cinnamonies

I baked some banana cupcakes yesterday (same as my normal banana cake but in smaller cases!) and, being cupcakes, they needed some sort of icing.

I'd found a few recipes for honey cinnamon frosting so that was the plan. Most feedback seemed to suggest that the honey made it too sweet so I settled on a cinnamon buttercream. Unfortunately I'm not a detail person so discovered a little too late that we didn't have enough icing sugar. Fail!

The result was a brown gloop with floating lumps of butter in it. It should have been thrown away really, but I thought it'd be worth a rescue attempt first. I zapped it in the microwave to melt the butter, and then stirred in about 250g flour (50g self raising, 200g plain, don't ask why!) and about 1tsp bicarbonate of soda. Baked it for 30mins and...

There are a few recipes online for cinnamon brownies, all of which seem to be chocolate brownies with added cinnamon. These are different in that there's no chocolate in them, just cinnamon.

As you can see, it's gone a bit hollow in the middle but apart from that they're pretty good. Well, considering they were a rescued mistake anyway! I think the crust on the top is helped by the fact that I used icing sugar. I'm going to work on the recipe to perfect it, but this is a good start!

It went something like this:

120g butter
400g icing sugar
1 dessert spoon cinnamon
50g self raising flour
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

- cream butter and sugar (hopefully you're better at this than me but if not, 90 seconds in the microwave will help)

- add cinnamon, flour and bicarb and mix well

- spread evenly in a lined tin and bake at 180c for 20 minutes or until the top is springy to touch. The inside should be gooey when you take them out - that'll set into a moist squidgy brownie-like consistency as the cake cools. If it's really really runny, put it back in for 10 minutes more but do resist the temptation to over cook it.


I'll let you know when I've improved the recipe...

caramel macchiato cupcakes

I've been making cupcakes for my sister in law's 30th birthday party this afternoon. The whole process started with me googling for interesting cupcake recipes to suit the occasion. There are loads of fantastic cupcake recipes out there - I chose Chocolate Mud Cupcakes, Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes and Lemon Meringue Cupcakes, as well as the Caramel Macchiato Cupcakes here.

I've modified the recipe a little bit so I'm going to share it here. The original is on the My Buttery Fingers blog.

Coffee Cupcakes
313g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
180ml strongly brewed coffee, cooled to warm
60ml milk
1 tbsp Tia Maria
170g unsalted butter, softened
200g sugar
3 eggs
1 sachet Starbucks VIA instant coffee
Additional Tia Maria to add afterwards

1. Preheat oven to 170c
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time
4. Mix in coffee, milk and Tia Maria
5. Add flour and baking powder and mix until fully integrated
6. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 15-18 minutes
7. When cooked, remove from oven and allow to cool.
8. Once the cakes are cooled, make a small opening in the top of each one with a knife and gently pour half a teaspoon of Tia Maria into each one. This will enhance the coffee flavour, and give moist cakes.

Whipped Cream Topping
200g (around 1 cup) whipping cream
3 tbsp (40g) sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp Tia Maria
Caramel ice cream sauce

1. Beat cream and sugar together until soft peaks begin to form
2. Add vanilla extract and Tia Maria
3. Pipe or spoon onto the top of each cake
4. Drizzle caramel sauce over the top of the cakes.
5. Enjoy!

roasting seeds

Not wishing to give the impression that this blog is becoming domesticated, I'm really aware that lately I use a lot of internet-based recipes which is great at the time (remind me of that on the day I cover my laptop in gravy or something) but it makes it quite hard to find things the next time I want to cook them. So I'm going to throw a few of my favourites up here in the hope that it might actually result in Dan & I eating the same meal twice, rather than several variations of something we once made and liked. As a bonus, you can be sure that any recipe I list here is something we tried and enjoyed!

So... today's favourite recipe is...

Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds
from Recipezaar

Ingredients

* seeds from 4 butternut squash or 1 pumpkin
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cumin
* 1/8 teaspoon chilli powder
* 1 tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Remove the fibres from the seeds.
2. Place the butter, salt and spices in a mound on the centre of a baking sheet and scatter the seeds on top.
3. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 minute at 180 degrees C until the butter is melted.
4. Lower oven to 160 degrees, mix and spread seed into single layer and bake for 30-40 minutes until crisp.

more truffles

I love chilli and chocolate together so this recipe is a must-try for me! I figured while I'm in Domestic-Goddess-Blogger mode, I may as well share this one too! I've modified the recipe a little as we melt our chocolate and cream a different way - none of that bowls over pans of water business!

Classic Truffles
Ingredients
200g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa content), broken into pieces
200ml double cream
chilli powder, to taste (optional)
cocoa powder, for dusting


Method
1. Put the cream in a saucepan over a low heat and warm it slowly but don't let it boil. Alternatively, microwave it a bit...
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the broken up chocolate. You won't need to add any more heat, the hot cream will melt the chocolate.
3. Mix well until incorporated and add the chilli powder.
4. Place aside to cool and firm up.
5. Once firm, take teaspoons of the mixture, dust with cocoa powder and roll into even-shaped balls, then leave to set.

Just on that last step, we've always rolled the balls and then dusted them in cocoa powder. I can't see how it would work the other way around. Am I missing out on a stroke of truffling genius, or is this an error in the original recipe?

christmas pudding truffles

Last year, Dan and I made loads of these cute sweets after Dan saw Nigella making them on TV. We searched for ages for the recipe and ended up finding the programme on iPlayer and writing it down. Since then I've found it on one blog but nowhere else. So I thought I'd add it here for everyone else to enjoy and so there's twice as much chance of people finding it if they google.

Ingredients
- 125g best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
- 350g leftover, or freshly cooked and cooled, Christmas pudding
- 60ml sherry
- 2 x 15ml tablespoons golden syrup

and for the decorations
- 100g white chocolate, finely chopped
- 6 red glacé cherries
- 6 green glacé cherries, or 6 short lengths angelica
(this was the fiddly bit - this year I might try white icing, food colouring and a tiny paintbrush)

So here's how to do it...

Melt the dark chocolate and then mix it in with the crumbled up Christmas pudding, sherry and syrup. Roll into balls and put each ball into a mini cake case.

Then top the balls with melted white chocolate and arrange 2 pieces of green and 1 red cherry on top to look like holly.

The sweet-making bit is easy. The decoration bit not so much and after about 6 you'll be asking yourself why you even bothered to start this project. All that will be forgotten though, once you see people's faces when you give them these cute sweets you've made.

Enjoy!

[edited to add:]
Here's a picture of this year's production. This was using double the quantities in the recipe and produced 81 truffles.