Red Velvet Cupcakes

I've only baked a red velvet cake once before when I made my partner a gumball machine cake and it had to be very dense to keep the sweets part of the cake up. I liked the taste but wish I could make something more light and fluffy and this lead me to bake some red velvet cupcakes.

I took me a while to find a recipe that I wanted to attempt, some seemed way to complicated but after coming across this Nigella Lawson recipe I knew this one was the one for me. The best thing about today's bake was that I got to have family time with my second cousin from South Africa.

Ingredients

250g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
100g soft unsalted butter (I used stork)
200g caster sugar
1 heaped tablespoon of red food colouring
2 teaspoons of villa extract
2 large eggs (I use free range) 
175 buttermilk
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

For the frosting:

500g icing sugar
125g cream cheese
125g soft unsalted butter
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Method

First, mix all the dry ingredients together.  

Cream the butter and sugar together. It would look like it normal does. It will more like a dough.

Like this.

Add the food colouring. We used paste.

Mix. It takes a while but it should get up like this.

Add the vanilla extract. We used this one as the baking stuff was 3 for 2 at Tesco.

It smelt so good :)

Mix in the dry ingredients, and eggs bit by bit before adding the butter milk and cider vinegar. This is the second time I have use butter milk. The first time I used it was for blueberry and almond muffins and I think it's a winner for making your cakes oozy.

Separate into cupcake cases. The recipe said it makes 24 but we were a bit generous with the mix so it ended up making 21.

We put all the frosting ingredients in at the same time then realised we needed a food processor. So we mixed them genitally then once incorporated we whizzed them together with the electric mixer.      

The best part about this bake was playing with some different piping nozzles.

These were the results.

We found some raspberry fudge cake toppers which I loved as it reminded me of my polka dot background. They also gave a burst of flavour which complemented the sponge. 

I will defintly bake these again as they went down a treat. I shared with friends the next day and they really liked them too.

If you like chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting why not give it a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx

How to make a football cake

This weekend was my nephew's 2nd birthday and I had a couple of ideas for what cake I would make but decided in the end to bake a football cake. He's football mad at the moment and has impressive skills for a two year old! Not that I'm bias in anyway...

  I wanted to wrap a cute little scarf around the football when I realised that this would be a problem with my sister being a Liverpool supporter and my brother-in-law being a Manchester United supporter. Luckily both team colours are red. Plus with live in Wrexham, Wales so it worked well for this too! 

Now for the baking. I used a two pint pyrex bowl to give the correct shape and used a basic sponge recipe. However, any heat proof bowl will work. Before you make the cake batter prepared the bowl and turned the oven on to pre-heat to 180. Used parchment paper to line a heat proof bowl by cutting it into strips and use butter to 'glue' it down trying to not overlap the paper too much.

Make cake better in a separate bowl. You can use a box mix or the recipe below.

Ingredients 

250g self raising flour

250g soft butter

250g sugar

4 medium eggs (I use free range)

Teaspoon of baking powder

Icing sugar

Jam

White icing

Black icing

Red icing

Green food die 

First mix the butter and sugar together until pale then bit by bit add the flour and baking powder by sifting it into the bowl. Crack the eggs in a mug and beat with a fork and add in a bit at a time alternating between the flour. Once combined pour into your lined heatproof bowl  

Place in the oven for 40 minuets, test the cake putting a skewer in the middle and if it comes out clean the cake is ready, if not leave it for another five minuets and try again. Leave to cool and turn out on your severing place (or cake stand). Cut in half and add your chosen filling. I chose strawberry jam. 

 Next, role out your white icing (tip: put icing sugar on your work station to save stickiness) You can buy icing from most supermarkets however, I got mine from Sugar & Spice as Mike is really helpful and I like to support local businesses. Before you place your icing on top use butter icing, icing sugar or jam  on your sponge so the cake has something to stick to. I used icing sugar for the first time (I normally use jam) and it worked well. Once your icing is on the cake carefully pat it down and cut off the excess (it's always better to have too much and cut off than have too little.)

Role out your black icing and cut in to a pentagon. I started off with a house shape then my partner helped by thinning down the sides for the correct shape.

Place the black shapes on by dabbing your finger (clean of course!) into a bit of water so it can stick to the white icing. Space them out until it looks right.

Next prepare your green butter icing. It's very easy to make just place a few tablespoons of soft butter in a bowl and bit by bit add icing sugar until you can't taste the butter any more. Add in the green food die (I use gel as it is gives a strong colour for little gel). Pipe the butter icing around the cake so it looked like grass. To do this you can use a disposable icing bag with a star nozzle. 

Role out the red icing long enough to wrap around 3/4 of the cake. Role out the white icing and cut rectangles and place along the scarf so there is one red and one white rectangle along the scarf. Use a fork to press the ends of the scarf and wrap around the cake.

I'm happy to say they loved the cake and it went down a treat! 

If you know some one (big or small) who would like a football cake why not give this a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx

How to bake without scales

A sad day came when I lined up all my ingredients to make my first ever muffins and the battery in my scales died :( 

After a day of being grumpy I decided to go against my usually 'everything needs to be exact' ways and when old school by using measuring cups. 

Luckily I have two sets, the standard measuring cups and these cute Russian doll measuring cups.

I decided to make some blueberry and almond muffins as I love both blueberries and almonds so this was a no brainer. I found this recipe on Life Style Food and it just happened to be a Mary Berry recipe! 

I converted the measurements into cups and hoped for the best.
This recipe includes buttermilk and this was the first time I've ever used it resulting in a supermarket staff member and myself hunting it down.

For those of you who are wondering what the difference is between a cupcake and muffin mix it's the way you mix the ingredients. For a cupcake you start with beating the butter and sugar then add in the rest of the ingredients. For a muffin you mix all the wet ingredients and then all the dry ingredients separately before combining together.    

The last ingredient to go in is the fresh blueberries. These are one of my favorite fruits and paired with flaked almonds just gave the muffins a mix of crunchy texture. The blueberries exploded in the muffins which give a pocket of flavour.     

I took some of these into work and I froze some too and they turned out better than I expected (as this was my first time baking muffins).

What's your favorite muffin flavour? 

If you are baking muffins for the first time why not try this Merry Berry recipe?

Happy baking

Ms B

xx

  

Chocolate orange cake

A while a go I made some yummy chocolate orange cupcakes. I liked the recipe so much I thought I would adapt it into a cake.
So the first step I made was doubling the original recipe.

Ingredients

230g (8oz) butter 

230g (8oz) caster sugar

230g (8oz) self raising flour

2 medium eggs

Zest of 1 orange 
2 tablespoons orange juice

The method is the same (see here) as the cupcakes however, this time I split the mix in a 8" sandwich tin.
While it was baking I made some orange butter cream so the cake wasn't overpowered by chocolate. I have got into a habit of just winging butter icing. I start by using two cups of soft butter then adding twice as much icing sugar. A little bit of orange juice and some zest of orange. Using an electric mixer on full power for 5 minutes adding icing sugar until I couldn't taste the butter anymore.

Once the cake was cool I added the butter icing.

Now for the topping. I had ready made chocolate icing already open so I used that and then I added canned mandarin orange to make it pretty. I chose canned as the segments looked nicer than cut up orange.

I took it to a BBQ and I'm pleased to say that it didn't last long. The photo below was after just 5 minutes.

Have you every adapted a cupcake recipe into a cake? Or if you have ever wanted that chocolate orange taste in a cake why not give it a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx