Coffee Cupcakes & New Look

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Hiya















Que the thoughts.....something is different about My Cupcake Habit......but i can't put my mouse on it. You may have clocked it straightway OR the words new look in the title gave it away  doh. You see I was rather bored with my old blogger look, had totally blog envy looking at all the  pretty blogs out there  and wanted something new + lovely. So I bought this lovely premade template from Etsy...and my blog is complete. Now anyone for coffee cupcakes?

I have recently fallen hard for anything to do with Coffee, its rather a yummy flavour in cakes...still can't drink the stuff though! (odd)  I was never really bothered with coffee cakes before...would completely over look them for whatever other baked good was available....i'm so mean- i regret it terribly now. Then one day there was NO other baked good, so I had me a slice of coffee.....and it was gooood. I loved the sweet coffee taste that you got from the sponge and yummy Buttercream. I had tasted all the ones available in the supermarkets, and felt I should bake me some coffee yumminess.

Now I was really only interested in digging in to lashings of coffee buttercream...the cake base was an afterthought!  To flavour my buttercream I poured some hot water in to a teaspoon of coffee granules. Try not to dilute it too much as it will weaken the coffee flavour which will mean you need lots of it to get the flavour coming through in the buttercream. This will then make your buttercream quite soft.

Recipe
100g unsalted butter
200g of icing sugar
I used three teaspoon of the coffee to get the flavour I wanted.

Cream the softened butter with half of the icing sugar to avoid making a big mess. Then add the other half of the icing sugar with the coffee. Beat until light and fluffy.

The sponge was an a nice normal cupcake base to which I added  the remaining coffee liquid to.....you can tell I only needed it as a vehicle for my yummy coffee buttercream.The buttercream was gorgeous! Lovely and light in texture with a yummy coffee hit. I was a happy little baker digging in to these babies.

So, have u guys discovered any new yummy flavours recently ? What do you think of the new look?! You can now easily access my Instagram and twitter if you wanna check them out or mayb even follow me ;)

See you soon x

Let loose at Cake International 2014

Hey Everyone

As I'm a self confessed obsessed baker if there is even a sniff of any baking related events nearby..(london) I'm there! Which is why its unsurprising that I was stalking the aisles of the cake international at The Excel last month.......stalking in a dedicated way not a creepy way.

Last year I attended the Cake +Bake show and was loitering the lobby with my twin trying to get last min tickets thankfully we did. I wasn't intending on doing that again so this trip was well planned. Like strategically I was armed with notes, snacks,camera, time + places of stall and demos I  wanted to see. I was very proud of my self I have to say lol!

I spent a lot of money, places like that are dangerous for people like me. To make myself feel better they were things that were

1 Awesome

2 Totally necessary

3  On a very good deal

4 Where things I was planing to get online which would have come with delivery charges.

I spent quite a bit at Purple Cupcakes....I love that place and their brand everything about them is gorgeous!  I bought their Impressit letters pack, a pretty embossed folder, and their swirly piping nozzel. I had  received a delivery from them 2 days before I went to the Excel and errr..... went back for more!
Other purchases were 2  24 cupcake carriers the first was £12 and then I got the 2nd for 10. Which is a great deal normally those things are in the £24 region!  A pack of colourfull cupcake cases,another nozzel, some flavourings and lastly some cute baby themed stamp/cutters. After a while I forbade myself from buying anything else!

I took loads of pics of the competition cakes  there were loads of awesome cakes I stuck to the pretty ones more than the novelty ones... feast your eyes.

  

                           

 

 

 

 


Aren't they gorgeous the detail on them was awesome, there are some very talented people out there. I wanted to just stay there.....it was so pretty there!  Unfortunately I couldn't, I had take my bulky purchases and catch the tube home. FYI it was a pain in the arse carrying two cupcake carriers + plus 2 bags on a packed a train in rush hour.  It was certainly worth it though, I had a very productive, informative and of course pretty day at the Cake international.

See ya x

A Yummy Pretty Chocolate cake

Hi Guys
My internet has been down hence the no posts for a while...but the techy guy came today and all is well with my laptop again...horray!
I have a chocolate cake to show that I made when my nieces and nephew were coming around for a visit. I wanted to make them a cake...and it had to be chocolate so feast your eyes on the end product. I used a bbc good food chocolate cake recipe but used sour cream instead of the suggested buttermilk/yoghurt. As I had used this recipe before with yoghurt and remember thinking it had a lighter chocolate flavour due to the yoghurt.

