Dessert Cupcakes - Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

First of a series of dessert themed cupcakes I am planning to make. This first one is a Lemon Meringue Cupcake. I had a little help from my little girl Niamh today too : )

We started by making the cupcakes, we followed the same recipe for the Vanilla cupcakes in an earlier post, although we left out the vanilla as the lemon curd added later gives enough flavour - https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=899605640553638927#editor/target=post;postID=113073759303182014

This recipe will make approximately 16 cupcakes. bake as directed.

Meringue Ingredients
4 egg whites
200g caster sugar
a pinch of salt

whisk the egg whites (preferably in an electric mixer) for 5-6 minutes until they form peaks and the mixture stays in the bowl when it is turned upside down : )

Whilst still Beat add the sugar and salt mix a little at a time. beat for 7 -8 mins until you have glossy smooth stiff peaks. When you rub a little of this mixture between two of your fingertips it should not feel at all grainy, if it does continue beating. Line a baking tray with baking parchment with little blobs of meringue under the corners of the paper to hold on the tray. Set up a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle and fill with the meringue mix.

When the cupcakes are baked turn the oven down to 110C

Pipe the meringue tops, I had one of the muffin cases to hand so that I knew the size I was going for. Once piped you can decorate with sprinkles or decorations like my little butterflies as these sugar decorations do not seem to be affected by further baking. Put the meringues into the oven for one hour and then turn the oven off and leave for a further hour.

When meringues have cooled, Make a hollow in each cupcake so that the top would sit neatly on top. Fill this hollow with Lemon curd and level off. Then simply top with a meringue.

Lovely Lemon drizzle cake

Lemon Drizzle Cake one of my favourites!

Ingredients

125g caster sugar

75g butter

150g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

3 tbsp full fat milk

zest and juice of 1 lemon

for the drizzle

zest and juice of 1 large lemon

2 tbsp of Granulated sugar

Heat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 1lb loaf tin with baking paper

Beat the sugar and butter together with a hand held mixer for 5-6 mins until very light and fluffy add the rest of the ingredients, mixing all the time until well combined

Pour into loaf tin and bake for 35-40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Whilst the cake is baking make the drizzle by mixing the ingredients together. As soon as you remove the cake from the oven, make some small holes all over the surface using the skewer, then pour over the drizzle and leave to cool slightly before removing from tin. Then just try not to eat it all at once!

Blueberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ian wanted a blue themed cake to celebrate coming first in something at work so I decided to go for a Blueberry cake with a cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients

• 175g softened butter
• 175g golden caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 4tbsp soured cream
• 300g  blueberries

For the frosting

• 200g tub Philadelphia cheese
• 115g icing sugar
• 4 tbsp soured cream

Preheat the oven to fan160/gas 4/Conventional 180

Grease a 22cm Cake tin and line the bottom with Baking paper.

Put the butter, sugar eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla into a bowl and beat for 2  -3 mins until well mixed and light in colour. Add the soured cream and beat again, then gently fold in half of the blueberries.

I found this mix worked very well as often with fruit cakes the fruit can sink to the bottom, a tip to avoid this is to dust the fruit with a little flour before you add it as it helps to prevent it from sinking to the bottom.  But I don't think that would be necessary here.

Gently spoon this mixture into the prepared tin and smooth out the top. Bake for 50 minutes until it is risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Rest for a couple of minutes in the tin then turn out, remove lining paper and leave to cool completely on a cooling rack

Whilst it is cooling make the frosting. Simply whisk together all the ingredients. It will seem quite lumpy at first, but will eventually become glossy and smooth.

When the Cake  is completely cooled top with the frosting, smooth out and decorate as you choose with the remaining Blueberries. You can store this cake in the fridge for a couple of days, but remove from fridge an hour or two before you want to eat it

Easiest ever Chocolate Brownies!

This is a very popular recipe in our house and one I don't mind making because it is so easy!

Ingredients
175g Butter
200g Dark Chocolate
325g Caster Sugar
130g Plain Flour
3 Eggs
icing sugar to decorate

Preheat oven to 170C. Line a square or rectangular tin with baking paper, don't worry too much about neatness, I just lay it over then press into the sides of the tin.

Melt Chocolate and butter together in a large bowl set over a pan of simmering water (or if you are lazy like me do it in the microwave!:) ) stir well to combine then add the sugarand stir well - it will look like a lot of sugar for the chocolate but it is the right amount. Add the flour and stir then finally stir in the eggs and mix until the mixture is smooth. Pour into lined tin smooth out and bake for 30-35 minutes. When ready cracks should be appearing across the top and the top should crack if you press it lightly with your finger. Remove from oven and rest in tin for 5 minutes. Remove from tin by holding a chopping board over the tin and turning it over, remove tin and lining paper then place another chopping board on top and turn back over. Leave to cool then cut into squares and dust with Icing sugar.

This pic is to show the kind of cracking you should see when the brownies are ready

Chocolate Birthday Cake

Have spent a couple of evenings making this cake, hopefully it has turned out ok!

It is a real chocolate feast with three different types of chocolate cake all layered up, covered with a chocolate ganache and decorated with even more Chocolate! 

