Red velvet cupcakes

 

Friendship is Sharing a Sweet Cupcake.

Marie Williams Johnstone

An American friend of mine gave me this recipe about 9 years ago and only last year did I manage to get round to baking it. It's quite popular that side of the pond and once you've baked this, had the aroma fill your kitchen and dipped your finger in the wonderful cream cheese frosting you'll realise why!

Ingredients:

310g plain flour
45g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
225g butter (or margarine), softened
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
230g sour cream
120ml milk
28g red food colouring
2 tsps Vanilla Extract

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
224g cream cheese, softened
55g butter, softened
30g sour cream
2 tsps Vanilla Extract
450g icing sugar

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

2. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Beat the butter/margarine and sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy.

4. Beat in your eggs, one at a time.

5. Now mix in the sour cream, vanilla, milk, and the food colouring.

6. Gradually add to the flour mixture, beating until just mixed together, make sure not to over do it!

7. Spoon batter into 30 paper-lined cupcake cups, filling each cup 2/3 full.

8. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until springy and a toothpick comes out clean.

9. Leave to cool in the pan for a couple of minutes, then remove (leaving them in their paper cases) to a wire rack for about 5 minutes.

10. Now remove from their cases to cool completely.

11. For the frosting: Beat the cream cheese, butter, sour cream and the vanilla extract in large bowl until light and fluffy. Slowly and gradually beat in the icing sugar until smooth.

12. Top with the cream cheese frosting.

Enjoy and I hope to see your versions of these soon

Happy baking!

 

Gorgeous Custard Creams recipe!

 

I don't think anyone can say no to these little naughty treats once they've tried them, I know I'm a total addict!

This is exactly why I had to hunt for a recipe to make them at home. Let's face it, if you love to bake and love any certain baked product then of course you're going to have to find out how they're made!!!!

So here's the recipe I used (from the BBC Good Food website with some tweaking by myself)

Ingredients:

For the biscuit:
100g margarine/butter
100g flour
50g caster sugar
50g custard powder
few drops of vanilla essence
For the filling:
150g icing sugar
75g margarine/butter
20g custard powder

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c-200c

2. Cream sugar and margarine, then fold in your flour, custard powder and vanilla essence until the dough is firm and roll-able.

3. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out the dough to roughly 1/2 cm thickness. Then cut out with a cookie cutter, making sure to have an equal amount of cut outs.

4. Place shapes on a baking tray covered in grease proof paper (or lightly greased and floured), ensuring that one of each pair is put on upside down (i.e. flipped over, rather than rotated).

5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

6. Remove from the oven, don't remove from the tray for a few minutes as they'll be very soft. Then cool on a wire rack.

7. Now mix the icing sugar and margarine until smooth, then add the custard powder.

8. Fill the custard creams once they are cool. Place a bit on the bottom (i.e. non-smooth side) of one biscuit, then put the bottom of the first biscuit's pair onto this. Don't force together as this'll just make the filling spill out.

Let me know how this works for you

Happy baking!

Related articles

• Custard Biscuits (gwenacaster.wordpress.com)


• Karpatka: Polish Vanilla Custard Slice (wholesomecook.wordpress.com)


• caramel fig cake (cakenationaus.blogspot.com)

 

Basic biscuit dough recipe

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This is a great little recipe to keep handy as you can adapt it completely to whatever type or flavor of biscuit you'd like.

Ingredients

250g butter, softened
140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour

Method

1. Mix the softened butter and caster sugar in a large bowl with a wooden spoon.

2. Add the egg yolk and the vanilla extract and briefly beat to combine.

3. Sift your plain flour and stir until the mixture is well combined, if it's not coming together, this is your chance to get all sticky and dirty just like when you were a kid! Put your hands in there and give it all a good mix and press the dough together firmly.

Note: Now, you'll notice I didn't give an oven temperature or time, this is because it all depends on what you add onto this basic recipe...for that your imagination is the limit! I usually say about 150c-170c is a good basis for about 10-15 minutes.