I didn't want to cover the whole cake in chocolate as the kids would have probably been as high as kites. So to make it pretty I piped some roses around the edge of top layer. FYI the middle part looks like I was trying to hide something because.....I  was trying to hide something. I tried to pipe roses in the middle but it got a bit wonky then I started to run out of buttercream so I just removed the middle roses and got out some handy chocy sprinkles!

This went down really well, they couldn't wait to get their hands on it.... so much so that while i was upstaris they licked the roses of the top! when I came back there was three roses left! A cheeky smile and some chocolate fingers led me to the culprit rather quickly.... I suspect she had an accomplice though. I really liked the chocolate sponge it was nice and chocolaty with a lovely texture. The buttercream was perhaps a bit thick....I think I should have used more buttercream on the cake as it was quite big. The cake to buttercream ratio was a bit off.

Sorry but I cant remember the measurements I used for the buttercream....I did use cocoa powder instead of melted choc though. So behold this has been the first proper cake I've posted on here ...GASP and this a baking blog, A wrong has now been righted. See ya :)

Peanut Butter and Choc Chip Blondies

Hi
This weekend  I had my first ever go at a Blondie. For sometime time now I  had been achying to bake something with Peanut Butter in it, so after some thinking I decided to make Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Blondie. I was really looking forward to what they would be like as I'd never tasted one before.
I found a really simple Rachel Allen recipe online and got on with the experiment.

I found this was easier to judge...i took it out when the edges had crisped up but the middle was soft...not wobbly just soft. I let it sit a while to firm up before i cut it....I wish my choc brownies cut this nice and neat! The Blondies definitely tasted better the longer they sat. The flavour seem to come to together better and you got a stronger taste of the Blondie part of it.... if that makes sense. They were dense..I  imagine this is down to the Peanut Butter in there. I didn't use as much sugar as the recipe recommended as I was scared of it being too sweet. I ended up drizzling some choc over the top which helped give you more of a chocolate hit as well as looking pretty of course.
I wished I'd put in more choc chips it was really nice when you bit in to one. The PB flavour is really strong...I wish I'd used smooth Peanut Butter...sometimes it was too chunky.The edges were nice and crisp with the slightly softer middle. At times it reminded me of  big chocolate chip cookie..the textures in the two were quite similar. I really quite liked this! It shan't be the last Blondie I make as I really like the texture and idea of a Blondie.
ps just saw Rachel has a Banoffee Blondie recipe!....my twin has put in a request for an Almond and Cherry one. Have you guys got any fav Blondies?

A Lush Apple and Caramel Cake

                           

 Dear Carnation Caramel,where o where have you been all my baking life?! I'm sorry I've never used you before..not sure what was wrong with me. From this day forth  I solemnly swear to bake with you lots.
Today's bake is a beautifully simple but seriously delicious cake, bringing together the lovely flavours of Apple and Caramel. The awesomeness of baking with caramel was only realized when I used it in my Salted Caramel Brownies,from then on I knew it was gonna be a baking staple in my cupboard. I adapted Jo Wheatley's Apple+Blackberry loaf recipe to make this delicious little treat.

Ingredients
Self-Raising Flour 170g
Sugar 130g
Butter 170g
Bramley Apples 2 peeled + chopped
Half a tin of Carnation caramel.
3 Eggs

This cake was an all in one method which was fab literally chucked everything in apart from the Apples and Caramel, mixed it until everything was combined. I cut up the Apples in to chunks then mixed them in some of the Caramel and gently folded that in to the cake mixture. I poured everything in to my lined square cake tin alternating cake mixture with the remaining caramel.Simple. It baked for about 40 mins I think... at Gas Mark 4.

This cake smelled amazing and tasted even better everyone loved it! It was beautifully moist and the Apples still had a bit of crunch to them. The Caramel added a delicious flavour to everything it was fab I was so happy with it. It tastes even better once its had time to cool and sat a while as the Caramel flavour gets stronger. The two flavours worked amazing well together and had a lovely familiar taste that we still can't place! It was like getting a big cake hug by the beautifully comforting flavors. Can't get over the Caramel flavour...... ..I miss it so much.....sniff sniff.

