Katherine's Jaffa Cake Cupcakes

Firstly, I was most excited about January's baking theme - cupcakes! Such a diverse topic, which made my culinary thoughts go into overdrive!!
I have a couple of cupcake recipe books, and ploughed my through, with my brief (that I gave myself) of something a bit bold, classy and tasty!

After much deliberation, the answer I knew, would be found in 'The Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book'. I then went on their website, and saw that this month's special bake on sale were 'Jaffa Cake Cupcakes'. So, i knew this was the one.. the only problem.. no ingredient measurements provided, just an ingredients list. Therefore I thought I'd be a bit bold and improvise!

I selected the Vanilla Cupcake Recipe, which I would tweak ( from 'The Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book', and the Chocolate Frosting recipe from the same book.

Ingredients

For the Sponge:
40g Unsalted Butter
120g Plain Flour
140g Caster Sugar
Pinch of Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
110ml Whole Milk
1 Egg
The Juice of 1/2 an Orange
The Zest of 1/2 an Orange

Firstly I preheated my oven to 170 degrees and lined a cupcake tin with cupcake cases.

I mixed together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, then adding the butter (which I chopped into small cubes to ensure it combined with the flour mixture better) and using a hand held whisk I started to combine all the mixture together.
I then added half of the milk (the original recipe stated 110ml of whole milk, but as I was adding the orange to the mixture I didn't want it to be too runny, so substituted 10ml of milk for orange juice) to the mixture and used an electric whisk to combine. Once this was incorporated, I mixed togther the milk, beaten egg, zest of half an orange, and then juice of half an orange, then slowly added it to the rest of the mixture and whisked together, ensuring that the mixture was smooth, yet not over worked.

I used 2 tablespoon measures to fill the cupcake cases to two thirds full (which they recommend on the hummingbird bakery application). Once all cupcake cases were full, I put them in the preheated oven for 20-25minutes as stated.
I set my timer to 20minutes as my oven is rather hot and didn't want them to burn.

Whilst the cupcakes were cooking (which may I add, the smell of the orange was quite something!) I got to work on the Chocolate Frosting.

Frosting Ingredients
300g Icing Sugar, sifted
40g Cocoa Powder (I used Bourneville Cococa Powder)
80g Unsalted Butter
30ml Whole Milk
10ml Juice of 1/2 an orange

With the above ingredients, I combined them together until light and fluffy, adding the juice of 1/2 an orange for the extra flavour.

Once the cakes were sufficiently cooled, I got to work on the the centre of the cake. For this i used a teaspoon so remove a small 5 pence piece size (in circumference) hole from the sponge, and about half way down - to enable the filling to sit perfectly in the centre and ooze out when bitten - but not seap out of the bottom of the cupcake. I repeated this step on each cupcake - discarding the sponge that was removed. I then used a teaspoon measure of thick cut marmalade and filled the holes made in the sponge. Once all filled with the marmalade I added the chocolate frosting and completed them with a mini jaffa cake.

The taste test proved quite popular, and many were unaware of the marmalade centre - so were more than pleased with the little cupcake surprise.

I would definitely make these again, as they were easy to make, just a tad fiddily, but with the end results and feedback that I received, were highly worth it.

Anna's January Cupcakes!

Every January, I vow to be more healthy. Less of the bad stuff and more of the good! So, when Emma set the challenge of a January cupcake challenge I decided that I was going to see if I could find a recipe for guilt free cake eating! Thankfully, my foresight (in a bid to become more healthy) of purchasing the Hairy Bikers, Hairy Dieters recipe book, completely paid off. However, I also could not resist having a browse through my Humming Bird book. I was completely torn between what I saw as the 'healthy' option and what I believed to be the 'tasty' option, so...I decided to bake a recipe from both!

My first recipe was Banana and Chocolate cupcakes from the Humming Bird Bakery. I followed the recipe exactly, which produced a light bananary cake with an extremely rich and chocolatey icing. These cakes were extremely rich, possibly a bit too much for me, however, they did have that 'Humming Bird taste.'

My second bake was skinny lemon cupcakes with drizzly icing, from the Hairy Dieters recipe book. These were delicious and I think I preferred them to my chocolate and banana ones. They have reduced the sugar content and used half fat natural yoghurt and blueberries to make up for it. The lemon flavoured icing gave the cake a zingy kick and added sweetness. I will definitely be making these again!

Sarah's Amaretto Cupcakes

So, for my January bake I made Amaretto and Orange Cupcakes. This is a bit of an invention I must admit, however I am quite impressed with them. I just made a basic cupcake mix, and then added the zest of a large orange, and about 50 ml of Amaretto.



I tried to lighten the calorie load by not using butter icing so I used Royal icing instead - with half an Amaretti biscuit crumbled on top - yum yum!

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!

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