperature - if I'd known how important that variable was, I might not have attempted Macarons with my dodgy, dodgy oven (the one that blasts out 240'C heat when dialed to 180'C). And oven temp. is what I've concentrated on the last couple of batches.

I now place the Macarons into an oven that has been pre-heated to 175'C, immediately turn it down to 150'C, then after about 10 minutes crack open the door; and then leaving it slightly open, check on the mac's every 30-60sec thereafter. That's how quickly they can brown!
And just before the browning starts, take them out the oven. (Undercooked macaron shells will crack and collapse.)

Nothing complicated ; )

I plan to fill these shells with white chocolate ganache, but for now they are going into the freezer. (They are also destined for the Paris-themed Grandparents day.)

Now that those are out if they way, I can't wait for my little distractions to come home tomorrow. Children really help you appreciate things in life - even if somedays it's just the quiet and calm once they've gone to bed!

Happy baking!

xxM

Quilted Cookie Tutorial

Another dry, hot 'Berg wind today - great cookie decorating weather (except for the soot blowing up from the valley, after all the winter fires).
So I did a whole lot of cookies for my son's school Grandparents Day - Paris Theme.  The event is only in two weeks time, but I don't know how long this dry weather will hold, and I just don't feel like trying to do this with wet, soggy royal icing...

 ...they were done with rubber stamps, and gel food colouring for ink. So simple.
So now I'm going to be on the look-out for interesting rubber stamps. I love having an excuse to visit Scrapbooking shops! I always have to remind myself that the embellishments they sell aren't edible. though!!

At the same time I did a couple of quilted cookies, and I thought I should share the technique with you.

Before I start - mine really are not the prettiest quilted cookies you will ever see! I don't have a steady enough hand, and as much as I like Ateco nozzles, the size 1 just isn't fine enough.

Anyway, here goes...

Start with a cookie ; )

Outline with 15-20sec icing (see Royal Icing notes here)

Cross-hatch with the same icing

Fill in alternate squares with the same icing

And now leave it to dry

Once dry, fill in the other squares

(bad photo, because it was now nighttime)

And once those squares are also dry, finish off with dots at the line junctions.  

That's all! 

Happy decorating.  

xxM