Spiced Orange Rolls

Hiya

So after making my Almond Cherry Couronne I've been bitten by the bread making bug and wanted to have ago at some rolls. I've been trying to use  my Jo wheatley Passion for Baking book more, so I was flicking through it looking at all the lovely pics...as i often do  when these Orange Spiced rolls caught my eye.

I started making these quite early in the day which is necessary because of the time which you need to dedicate to them proving twice. It was relatively straight forward and rather similar to the Couronne. I still think I need to work on my kneading methods but I think what I was doing got the job done. This time after the first proving the dough did double in size which didn't happen with the Couronne.Unfortunately for some reason this time,when I was rolling it out the dough was really tough and I struggled to get it the rectangle shape which was required. I'm not sure why it was so tough...should I have kneaded more to get it soft and stretchy before rolling it out?! I was quite thrown by this as it didn't happen the last time. Anyway I soldiered on and rolled it out sprinkled the Cinnamon, Demerara Sugar, Pecans, Orange zest and Mixed Spiced over the dough and started rolling up.

After I rolled and cut them up I had to leave it prove for a second time for 40 mins or until doubled in size. Then you can whack them in the oven. The smells coming from the oven where gorgeous! Beautifully Cinnamon + Citrusy scents, I left the kitchen door open so it could go all around the house! I was quite apprehensive about tasting these I was worried about the dough being so tough...it wasn't normal....and sadly I was proven right, these rolls were tough and chewy. They tasted of all the lovely flavours which were in them but they were so tough we had to dip them in our tea for 30 seconds to help soften them before eating them. Seriously.

I so disappointed about it...the whole process was going relatively well. I was wondering if any of you bread experts know why the dough ended up so tough? Please let me know, or any ideas of what can do to avoid it happening again I'm baffled. Maybe I under kneaded? Or maybe this recipe called for different ingredients so it was going to be different to the Couronne. Maybe rolls like these are meant to be a chewy?  I don’t know!! Some advice please for this bread novice. 

Chocolate Viennese biscuits sandwiched with chocolate Ganache

This week we have these pretty little Viennese Biscuits sandwiched with a luscious chocolate Ganache.
They sit there all dainty and innocent but making them to begin with was infuriating! I used Jo Wheatley's Melting Mousse Moments  for this recipe, I didn't fancy the raw egg in her Choc mousse filling so I opted for a safe yummy Ganache instead.

So what was hard about making these pretty little things? Well as all they contain is dry ingredients so combining them was beyond frustrating. The mixture nearly got stuck in my electric mixer- I thought it was gonna break! So after that I turned to a trusty wooden spoon, but the mixture was so stiff  it wouldn't reach the mixture at the bottom of the bowl and to top it of the bowl kept trying to run away from me. It was a pain in the butt! Got me well and truly annoyed so i chucked it in the fridge and left it till the morning when I was seeing something other than the colour red.

So, the next morning brought round 2  with the mixture, as there was no pointing even contemplating trying to pipe them on to the baking tray as you normally would I decided to roll and cut them like your average biscuit. They took about 12-15 minutes in my oven I took them out when  the tops were firm to touch but still had a bit of a give. Let them cool before moving them they are delicate little things.

Right, having baked them all I was on much better terms with these biscuits. Once assembled I tasted..... they were seriously  delicious! Lovely and crumbly not too buttery which is something I  found last time I made Viennese bics. Seriously chocolaty,which was beautifully complemented by the fluffy light chocolaty Ganache filling. Once you bit in to it you got intense crumbly chocolaty biscuits followed by lovely sweet fluffy Ganache YUM! They were truly forgiven!!!

I was really happy with these and think I will like to try more biscuits filled with yummy things, especially as I  think I'm getting the hang of not over baking a biscuit. Gone are the days I would wait till they were really coloured to take them out which meant when I got round to tasting they were seriously hard. I'm thinking something with lemon curd maybe......
Have you guys made any yummy biscuits with an even yummier fillings lately? Any suggestions on what should next fill my biscuit tin?