slackadaisy

Sorry for the lack of updates, I haven't really had the time or energy to be baking lately. These should make up for lost time.



I made these for my Dad for Father's Day. They are so rich and delectable you will probably be sick before you can finish one. Isn't that the way mud cake should be?

Mud Cupcakes
Makes 8.

110g dark chocolate
70g milk chocolate
120g butter
100ml water
2 tsp whiskey or other dark spirit (I used rum)
1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 tsp self-raising flour

Preheat oven to 170C, or 160C Fan-Forced. Line a muffin tin (base diameter of about 5cm, rather than the tiny cupcake tins) with 8 muffin cases.
Melt the chocolate, butter, water, whiskey, coffee and sugar together, (over a double boiler or bain marie - a saucepan half full of boiling water with a bowl on top) stirring frequently, until you get a smooth liquid. Let cool for half an hour or more (but don't refridgerate). Lukewarm or room temperature should do, just make sure there is not enough residual heat to start cooking the egg!
Stir in the egg, and gradually add the flours. The mix will be very thin and sloppy, and may appear slightly lumpy (but that shouldn't matter).
Divide mix into the cases equally, it should come nearly to the top of the cases (if it doesn't, make 7 cakes instead, because these don't rise much, and they'll look silly if they only take up half of the muffin case).
Bake for 25 minutes, or a little longer if you test them and they leave residue on the tester/knife/toothpick/spaghetti stick. I think I cooked mine for 28 minutes. Try not to press them because they're a dense cake and won't bounce back.

I iced these with a chocolate ganache that I made from a mix of leftover dark and milk chocolate (probably about 200g) and half a tub of thickened cream (maybe 120ml? I don't measure things like this). Melt the chocolate and cream together in the same way you did the mix, just remember to not let any water or steam get in or else the chocolate will seize and go lumpy.

Store these in the fridge, but they are best eaten at room temperature.

I know I haven't posted much lately, I assure you I have been baking, I've just been too busy (and hungry) to take pictures and post!
These are my most recent endeavour. Oh God they're delicious,and they're easier than falling over.

Gingerbread Cupcakes
1/2 cup Self Raising Flour
1/2 cup Plain Flour
1/4 tsp Bicarb Soda
Ginger to taste (I used maybe 2 tablespoons, the recipe stipulated maybe 1/2 a teaspoon)
Cinnamon and Allspice if you want
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 egg
90g Soft Butter
1/4 cup Milk
2 tblsp Golden Syrup (or Treacle)

Preheat oven to 170C and line a 12 cupcake pan.
Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients.
Mix with an electric mixer for two minutes, the mixture will lighten in colour.
I like to portion my cupcakes really small, so I got 18 cupcakes out of this recipe, if you use a larger sized tin or you put more batter in you'll get 12.
Bake for 30 minutes or until springy on top.

My flickr friends asked for a recipe for the Lemon Ginger Buttercream, but I don't use recipes really when I'm making icing, I just add until the consistency is right. This is what I gave them.
Half stick softened butter
2-ish cups icing sugar
Mix with electric mixer until the colour lightens.
Add a few teaspoons of lemon juice and the rind of one or two lemons.
To match it with the cupcakes a bit better I added a couple of teaspoons of ginger ale, then kept whipping it and added more icing sugar until the consistency was nice and the icing kept its shape.
I can't even tell you what tip I used to decorate because all I have is a cheap icing kit! I'm a dodgy cook!

This morning, on a bucketing rainy cold day, I went into the kitchen and said "Right. I am going to bake something."
Gazing into the pantry, the back of the cocoa box caught my eye with a recipe for chocolate cupcakes. "Brilliant," I thought. "Cupcakes are just the thing."
My problem was I didn't have butter. I didn't have caster sugar. I didn't have vanilla essence. I had just under a cup of flour. And the recipe was for twelve large cupcakes made in a muffin pan.
So I substituted a little. I used Dairysoft spreadable butter stuff (not margarine, but not entirely butter, I think it is blended with vegetable oil or something), brown sugar (which would, I reasoned, make the cupcakes fudgy rather than fluffy), a splash of Tia Maria (coffee liqueur) and all the flour I had. I divided the mixture into 36 small cupcakes rather than 12 muffins, and decreased the cooking time.
The cupcakes are beautiful. So soft and fudgy and delicious. I had to figure out a frosting worthy to pair with them. I browsed the pantry once more. Peanut butter, perhaps? I checked the jar, and there was barely a tablespoonn left. I put it aside and instead eyed the big jar of Nutella. Oh yes.
Since I just kind of made the frosting up, it turned out very gooey and no matter how much icing sugar I added, it seemed to stay the same consistency. So I plopped it on the cupcakes anyway.
They are an orgasm of fudgy chocolate deliciousness.
I'll give you the recipe, but it's kind of a mess and I measured everything really badly and didn't measure other things at all. But maybe you will have a happy messy muck-up like I did.

