Mint Madness

My beloved cupcakes are back on my blog! all is well the world....and they've gone all minty. It been ages since I've posted cupcakes,Mint and Chocolate have been on my mind since my twin bought home some peppermint essence. I've been waiting to make them because...errr.....I wanted to purchase some nice dark brown cupcake cases to put them in .......don't judge me! If I'm gonna make something I want it to look amazing, so my head colour co-ordinates my bakes and that is the ONLY way they can look......admit it they would have just looked silly with blue cases right? Just don't ask how long I  actually waited!

Moving on from my baking vanity, to these minty lovelies which have a rich Dark Chocolate base.They are topped with a Peppermint Buttercream and some have been flourished with chocolate chips.I used The More Than Occasional Baker's chocolate cupcake recipe which was amazing! A lovely moist chocolaty sponge with some serious chocolate flavour, they were even better the next day. I used 70% Lindt Dark Chocolate which has a really high cocoa content, so you if ate one on its own it was a tad bitter but they balanced out once paired with the sweet Peppermint Buttercream. They complimented each other beautifully making one hell of a cupcake! The choc chips added a nice crunch which added a different texture.

I'm always looking for great rich Chocolate cupcake and find it interesting how different they can taste depending on whether the recipe calls for Buttermilk,Yogurt or Sour Cream. Ros's recipe called for Sour Cream which was a first for me, I think it added a  lot to the texture of the cupcake. I think that's something I might dedicate some posts to.... my search for the best chocolate cake/cupcake recipe which will require tasting a lot of Chocolate cupcakes....it will be hard.....but I'll manage..... SOME HOW.

For the Buttercream  I creamed 150g of Lurpak with 250g of Icing Sugar to which I added  just a teaspoon of the Peppermint Essence. This amount gave it a lovely Peppermint flavor any more would have been overpowering, lastly a splash of milk which made the Buttcream nice and creamy. I used a tiny bit of the Wilton Lime food colour gels.

Commitment!...I going to put it in writing now... I really want to get regular on my blog so I've decided that Monday evenings are going to be my official post night, I'm gonna try my very best to post something every  Monday (InshaAllah) so do please keep an eye out.

PS Would love it if you could point me in the direction of your fave chocolate cake/cupcake recipe...I'd love to give them a try!

Almond + Cherry Couronne

Hi

Guess who had her first ever go at making bread? ooo me!  me!  
I'm sticking to my blog resolutions  to try and bake different things...so this week  I had a go at bread!! Its me so it was a sweet bread of course...I made a Couronne which was the week 6 technical challenge in GBBO.
I really wanted this to work for me I can't bear it if my time and ingredients  avail to nothing plus I hate wasting food. So I turned in to a right little Herminone and did my research.... youtubed  the masterclass-watched Paul do his magic plus read lots of posts about other bloggers having ago.

.

So the how was the actual Couronne? It was delicious!....lovely soft sweet bread sandwiched with a delicious Almond+ Cherry filling. That filling was divine, lovley sweet almondyness... biting in those parts were by far the best bit. .
My first attempt at sweet bread was relativley straightforward....having said that it wasn't all a breeze. Just little issues like my dough not rising much after the first proving. My filling was rather wet so twisting the two ends of the dough got tricky and VERY messy. The rather wet filling resulted in my Couronne taking a lot longer to bake as bread  touching the filling got wet and took longer to actually bake properly. I have a thing about making sure things are baked all the way through. I didn't really relax until I was certain  all of the bread was baked all the way through....to achieve this I sliced the Couronne up to get better exposure for the middle layers and popped it back in the oven for about 10 mins.

 I used a Paul hollywood recipe for the Couronne and after scouring the net used this filling recipe by Cookies Cakes and Bakes.  All in all I was immensely pleased with my first attempt it was well yummy..the icing on the top made it even nicer....I'm still annoyed I forgot to buy apricot jam which meant I couldn't do the glaze on top and is was my lovely Couronne is lacking the usual shine. I'm certainly spurred on to try other sweet breads+ rolls...I see cinnamon rolls in future!  x

.

1st blogoversary! Chocolate & Orange Fondant

Happy New Year everyone!! So it my blogs birthday....I started it on the first of January 2013....I've been blogging a whole year! Before I get to anything else I would like to say thank you to everyone who has read, commented on my little blog I really enjoying reading your thoughts. I love it..... my mind is always thinking about what my next post could be and I'm forever wandering the home sections of every store looking for something pretty to put in my pictures.

So to celebrate I have made a chocolate &Orange  fondant, I wanted something a bit fancy and new so I decide to give these babies  ago. Oh boy am I glad a did,they were actually rather straight forward to make and as long as you stick to the timings all will be well. I used this Channel 4 food recipe by Ramsay but I used a different Ramsay cooker temp+time. I preheated my oven to gas mark 6 and had them in for 11 minutes exact and yes is it could have been runnier but I can live with it.  To flavor them I used some orange zest and orange extract as I was using  a very Dark Chocolate and I wanted to make sure you could taste the orange flavor. They were soooo nice, you get lovely chocolaty sponge from the base and top, then sandwiched between them is the silky smooth chocolate center...divine.  Not too sweet not too chocolaty...(like that even exists) just perfect, I devoured this with a bit of sweetened whipped double cream..

To kick start 2014 for my blog I wanted to make some resolution for My Cupcake Habit.

• I want to challenge my self and bake/post some complicated trickier bakes ....must try and be brave!
• I also want to try some different flavor combinations and different ingredients as I find my self just sticking to my favorites....believe it or not their some relatively normal fruits and things that are yet to pass these lips....so I aim to bake with them.

Back soon Bye :)