Easter Mint chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients
For the cake:

80g plain flour
40g mint hot chocolate
140g caster sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter, at room temperature
120ml whole milk
1 egg
¼tsp vanilla extract


For the vanilla frosting:
250g icing sugar, sifted
80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
25ml whole milk
2 tbsp of Mint hot chocolate
a couple of drops of vanilla extract

Usual method, combine all dry ingredient with the butter mix until sand like texture, mix the egg with the milk and vanilla essence pour in slowly until a even batter texture is formed. Fill 12 cupcake cases 2/3 full, bake for around 12 minutes.

Once completely cooled ice.
Mix the butter and icing sugar together until sand like texture is formed add the mint hot chocolate followed by the milk and vanilla essence, mix on full speed for 5 whole minutes this makes the icing really light and fluffy.

Decorate with mini eggs or what ever takes your fancy
Enjoy!

Birthday Cake

The Man in my life turned 27 so of course a cake was in order!

Traditional occasion cake, rich Victoria sponge filled with strawberry jam and butter cream covered in fondant icing

Home made chocolates

For Valentines day I made milk chocolate truffles rolled in pistachio and coco. I also made white and dark chocolates.

I strongly recommend making truffles so easy and so delicious :)

Ms Cupcake interview

A few weeks ago I had a interview with Ms Cupcake, Ms Cupcake is based in Brixton it's a entirely Vegan bakery. Over 300 hundred people applied for the job of "bakery assistant " I got down to one of 12 and then finally the top 3 , unfortunately I didn't get the job but this experience has definitely raised my confidence and pushed me to continue to make my passion a career!


The night before the interview I tried some Vegan baking for myself! Not being vegan myself it was certainly different and challenging.

I made Coconut and Raspberry cupcakes, I found a recipe online after getting very confused.

They didn't turn out too bad but next time I will be extremely careful about how much bicarbonate of soda I used as there was a slight after taste!

Fondant cupcakes

It's been a while since I used fondant to decorate cakes so I thought I'd get some practice in!
All pretty basic but fun none the less.

Vanilla cupcakes filled with fluff and finished with a chocolate ganache

I wanted to see if I could put the fluff into cakes - so here it is.

1. Use a simple vanilla sponge recipe (any one will do as long as its for 12 cupcakes) and cook the cupcakes as normal.

2. Take them out of the oven and let them cool completely.

3. Put some fluff into a piping bag, each cupcake needs to have a small hole in the centre for the fluff to go, pipe the fluff into each cake only a small amount should over flow.

4. Once this is complete put the cupcakes to one side and start the ganache...

A ganache is a rich chocolate covering made with double cream.
250g of milk or dark chocolate
250ml double cream
1 tsp of coffee granules

5. Melt all the ganache ingredients together over a Bain Marie ( a glass bowl over a saucepan filled with boiling water)

6. Once all mixed together smoothly leave to cool slightly.

7. Once cooled, cover each cupcake. I personally find it easier to dip the cupcake into the mixture as it makes for a better coverage!

8. Decorate as you wish

Lady Muck's marshmallow fluff

Looking through whoppie pie recipes, I saw that a lot of them were filled with marshmallow fluff. The problem being that the fluff is American and even though I live in London I couldn't seem to find it anywhere so I found a recipe instead - So ridiculously simple!

3 egg whites
250 ml of Corn syrup which us English tend to call Golden syrup
1/2 tsp of salt
260g icing sugar

Whisk the whites with the syrup on full speed until the mixture is stiff and holds its own. Add the salt and the icing sugar until completely mixed through.

Done, so easy!

The mixture makes enough to fill about 3 or 4 jam jars.