Cupcakes - no aqua faba this time

Well not wanting to open another can of chickpeas I have tried a new cupcake recipe based on a few older cake recipes on this site. This is a proper amalgamation. My daughter asked for pink and blue cakes, so we ended up adding food colouring from my icing sets to get some colour in the mix. This recipe is vegan friendly.

Ingredients

• 200g self raising flour
• 50g Tex butter substitute
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 tbl flax seed in 70ml of water
• 150ml yogurt (I used soya/ almond)
• Dash of almond milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Methodology

• Pre heat oven to 180C
• mix up the flour and sugar
• in second bowl mix up the butter, yogurt, vanilla essence, and flax seed
• add the flour and sugar to the wet ingredients 
• place a tablespoon in each cupcake case - this made 16 cupcakes.

Notes

• This may not be sweet enough for you but the kids loved it - my daughter happily cleaned the bowls for me and sat sucking the paper after eating the cupcake first out of oven (still stuck to paper as they hadn't cooled at that point)
• The cupcakes took a while in the oven - around 20/ 25mins. this did seem a long time but they were still moist and yummy.

Chocolate Cake with raspberry layer

Well it has been a while! I have been baking but not recording it, sorry. Life has been busy but getting some down time thanks to the oldest off with chicken pox, so balancing working at home with making sure he is entertained. Yesterday this was done by doing some baking. We modified two recipes into one, the first was http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/i-can-cook/makes/i-can-cook-stickychocolatecake/ which we saw being made on Cbeebies the day before, the second http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/13485/eggless-chocolate-cake was a bigger version, for a full family cake. This made one loaf tin and three cup cakes as little guy can never wait for big cakes to be finished!! Each worked well, but the cupcakes did get wet thanks to the raspberries in the bottom.

Ingredients

(I didn't go diary free, just egg free)

• 160ml Milk
• 1/2 tbsp. Vanilla Essence
• 85g Butter
• 2 tbsp. Golden Syrup
• 300g Self Raising Flour
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate Soda
• 35g Cocoa Powder
• 125g Caster Sugar
• Handful of raspberries

If you don't go down the raspberry route, and want a plain chocolate cake in a round 9 inch tin...

• 1 small tub of cherry yoghurt (I used a soya yoghurt which was lush)
• 1 large beetroot (the cooked, vacuum packed version)

Add both these to the milk and liquidise (then add the bicarb of soda). Mix in as much liquid as you need.

Method

• Grease the tin with some butter, I would recommend that you use some greaseproof paper in the bottom too (I didn't and the cake/raspberries did stick a little to the bottom, so I had to scrap it out and spread it back over the base of the cake)
• Pre heat oven to 190C/ 170C (fan assisted)
• Mix together the milk and the bicarbonate of soda in a cup
• Mix together the flour and cocoa powder in a "dry bowl"
• Cream together the  butter, sugar, syrup and vanilla essence "wet bowl" (big bowl)
• Slowly add some of the milk mixture and dry bowl mixture into the wet bowl, continuously mixing. (Little chap helped add these, I would then stir, he would add more etc)
• Once you have a smooth, but slightly stiff mixture you are ready to put in the tin
• Take a handful of raspberries and layer them at the bottom of the tin, then add mixture on top. Smooth the mixture out as otherwise the cake will be "lumpy" on top as it rises. 

Notes

• I would  be tempted to try the raspberries on the top of the cake next time, or even all through the mixture. The raspberries helped with the moisture of the cake.
• This was very nice with ice cream and extra raspberries.
• The cupcakes took around 15 mins
• The cake took around 45 mins
• The raspberry free round (9inch) cake took around 40 mins. Just keep checking it!

 

Double Chocolate Chip Cup Cakes

I found this recipe on the Annabel Karmel website and decided to try it to keep little man entertained while we emptied the house ready for our move! Plus little man has been invited to a birthday party and they are not providing egg free cakes. Unfortunately I have lent out the cake pop maker so will be trying this as a cupcake recipe. This makes 12 cupcakes.

They didn't sink! Yeah. 

Ingredients

• 145g sifted plain flour 
• 150g caster sugar (or vanilla sugar) 
• 20g nice quality cocoa powder 
• 62g vegetable oil 
• 175ml water 
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 
• small pinch of salt 
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 
• 100g of choc chips

Method

• pre-heat oven to 180C / gas mark 4. 
• Set out the cupcake cases
• In a bowl, sift the flour, bicarb of soda, salt and cocoa powder. Mix well. 
• Add sugar and mix well 
• Add oil, water, choc chips and vanilla essence and mix well
•  Pour into cupcakes 
• Cook for approx 22 mins

Notes

Original recipe says it serves about 6, so I'm guessing a 8" tin, and says to grease a tin and pour in to the baking tin/ring and bake for 1 hour in the middle of the oven or until a knife inserted in to the centre comes out clean.

These tasted a little funny to us... The taste of bicarbonate of soda seemed to come through. Will be trying again with self raising flour or adding some orange/lemon juice to balance it out. I think even a bit of vinegar would help. 