Chocolate Cupcakes
100g butter
1/3 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon-ish coffee liqueur
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup-ish SR flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 180C, or fan-forced to 160C.
Cream butter and sugar until pale and creamy, add eggs and mix until combined.
Stir in flour, cocoa and bicarb, and add the milk and liqueur. Stir until all combined.
Spoon into around 30-36 cupcake pans or 12 muffin tins and bake for 12 (for cupcakes) or 15 (for muffins) minutes, baking times vary but I took mine out just before they bounced back, to keep them soft and fudgy.

Gooey Nutella Frosting
100g Nutella
50-70g Smooth Peanut Butter
dash of milk and tia maria
3 cups icing sugar
Mix all together. Add more icing sugar if it is way too gooey for you.
Try not to eat it all before it goes on the cupcakes. You'll probably have way too much, but just in case.

Ingredients:
Chocolate - I used a 375g pack of milk chocolate melts, but any chocolate will do
Peanut Butter - I used a small 250g jar, you can use crunchy or smooth
Noodles - Ramen, 2 minute, or egg noodles, I used three packs

Step 1: Melt chocolate
Step 2: Mix in peanut butter
Step 3: Stir in crunched up noodles
Step 4: Spoon blobs onto a tray
Step 5: Fridge for half an hour
Step 6: Scoff like a maniac

These are a biscuit that I grew up making, they're so simple and really easy to eat. I can run off a batch in half an hour. Normally they are made with strawberry or sometimes apricot jam, but today I made them with marmalade because I adore it. You could just as easily use any other jam/jelly/conserve.

Jam Drops

125g butter
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tsps honey
1 egg
1/2 cup plain flour
1 cup SR flour
Pinch salt
Jam

Preheat oven to 180C and grease 2 or 3 trays.
Cream your butter and sugar until fluffy, add the egg and honey, mix well. Sift flours and salt and add to the mix. I used an electric mixer for this step because otherwise it doesn't really bind. If it is still too dry, add a teaspoon of water and knead it with your hands until it all comes together in a ball.
Roll teaspoons of the mixture into balls and place onto trays, make a dent in the middle of the cookies with a finger and add 1/4 teaspoon of jam in each.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden.
Makes about 2-3 dozen depending on how much dough you eat beforehand and how big you make the cookies.

I am hopeless at pancakes. Honestly. I'm impatient and I under cook them and I can't flip them without at least one edge going all dodgy or the whole thing collapsing into a gooey, rapidly-cooking mess. Most recipes don't help, and you end up with a bland rubbery disc that you have to smother in syrup and butter and hope you don't taste it.
These pancakes are really easy and although they aren't extraordinarily tasty OMG, they are very edible.

1 cup Self Raising Flour (or 1 cup plain flour with half a teaspoon of baking powder)
1/4 tsp bicarb soda
2 tbls sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp white vinegar
1 tbls melted butter or margarine
1 egg

Sift dry ingredients together, add wet ingredients, beat until smooth. If you like you can let the mixture rest for an hour but that isn't really needed. Cook on a medium heat in the frypan with a good splash of oil or a chunk of butter. Turn over once the top has been bubbling for a little while and is solid enough to flip neatly.
I like to make them a little smaller than a CD in diameter so that they stack nicely and look really posh, but you can make them pikelet sized, or if you're brave and are good at flipping, frypan sized.

I had a craving. It had to be fulfilled. So I made these. The biscuit is kind of bland, but it makes up for it by adding a hint of coffee and substance beneath the decadent dark chocolate.


Chocolate Cookies

250g butter, softened
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons of cooled coffee (instant will do)
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cocoa
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cornflour
300g (or a bag) of dark chocolate melts, or one block of good cooking chocolate

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, coffee and milk, and mix. Add the flours and cocoa and beat until completely combined. The mixture should be stiff, but still too gooey to roll out.
Divide the mix in half and wrap in baking paper in a rough ball, refrigerate for half an hour.
Preheat oven to 160°C and line trays with baking paper.
One ball at a time, roll out the stiffened dough between two sheets of baking paper until about 5mm thick. Cut out shapes and place on trays, then refrigerate the cut outs for another fifteen minutes.
Bake for fifteen minutes, any more and they will be too crunchy and unpleasant.
Let cool on trays for five minutes before removing to a rack.
Melt the chocolate according to instructions (I melted mine in the microwave on low for seven minutes) and dip one side of the cooled biscuits in. Yes, you'll get chocolate all over your hands. This means you get to eat it off afterwards. Place chocolate side up on the trays and let cool completely before eating.
These are fantastic with coffee. It makes about two dozen, perhaps more or less depending upon the size of your cutters. I made them last night and they were all gone before 3:00 this afternoon. I hope this means they're pretty tasty, and not that my family just got the munchies and snarfled the lot.

These are another Nigella recipe: Basically plain cupcake mix with a tablespoon of instant coffee granules stirred in. I added a white chocolate buttercream (rather than the sour cream frosting she suggested) and sprinkled them with cocoa. Tasty!

My normal recipe, baked in mini muffin moulds, with a faintly strawberry buttercream.

No, you don't want the recipe. These things have been the bane of my morning. They scrub up okay though!