The Red Velvet Cupcake

The Red Velvet has a somewhat tangy, chocolate flavour. It's absolutely yummy, and goes perfectly with vanilla cream cheese frosting!

This is definitely one of my staple cupcake recipes, because it's a favourite amongst both adults and people my age.
Source

Ingredients

60g unsalted butter, softened

150g sugar

1 egg

10g cocoa powder

20ml red food colouring

little bit of vanilla

120ml buttermilk

150g plain flour

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon of bicarb

1 and a half teaspoons of white wine vinegar

Method

Pre heat the oven to 170C (conventional), and line a muffin tray with 12 paper cases.

Grab the hand mixer, and beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Next, add in the egg and keep beating on low speed.

In a small bowl, combine the vanilla, cocoa, and red food colouring to form a paste, and add this into the batter.

Still beating on slow speed, add in the buttermilk and flour, alternating between the two.

Add in the salt, bicarb and vinegar, and beat on medium speed for another couple of minutes.

Now, spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife/skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. 

Once out the oven, leave them too cool, and get started on the frosting.

FROSTING

50g butter, softened

125g cream cheese, soft

300g icing sugar

little bit of vanilla

With the hand mixer, beat the butter and cheese together, and slowly add in the icing sugar and vanilla. 

Either pipe or spread over the cupcakes. My method of choice is to pipe.

Also, save one of the cupcakes (preferably one that's gone a little skewed whilst cooking - there's always one!!!) and grate it into crumbs. Use these crumbs to sprinkle on top of the frosted cupcakes - it just adds a lovely touch to them!

 A few I made a while back..

Duo-toned frosting! Yeyyy!!

J xx

The Oreo Cupcake

The Oreo Cupcake, probably my most-used recipe, ever. Fundamentally, it's a vanilla sponge cake with Oreos added in, plus a ridiculously yummy vanilla cream cheese frosting which marries all the flavours together and brings a smile to anyone who eats it, usually leading them to follow with an 'omg, this is heavenly!'.

Adapted from this

Ingredients
170g unsalted butter, softened
120g caster sugar
35g brown sugar
1/2tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
170g flour
1teasp baking powder
pinch of salt

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C, and line a cupcake tray with 12 liners. Get 12 Oreos, and twist them apart. Place the half with the cream, cream-side up at the bottom of each liner. 

If you don't fancy lining them this way, you can always break up the whole Oreos and fold them into the batter before spooning into cases.

This is how they'll come out

Beat the butter and sugars on low speed until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, plus the vanilla extract, still beating. Next, get rid of the hand mixer, and fold in the dry ingredients with a spatula. The batter will get a little bit stiff, and might look a tad curdled, but this is normal. Just keep folding it gently until all the ingredients are combined.
Spoon the batter into the cases. I use an ice cream scoop to create uniform size cupcakes, but whatever you have is fine. Fill them around 2/3 of the way full - keep in mind, they do rise a little bit.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer/knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. The cupcakes will be dense, and bounce back when you poke them with your finger.
Take out the oven, and leave to cool.

FROSTING
125g cream cheese, softened
50g unsalted butter, soft
300g icing sugar
little bit of vanilla extract

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and beat together.
Be careful, it gets messy!
Pipe or spread onto the cupcakes. For a finishing touch, I like to take half of an entire Oreo and place it on top of the frosting.
Make these for the people you know and love, and you won't be forgotten!

Of course, you can decorate it any way you like, and this recipe is open to so many variations.

Or, finely crush some Oreos into the frosting and pipe.

For those without a piping bag, just spoon the frosting onto the cupcake!

Hope you enjoy!

J x

Decadent Chocolate Cake

Hiiiiiii

To my lovely followers (one of them being my Dad), sorry that I take so much time to update this blog! I've baked literally one thing in the last two months.. Hopefully this post will make up for things.

So, it was my friend Kristina's birthday yesterday, and I know how much she likes chocolate cake - I planned a yummy surprise for her. We all went out to an Indian restaurant for dinner (ate too much, as per usual), and just as we're all too stuffed to shovel in more food, the cake comes out (along with a lovely sing song of happy birthday)!!!

Here's the story.

I'd never used this cake recipe before, and knew that everyone in my household would want a piece of it anyway. So, I made two.

The first one (made on Sunday) went really well, and was devoured within about 48 hours. It's just a really rich, yummy dark chocolate cake with the creamiest, fudgiest chocolate frosting. This is definitely the holy grail of chocolate cakes.

The recipe is really easy, and it's pretty quick to prepare - in fact, it doesn't actually require that much effort (it's not like you need to get a piping bag out for the frosting).

Ingredients (usually I quote things in ounces/grams, but the recipe used cup measurements)

From the Hershey's Kitchen - this website has the most fantastic recipes!

2 cups of sugar

1 and 3/4 cups of plain flour

1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder

1 and a half teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon of salt

3/4 cup of cocoa powder (I like Bourneville)

1 cup of milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup of vegetable oil

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

1 cup of boiling water

Method

Preheat your oven to 180C, or 160C ish if you have a crap fan oven (like I do).

Line two 9inch cake pans with baking paper and flour the sides.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl (sugar, flour, cocoa, bicarb, baking powder, salt) and whisk together until combined.

Now, add in the milk, oil, eggs, vanilla and beat on medium speed until incorporated. With a spatula/spoon, mix in the boiling water. The consistency of the batter will be quite runny, so it'll drizzle into the cake pans with ease. Now, pop it in the oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Time varies for all ovens.

I actually only own one cake pan, and my oven only has room (on the optimum shelf) for one. The typical individual (or student) isn't likely to own more than one anyway, so I figured a way around it. Before mixing the wet ingredients into the dry, evenly divide the dry mixture between two bowls (I weighed it all out with scales). Then, with your first bowl of dry matter, mix in half of the wet ingredients (i.e the recipe calls for 2 eggs and 1 cup of milk, so make a well in the middle and add in 1 egg and half a cup of milk, and so on).

Obviously, baking time will be overall longer because you have to wait longer for the cakes to cook individually and for them to cool.

In my oven, each half of the cake took around 40 minutes to cook, but this will obviously vary if you have a better oven. Typically, any where between 30-45 minutes will make sense.

Once they're done, remove from the oven and leave to cool, and then transfer onto some other plate/rack to cool further. 

FROSTING

1/2 cup of unsalted butter (around 115 grams)

2/3 cup cocoa powder

3cups icing sugar

1/3 cup of milk

teaspoon of vanilla

Melt the butter, and mix in the cocoa. Then, alternating icing sugar and milk, beat with a handmixer until lovely and creamy, and add in the vanilla. 

Then, assemble the cake!

Bottom half....

Oh my.

Heaven eh?

Just smoothed on the frosting with a rubber spatula - no effort required!

I made the one for Kristina on Monday afternoon, just in time for dinner in the evening!

It's been likened to 'Brucey Cake' (like the one from Matilda)...

And clearly, everyone loved it. Because this is what was left by the time we'd paid the bill.

Quite impressive!! (although there were 12 of us at the table..)..

Anyway, exams are on the way.

It's around 3am right now, and I've been up writing an essay for the last three hours. And the sad thing is, there's no more chocolate cake left in the kitchen, so I have nothing to snack on during breaks!!

I can probably think of a way to resolve this..

:D

Jen xx