Now for a girl's first birthday cake

Design ideas

After looking on the internet for ideas for my little girls first birthday, I had two criteria, one it had to be simple and two it needed to have some items that could be taken off and kept (like my boys train and cubes from his first cake).

This 1st Birthday Party supplies page has some cakes on it, including a baby pulling down a cake but was much too complicated, but perhaps I could include a baby on my cake somehow? It also showed a lovely cake with a girl on the top, and spots over the cake itself. I really like this cake. This two coloured cake of pink and green was lovely, and the bear very cute. 

With these, and my daughters cot toys, in mind I got out my iPad and using a Paper app I started sketching out ideas. These are not shared here as I am a TERRIBLE drawer and they are awful!! However they helped me pull together a couple of thoughts. 

The Plan

So I had a basic design, and I was going to reuse the recipe from my little boys cake. First it was off to the cake shop in Shrewsbury Market Hall (the ladies are so lovely and helpful) to get my supplies, I even managed to save a little by getting some flower paste icing on sale to make the baby skin (and with a little food colouring the dress too!).

Second it was tripling up the recipe and getting all the ingredients, this is because the recipe is for one 6" cake and I wanted to make two 8" cakes to put on top of each other with some butter icing. I had set aside Friday before the party (Sunday) to get the cake cooked and iced, although the other half was off too I was hoping to send him off on the bike or something!

The Reality

In fact I started the characters on Thursday evening, as I was loosing sleep about how to do them. This turned out to be a good thing as they took much longer than expected to make. I'm sure if I had all the tools and some training they would be dead easy to make but each character took approx 2 hours!! The first one made was the bunny, which used toothpicks to hold head to body and ears to head. 

Friday morning I baked the cakes, these are a bit more dense than normal egg cakes but still taste yummy and the cake was polished off at the party which I took to be a good sign. They did take approx 2 more mins to cook than on the recipe, and the first sank a fair bit in the middle. Otherwise I did not modify this at all. After the cakes had cooled it was time to stick them together with a fair bit of butter icing (the two tops together so they didn't look sunken with icing on). I then stuck the cakes in the fridge to let the icing go hard before adding the jam, marzipan and royal icing to the cake. While they were in the fridge, I made the little baby girl/doll.  This was using flower paste icing as it let me go finer in rolling out for the dress and hair. I used toothpicks to hold arms and head to the body.

Once the cake had the base icing on it was time to stick on the spots and make the monkey (this was a copy of a toy that my daughter was given at birth by her Nana and Granddad). I ended up doing this on Friday night once the kids had gone to bed, so I was pretty tired at this point so it wasn't brilliant. Anyway the final cake....

...

Daughters first birthday cake

Apricot and Coconut Cake in Cake Pop Maker

Last week I took the kids to see the grand parents rather than do the usual cooking thing, this was due to them being 'missing' for the last 6 weeks visiting my brother in Australia. This week our cooking experience has occurred on Thursday as I had to work on Monday and Tuesday of this week.

I have tried to be daring again this week, by not even starting with an egg free recipe, rather a lovely cake recipe off the BBC website (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10243/apricot-and-coconut-cake). Very brave after trying my own, adapted, egg free Blueberry (or strawberry) crumb cake in the pop cake maker (tasted ok but were a bit flat)! On starting this recipe I was hoping that the apricot would act as a structure to hold up the pop cakes (as the strawberries did when I modified the Blueberry crumb cake to be strawberry crumb cake!). This turned out to be the case, the cakes were very airy but kept their shape. However this trial was more error to start with! My little boy enjoyed the final product but the in the first batch some cakes tasted kind of fizzy (see the second point under notes for more info).

Ingredients

• 200g fresh apricots chopped small (this worked as 4 stoned apricots, which I then sliced one way & the other)
• 275g self raising flour
• 75g desiccated coconut
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 225g caster sugar
• 125g softened butter
• 100g soft margarine
• 1 & a half bananas (mashed) (substitute for 2 of the 4 eggs required for recipe)
• I used milk, but guessed-emated based on recovering mix (see second point in notes) - I would say get half a cup and slowly add until the consistency seems right (a whole cup is too much - see my notes from 19th August!)

Method

• Measure all dry ingredients into large bowl (dry)
• Mix the margarine and butter, then add the puree (wet)
• Add the dry & wet ingredients together
• Beat well for 2 min
• Add to pop cake maker (or look in notes for how to cook in oven)
• Leave to cool on wire rack

Notes 

• I have modified this recipe in two main ways, first is obvious - I removed the four eggs, the second is I added butter with the margarine as most agree that butter gives a better taste to baking than margarine does. 
• The first time I tried this I substituted 2 of the 4 eggs with a baking powder & vinegar mix that I added last. It made some of the cakes taste almost fizzy (not sure if it was because I mixed them together first & the mix was then absorbed by the apricots, or due to too much baking powder & soda in the mix). To 'repair' the mix for second cooking I picked out all the fresh apricots, added in dry, as I had run out of fresh, added more flour, coconut & some milk. They turned out MUCH nicer! 
• If using the oven preheat to 160C/ 325F (Gas mark 3), pour mix into a 2 litre loaf tin that has been well greased. Bake for 1 & 1/2 hours or until skewer comes out of cake clean. 
• Leave to cool in tin for 10min and turn out 

19/08/13

Below is our third attempt, I added too much milk so added more flour to balance it out. Ended up making a batch of pop cakes on the first day, refrigerating the mix for a couple of days & then cooking in the oven. This took about 1hour 15 mins at 165 C. This was very yummy, more moist than the cake pops, but also more banana tasty. Think if doing it this way need to wizz the banana rather than just mash it. Might try some proper fruit purée next time....