Let me see and know about your concoctions :)

Happy baking!

Related articles

• Yesterday's invention - Vanilla & Chocolate Piscuits (no that's not a typo) (carucakes.wordpress.com)


• My version of digestive biscuits (carucakes.wordpress.com)


• Walnut And Pecan Biscuits-Galletas De Nueces Y Pacanas (mariposaoro.wordpress.com)

 

I haven't had the time to plan returning to the scene because I haven't left it.

Mick Jagger

I have to start this post off with an apology. I know I have been absent from my blog and all of you (if anyone is truly out there).

This isn't because I've lost my passion for baking, writing this blog, or sharing things with you all. Mainly it's because I wasn't well and have been crazy busy planning for my trip back to the U.K. as well.

Of course I'm totally excited about going back, seeing my family and friends (and maybe baking a thing or two while I'm there!) but this won't mean I will neglect this blog :)

So I'm sorry for not providing more tasty recipes for you all but I'm back on par now and will make up for this lack of attention by giving you 3 new recipes today! How does that sound?

Also, I want to ask opinions, should I add to this blog savory baking recipes? Such as quiches, pies, pastries and breads?

Let me know what you think,

Happy baking!

 

Peanut butter gluten free cookies - yum!

Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.

James A. Garfield

My lovely fiancé is seeming to get worse with his (what was a slight) gluten intolerance and of course this bothers me...who else do I subject to testing new inventions?!

Now I have to invent new gluten-free versions of recipes! Woohoo a genuine excuse to bake? I'm all over it.

So my first go at this is peanut butter cookies.

I hope you enjoy these as much as he seemed to!

Ingredients:

2 cups of peanut butter (smooth or crunchy - your choice)
1 cup of dark brown sugar
1 cup of caster sugar
1/2 chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to about 150c

2. Beat the peanut butter with a wooden spoon until it softens up some more and gets a bit creamier

3. Add the dark brown sugar and cream it with the peanut butter

4. Now add the caster sugar in bits, creaming as you go.

5. Finally, add your chocolate chips and you're done!

6. Bake on a grease proof paper lined baking tray for about 10 minutes or until golden brown

7. Let the cookies cool a bit on the grease proof paper and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

8. Store in an air tight container and (if they're not all eaten at once) they should last 5 days

Note: They will spread quite a bit during baking so give a lot of space around them!



Enjoy and let me see your versions of these.

Happy baking!

Dieting starts again tomorrow

Where's the place to put your refrigerator so it causes most problems while still being useful? Right next to the sofa

me

I should probably explain the above 'quote' (if you can call it that).

When we moved, we found a gorgeous 1 bedroom apartment here. Nice flowing layout to it - i.e the kitchen/dining room is sort of attached to the living room.

Originally, our sofa wasn't too near the kitchen but my fiancé wasn't happy with it and kept moving things around (as he always does) until he felt everything was perfect. Now, I love this quality about him, I truly do, but this time there was a slight error in judgement on his part - the fridge is now next to our sofa - where I sit to write this blog a lot of the time!

This would be fine and is fine most of the time if it wasn't for those moments of craving a cigarette, so you reach for the grapes instead and this sometimes works for me totally but sometimes grapes aren't...naughty enough and that's when the fridge is dangerous. You don't have to walk far or even get up to delve into its shelves and splurge out on those last 5 cookies you were saving, that giant green apple or even some of that cookie dough that's yet to be cooked! Agh!!!

I think I should also clarify the other reasons to diet.

I'm not fat and haven't really ever been big, usually weighing in around 56/57kg (and I'm tallish - yep I'm truly lucky, or at least I WAS). however, since moving to such a hot climate AND quitting smoking my metabolism has slowed so badly that I've gain 11kgs in 5 months and I hate it.
I haven't really been over eating all the time we've been here but I admit I have my moments like anyone, and usually it doesn't make a difference, but here, it's like the gravity has been increased and everything contains more calories and fats or something! It's too hot to do any real vigorous exercise so all I get to do is a hour power walk in the early morning and some exercises in front of the air con after that which isn't really enough to get rid of the weight and kick start my metabolism again. So this is why the diet.