The first thing I did was to make the patterned chocolate for the letters and the crumbled chocolate around the sides of the cake. The pattern was added to the chocolate with chocolate transfer sheets. This was the first time I have used them, and they pattern transferred very well, but you mustn't let the chocolate completely harden before you try to cut it or it will break. Here is a link to a video explaining how to use chocolate transfer sheets .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcHSqgIH4No

I cut out my letters then left them to harden further, then removed from sheet and left in the fridge overnight.

Today I got to work on my cakes. The bottom layer is a chocolate coca cola cake and this is the recipe

Ingredients
250g/9oz self-raising flour
300g/10½oz golden caster sugar
3 heaped tbsp cocoa powder
generous pinch bicarbonate of soda
250g/9oz butter
200ml of cola drink
75ml/4¼fl oz milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas4. and grease a 24cm loose bottomed cake tin
2. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Melt
the butter and cola drink gently in a pan then add to the dry
ingredients, together with the milk, eggs and vanilla. Mix gently but thoroughly
3. Tip into the cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes or until a
skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove
from the oven and leave for about 15 minutes. 

The other layers are a recipe split in two to make two different flavour cakes : 

• 175g butter , softened, plus extra for greasing
• 100g white chocolate (we like M & S or Green & Black's with real vanilla)
• 100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
• 3 eggs
• 100ml whole or semi-skimmed milk
• 175g caster sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 200g self-raising flour
• 2 tbsp very strong coffee (instant is fine)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Butter and bottom-line 2 x 20cm sandwich tins. For the cake, break the white and dark chocolate into two small bowls, then melt in the microwave on High for 1 min or over a pan of simmering water. Put everything else, except the coffee and vanilla, into a large bowl, then beat until creamy.
• Divide the mixture in two, then add the coffee and melted dark chocolate to one bowl, and the vanilla and melted white chocolate to the other. Stir until mixed through, then tip into the tins. Bake for 20-25 mins until risen and slightly shrunk from the sides of the tins. Cool in the tins for a few mins, then turn onto a wire rack.
• When the cakes were cooled I used a smaller tin to trim a rim of about 1cm off them as I felt they were a little big as they were.
• The next job was to make the ganache.
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• Ingredients
• 430ml double cream
• 300g dark chocolate
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• For the ganache, heat the cream in a pan, then break the dark chocolate into a large bowl. Once the cream is just boiling, pour it onto the chocolate, then leave for 5 mins. Stir until smooth, then leave until thickened and cool. 
• I then started to assemble the cake. I used the cola cake for the bottom layer and topped the whole cake with ganache smmothing with a palette knife. The next layer was the white chocolate cake and Again I covered with ganache and smoothed out and finally did the same with the dark chocolate cake finishing with a final layer of ganache, I then used 5 boxes (!!) of chocolate fingers to encircle the inner and outer cakes, starting with the inner one - and I was very good because I only ate one or two :) I then filled the gap between the two with crumbled transfer decorated chocolate and crumbled flake. I then decorated the top with Maltesers (It took a full large bag) and stuck on the letters / numbers with some of the left over ganache. I added a ribbon to give a bit more stability to the chocolate fingers although it was not strictly neccesary
• Sorry blog is a funny layout today, am good with cakes, rubbish with computers : (
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Vanilla Cupcakes

A very simple recipe - that makes oh so cute cupcakes!!

4 med eggs
250g butter at room temperature
250g caster sugar
250g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
seeds from  half a vanilla pod, or 1tsp vanilla extract


Mix all the above together until smooth and creamy. Fill muffin cases 2/3rds full with mixture, smooth tops and bake at 180 for 12-14 mins until golden and a skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Leave to cool.

For Icing, mix 500g of sifted icing sugar with 160g butter and 2 tbsp of milk and seeds from other half of vanilla pod or vanilla extract. Beat until smooth, then add colouring if required, and pipe or smooth onto cakes and decorate!

Jammie Dodgers and Custard Creams

Treats needed to go in Packed Lunches this week, so it's biscuits today,  2 of my favourite kinds too 

I used the same basic dough for each biscuit which is really easy to make and very pliable to easy to work with.

Ingredients for dough

170g butter
85g icing sugar (sifted)
170g pln flour (sifted)
55g custard powder (sifted)

Cream together the butter and icing sugar - I start doing this with a wooden spoon before using the mixer so that I  don't get covered in icing sugar when turning the mixer on. add flour and custard powder and using a K beater if using a food processor or a spoon and then your hands if you are not, work together until you have a nice ball of dough. The dough should feel lovely and soft and a bit like playdoh!

Roll out the dough and cut into whatever shapes you like. I Did stars for my Jammie dodgers, using the round end of a piping nozzle to cut out a small circle in half of the stars. I cut out the hole whilst the dough was still in the star shaped cutter so that it wouldn't cause the dough to spread out. For the custard creams I used a standard cutter, but for some of the tops I pushed a mesh shape into the dough before cutting out to give some of the tops a more interesting texture. Bake for about 10-12 mins then leave to cool on trays.

For the Jammie Dodgers I just sandwiched them together with the jam using slightly more in the middle so it would come up through the hole, and then sprinkled with caster sugar.

For the custard creams I made a custard flavoured buttercream icing.

Ingredients

80g butter at room temperature

250g sifted icing sugar 

2 tbsp whole milk

50g custard powder

beat the icing sugar and butter together after initially combining using a spoon. add the milk and the custard powder. Taste and add more sugar or custard powder if required. Then use to sandwich biscuits together. You can be quite generous with it.