The cake straight out of the oven, it was very yummy!

Blueberry Crumb Cake in Pop Cake Maker

I found this recipe while looking for a new experiment for our cooking. I ummed and arrhhed about doing this 'traditionally' in the oven or using the pop cake maker. As usual I turned to other half and little one for help on the decision! Funnily enough they pumped for the cake pop maker! I am liking the different stages of this as can get little one to help with mixing wet ingredients while I mix the dry (which seems to get messier with lo as he likes to pour the flour over his hands!). He is also very good (as I discovered using the pancake recipe) in adding the dry ingredients to the wet mix (which is the wrong way according to original recipe but again works better for us).

This made loads of cakes, thank goodness, the first lot I did I over filled the wells, the second lot sank, the third I forgot to turn the maker back on after cleaning it (muppet) (see photo below for these attempts).

Anyway, the next time I made them was more successful, so that is what I've recreated below. They did deflate after coming out - very light cakes indeed, and very more-ish. They got eaten over two days. For more consistent ones that stayed round please read the notes for the ones I made out of strawberries, I think one of the problems with this is that the blueberries deflate when cooked so collapse the cakes.

Ingredients

Dry Ingredients

• 190g sifted plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 150g caster sugar

Wet Ingredients

• 2 eggs worth of egg replacer, I used 2 tbl spoon flax seed, 6 tbl spoon water
• 250ml yoghurt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Optional Flavours (and/or)

• 125g fresh blueberries
• 60g tablespoons chopped walnuts

 Topping/ Crumb Ingredients

• 5 tablespoons caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

• In a medium mixing bowl sift flour with the rest of the dry ingredients
• In a large mixing bowl separate bowl combine the wet ingredients
• Pour the flour mixture into the wet mix and beat until smooth. 
• Add the mixture into the pop cake mixer, so the bottom well is half full.
• to each pop cake set in one of the blueberries into the centre of the mix (although the recipe says about walnuts my lo isn't a fan so didn't add them this time around), add a small amount of mix to the top to help cover the blueberry.
• I didn't bother with doing the crumble as couldn't work how to do it in the pop cake maker. In a small bowl, combine the crumb mix with a fork until it resembles breadcrumbs
• Put in the pop cake maker for 5/6 mins. 

 Notes

• When using a normal cake tin/ oven combination the recipe recommends setting the oven to 180 C / Gas 4, and using a greased 23cm square cake tin. Spread the mixture in the tin after mixing the wet and dry ingredients and then sprinkling the blueberries  and/or walnuts  over the mixture, stirring slightly so that they stay in the top layer. Then add the crumb mixture on top.
• Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool slightly before serving
• Additionally, I've made these a second time, this time with self raising flour, slightly less sugar (140g) and 200ml of yogurt with 50ml of milk. I also used chopped up strawberries instead of blueberries. These came out dead yummy & sweet thanks to the strawberries, I seem to be getting there making them perfectly round, I think they fail as soon as you get one overflowing. 

The first try using blueberries, not so round as half round half flat!

Banana cake (in Pop Cake Maker)

Well I was going to make this as a proper cake that can be cut up, however it looks like the pop cake idea is popular with my other half as well as my little one, so once again the pop cake maker was put into action. Once again I enrolled my 2 year old to help with the mixing & mashing!

This recipe made 21 balls.

Ingredients

• 1 & a half medium bananas
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g butter
• 45g light muscovado sugar
• 45g dark brown soft sugar
• 1 tbs ground flaxseed
• 3 tbs water
• 125g self raising flour (I used 50/50 plain & wholemeal)
• Small bag chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

• Mix together the flaxseed & water until the mix goes gelatinous.
• Mash together the banana, flaxseed mix & vanilla extract
• Cream together the butter & sugar
• Add the banana mix & walnuts
• Slowly add the flour. (The mix should be firm - as the picture)
• Add to cake pop maker, fill over the edge by a little bit
• Cook for just under 5 mins 

Notes

The mix just before it went
into the pop cake maker

With the first batch I didn't fill the maker properly, and I didn't cook quite long enough (4 mins) so they were a bit pale & misshapen (oh and raw inside!).

The final 9 balls that I slightly over cooked

The second batch I slightly over cooked (5 mins 30), as you can see.

My little man didn't like the bigger pieces of walnut from my rough chopping of the walnut halves that I bought, so the second batch involved me breaking the pieces up some more with a fork in the mix! It turns out not enough - he still wasn't happy with "the bits" and in fact I noticed after that his arms were red...walnut allergy?? Next time I will split the mix so he can have some walnut free ones.

These were again chrispy on outside but lovely on inside. As I say think I over cooked them the second time. However they did taste lovely.