I lost 3kgs with the first go at it, have had my recommended break and now I need to go back on it if I want to lose at least a good deal of this weight before going on my holiday back to the U.K.

Now you see the full problem of having our fridge near my comfy blogging seat? Yep, thought so, so this one is coming to you from our balcony instead (Although I'd love to have a ciggie in hand right now as I type).

So once again I'm sorry to say that from tomorrow until Wednesday I won't be creating new recipes. It's too hard not to taste as I go and this diet is too strict for that to be allowed. Instead I'll share other favourite and well practised recipes I already have.

Hope you enjoy it still the same and keep all fingers crossed for me to shift that other 8kgs!

Happy baking!

Hot cookies

The failure or incomplete success of a recipe often depends upon some little detail that has been misunderstood or overlooked in the preparation.

'A Book for a Cook' The Pillsbury Co. (1905)

Do you have problems with your dough spreading before going in the oven or your cookies/biscuits coming out thin, flat and too hard?

Don't worry, so did I when I first got back to baking them over here. Back in the U.K of course I didn't have to worry too often about humidity and although my kitchen did indeed get quite hot when the oven was on (it was a small kitchen), the rest of the house was cooler so it wouldn't ever run as hot as it does here.

Another HUGE  difference here is the oven I'm using. It's quite an old (and well used) one, with a door that doesn't shut totally, wonky shelving and not very specific temperature gauge. However, it was free so I'm not moaning - just stating a fact that it's another learning curve.

I've compiled a list of some tricks I've worked out, always done but had to adjust, or been told to try here for you all to give a go. I hope they help you and your baked goods as much as they've been helping me.

• First of all, something I shouldn't need to say and you probably all do anyway - make sure you always measure your ingredients properly. If you don't add enough flour your little bakes will be flat and hard.


• Chill your biscuit dough if it's a dough to roll out. The exception to this rule is oatmeal cookies - all types should be refrigerated for at least 2 hours before baking but preferably overnight.


• After rolling out and cutting (or if not a rolled dough type of biscuit/cookies - after you've spooned out enough mix) your biscuits/cookies, put any unused mix into the refrigerator.


• Try chilling your oven tray before you even put anything on it.


• With biscuits/cookies like Sugar cookies you should also refrigerate the cut out cookies for about 10 minutes on the baking tray before putting them in your oven - this means they will keep their shape


• Don't spoon out or add cut biscuits/cookies to a warm oven tray, this will make them spread


• Make sure your butter/margarine isn't too soft before adding it to your sugar. If your recipe calls for blending/creaming the fat and sugar together, your fat should be soft enough to bend but not dripping or soggy.


• DO NOT oil or grease in any way your baking sheets/grease proof paper - they're fine the way they are!
  


• If you're not using baking sheets or grease proof paper, only use a tiny bit of oil/butter/margarine to grease your oven tray - too much fat will add to the mix and make your biscuits/cookies dense and flat.


• Try transferring the cooked biscuits/cookies from the warm baking sheet/grease proof paper to a clean, fresh piece.


• DO NOT mix your batter/dough too much. If you incorporate too much air into your mixture your biscuits/cookies will rise well in the oven and flatten dramatically once removed. Also this causes the butter/margarine to change consistency - making it melt which we don't want.


• Make sure that if you're using baking powder or baking soda that it's not out of date.


• Also, relating to the baking soda - using too much will cause flat, dark biscuits/cookies


• If you're using a standing mixer or hand mixer and are adding such things like chocolate chips or nuts etc - always mix these in by hand.

I hope this helps any of you out there with the same problem :)

Happy baking!