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!

Blueberry Cupcakes

Hiya

How hot has it been?! I haven't baked in a while as I can't be bare the heat of the kitchen. These were made BBH (Before the British Heatwave!)
How pretty is this colour people? As I loved my Lemon +  Blueberry cupcakes I fancied a complete Blueberry one so here are the pics of my Blueberry baking labour.

With these I used my usual cupcakes recipe and just chucked some blueberries in at the end. As I had some Bonne Maman Blueberry jam I decided to use this to flavour my buttercream. A thing to note was that I had to use a lot of the jam to get the Blueberry flavour I wanted, loads actually, but as the jam isn't really sweet it thankfully didn't make the buttercream too sweet. Next time I think shall use fresh Blueberries in the buttercream, as I think that would  be an easier more effective way of getting a lovely Blueberry flavour. 

Recipe for Blueberry Buttercream

100g Unsalted Butter (Lurpack)

200g Icing sugar

3 heaped tablespoon of Blueberry Jam

Method

Beat the butter with half the icing sugar till you get a  sandy consistency, then add the rest of the icing sugar along with the blueberry jam. Beat this all together till everything is incorporated.This is where I stop and check if I'm happy with the flavour and add more Blueberry jam if necessary. Normally I'm carefully to not over beat however I'd heard about beating your buttercream a lot to get a nice light fluffy buttercream. So hoping I wouldn't take it too far.. I gave it ago...and er...I  think I may have beat it too much. It was certainly lighter in consistency but I felt it made it way too soft really, which made piping trickier plus I felt it made it taste buttery which was a bit odd .

On to the flavour, I seriously loved these! The cupcake was lovely with juicy blueberries in and around. The buttercream was a lovely Blueberry flavour. Light consistency + lovely flavour...loved it.  

Lemon & Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a lemony delight for you guys today as last week I made some Lemon and Blueberry cupcakes which I paired with a Lemon cream cheese frosting (lush!). I love lemony bakes their just so yummy and refreshing, I'd seen them paired with blueberries and thought what an awesome combo.

To my usual cupcake recipe I added the zest of two un-waxed lemon plus a bit of the juice as well as a handful of blueberries. I thought it would be nice to try a lemon cream cheese frosting with this as I wanted a light topping for this lemony cupcake. I used the Pink Whisk's cream cheese frosting recipe, initially i was just going to add lemon zest to flavour it. However after tasting it felt that zest alone wasn't giving me the strong lemon flavour I wanted so my twin suggested  I add a tablespoon of lemon curd to it..... definitely a good call.

I was so happy with the way it all turned out. I took them to work and I got such amazing feedback I went home a very happy baker! It was a deliciously, lemony cupcake surrounded by juicy blueberries. The cream cheese frosting was a beautiful compliment, silky and refreshingly light. The lemon curd that was added last minute gave it a gorgeous lemony kick. Simply delicious.

A special thanks to my talented friend she has outdone herself with these photos let drooling comence  lol x

I'm entering these to Kick at the pantry Door's Feel Good Food challenge as June's feel good food is  Blueberries.

I'm also going to enter Simple and in Seasonal for the first time also as Blueberries are in season.