Jess's Raspberry Trifle Cupcakes

Because i havent got round to making the macaroons yet, i thought i would tackle a slightly tricky cupcake recipe. The recipe i used comes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book, and it took around 3 hours to make (i seriously regretted starting hem at 9.30pm!!)...

INGREDIENTS;
(enough for 12 cupcakes)
For the sponge:
80g unsalted butter
280g caster sugar
240g plain flour
1tbsp baking flour
pinch of salt
240ml whole milk
1tsp vanilla essence
2 large eggs

For the topping and inside:
500ml whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
5 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
30g plain flour
30g cornflour
200ml double cream
24 raspberries
100g raspberry jam

So... firstly i mixed together the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt until they resembled breadcrumbs. Was one the biggest downfalls of this recipe was that i used a handheld electric whisk.. with a freestanding electric whisk the whole process would have been a lot faster and easier.

I then whisked together the milk, vanilla essence and eggs (by hand),then poured it into the breadcrumb mixture to create a batter. This batter was then divided into 12 cases of a muffin tin, and then put into the oven for around 20minutes.

While the cakes were cooking, i made the custard for the filling and topping. Firstly, i mixed the egg yolks, sugar, cornflour and plain flour to make a paste. I then put the milk and vanilla essence into a saucepan and brought to the boil. I then removed this from the boil and mixed the paste and hot milk together, then brought it back to boil, ensuing everything was fully cooked through. I then removed it from the boil and emptied the mixture into a baking tray, covered in clingfilm to cool down. By this time the cakes were ready to come out of the oven and cool down.

Once the custard was cooled, i poured it back into a large bowl and gave it a good stir to remove any lumps. In another bowl, i whipped the double cream into soft peaks, and then folded it into the custard.

Now comes the tricky part... i then had to hollow out the cakes (with the help of my glamorous assistant Tyrone). Being careful not to remove too much sponge from the cakes making them breakable, we hollow out the middles, and added a raspberry, raspberry jam and some custard into each cake. We then replaced the cut out bit of cake back onto the top of each cake, piped the custard onto the top, and then aded a raspberry to the top!

Finito! So.. they took rather a while.. and were quite tricky in places, BUT were very yummy! I took them into work and everyone loved them, and i would definitely make them again. YUMMYYYY!

Hannah's Christmas Chocolate Bark

This Christmas myself, my mum and sister had decided to give homemade gifts to our family as presents and this was one of them. I was inspired after watching Lorraine Pascale's 'Last Minute Christmas' to try out this chocolate bark.

The way of making this is very simple, but I think that the end product looks quite impressive and there's nothing better than homemade treats: You are simply mixing up different chocolates and adding fruits, nuts or anything else that you can think of.

To start with I made one for my Dad by melting 300g dark chocolate and 100g milk chocolate in separate bowls over hot water (being careful that the bottom of the bowl didn't touch the water). I had lined a baking tray with greaseproof paper and firstly poured the dark chocolate in and then poured the milk chocolate down the middle of the tray. Then I used a skewer to make some swirls and sprinkled with brazil and pistachio nuts.

The tray was then left to cool, and once cool was broken in to pieces and placed in a sealed jar.

The second one I did for James was very similar, but I also used white chocolate.

I couldn't go to all that effort without making one for me to munch, so I used the left over chocolate and added some marshmallows!

Hannah's Tennis Themed Cupcakes

For my sister's boyfriend's 30th birthday, I thought I would make a contribution in the form of cupcakes. Andy plays a lot of tennis and so I therefore had the perfect theme to 'play' on. The cupcake mixture was a simple vanilla recipe, so that the cupcakes weren't overly sweet when combined with the chocolate frosting on top. I piped the frosting on to the cupcakes and then decorated each one with a rice paper style tennis ball, personalised with 'Happy Birthday Andy'.

These went down really well and I think they looked smart and tasted pretty good.

Hannah's Red Velvet Cupcakes

So, January is cupcake month, a perfect topic to bring us out of the doom and gloom of post Christmas blues although not so great for the January diets.

Santa was very kind to me and sent me a new cookery book stand and James got me a mixer! After flicking through the Hummingbird 'Cake Days' cookery book I settled on Red Velvet Cupcakes - something i've always wanted to try and make. Throughout the making of these cupcakes, I really loved the vibrant red colour, which made making them even more enjoyable.

I firstly mixed butter and sugar and then broke the eggs in, one at a time to make a batter. In another bowl I mixed cocoa powder, vanilla essence and the whole container of red food colouring (I used Dr Oetker) in to a paste. I then incorporated this in to the batter and mixed until fully combined. I then added the flour and salt, which was added to the mixture, alternated with buttermilk. I couldn't find any buttermilk so instead used low fat plain yoghurt. Finally I mixed cider vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and added it to the batter, as per the pic below.

The mixture was then evenly distributed amongst cupcakes cases (a mixture of silicon and paper) as per below.

Whilst the cupcakes were cooling, I cracked on with the cream cheese frosting. I again used the mixer for this, which made a really light and fluffy frosting, which was made up of butter, icing sugar and cream cheese.

I covered all but one of the cupcakes with the frosting and then broke up the remaining cupcake over the others. I chose to cover them using a palette knife rather than a piping bag, however I think it's obvious I need some practice!

As the cakes cooked, they lost quite a bit of their vibrant colour and looked mostly brown, so maybe next time I should use even more food colouring. The cakes tasted nice and I even took some in to work, which seemed to go down well. I found the cakes quite sweet and they have their own taste which can't really be compared, apart from maybe toffee-ish. All in all, I would make these again, as would be a good recipe to have up your sleeve for birthdays and celebrations.

January Cupcakes

After a busy month of celebrations over Christmas and the New year the Queensoftarts are ready and eager to get baking again...

Happy new year everyone and here's to more delicious bakes in 2013!

It has to be said that perhaps we were a little over ambitious in November with Anna's choice of bake being the French favourite, the macaron! For those of us that did share our attempts well done! For this reason I have decided that for January we need to go back to basics, but at the same time I have chosen something that gives you the option to be a bit more creative. So the January bake is the ever popular cupcake! Whether you decide to go for the classic vanilla sponge or not, the flavour, topping etc is up to you. I am sure there are hundreds of recipes out there to find and I will look forward to seeing (and tasting) the results!

Happy baking #QOTS

xxx