Cupcakes for Dad

Dad with a 2 month old Destructor...they're having tummy time!

Today, I baked an impromptu batch of cupcakes for my Dad. Without going into too much detail, he's been in hospital since Monday after an operation and came home today.

Dad is awesome. He's great at a lot of things and is sweet and kind to boot. He tells lame jokes (sometimes over and over), pretends to be cool and likes to wear long ankle socks with shorts (much to mum's chagrin). But most of all, Dad is loving and caring, passionate and protective, and is never short of a kind word of a piece of advice. He'll even forgo his dignity to dance along with Destructor to one of mum's singing and dancing soft toys.

But I digress!

When I was doing my initial planning, I took into account what flavours Dad loves best. Firstly, banana...one of his all-time favourites. Secondly, peanut butter. And finally, chocolate (because we all love chocolate). However, Dad only likes chocolate in block form...he doesn't like chocolate ice-cream or other chocolate flavoured stuff...so, chocolate cake was out of the question.

So, I decided on banana cake with fluffy peanut butter frosting, drizzled with dark chocolate.

Given that these cupcakes were for Dad, I splurged a little and bought a Green's packet mix. They're also REALLY good. They are my second favourite cake mix. Never fail and always delicious. I bought a banana flavoured one.

YUMMMM!!!

 The box says 2/3 cup of milk and 60g of butter, however, I wanted something richer. And, like Julie says in Julie and Julia, butter makes everything better. So, I added a little less milk and 30g more butter. The batter was amazing, so I figured it was an improvement!

While the cakes baked, I started my buttercream. I whipped the living daylights out of about 300g of butter (a good 5-10 minutes of high speed electric mixer) and then added a cup (or thereabouts) of crunchy peanut butter (softened a tad in the microwave). I then added some icing mixture and whipped it all again. After tasting, it needed a little more PB and icing mix, so I adjusted and whipped again. The result - deliciously light and fluffy PB frosting. I could have eaten the whole bowl (had I not known how much butter was in it!)

Not pretty, but soooooo good!

So, on went the PB frosting, and then it was time to drizzle the chocolate. Now, drizzling is NOT my forte. In fact, I suck at it. I melted some chocolate in the microwave and then got a spoon. I tried some practice drizzling over the bowl of melted chocolate and results were not good. They were blobby. I tried on two of the cupcakes and same result. Blobby and very untidy.

Whenever I run into a problem like this, I turn to the internet. There's always a couple of answers, so I usually figure out what I'm doing wrong and then correct it. So, a short google revealed that I was doing it all wrong. I needed to put the chocolate in a plastic bag (I chose a mini zip lock bag) and then pierce one end. Next, squeeze the chocolate out and voilà - the perfect drizzle! So, off I went, however, I accidentally made two holes in the bag (my own fault for using an olive fork...don't ask). Lucky me, this was one of those screw ups that worked in my favour - the two lines of chocolate looked awesome!

Here's the finished product:

Cute AND delicious!

The feedback that I got from Dad was that the peanut butter was too overpowering. However, my cousin said that they were the best peanut butter cupcakes ever...so, the balance wasn't the way that I wanted, BUT, they still tasted great. Success!

More Bachelorette Cupcakes

This fun little job was care of one of my newest friends - a fellow bridesmaid at a wedding that I was part of about a month ago. I did the cupcakes for the bachelorette party that we organised together, and then she asked me to do them for her sister's bachelorette party.

We sat down and talked about flavours and cakes, and decided that there needed to be a gluten free option. So, we decided on one batch of gluten free chocolate (of which half were mint, the other half with marshmallow) and one batch of vanilla lemon meringue. 30 cupcakes in total.

What made this job particularly challenging was the fact that I also had a wedding cake to for the same date. So, needless to say, I did the baking of the cakes in advance!

Now, when I make the lemon meringue cupcakes, I always fill the middle with lemon curd. Usually, I'd use the bought stuff (because, let's face it, it's easier!), however, this time, I had forgotten to buy some (but had remembered to buy 30 odd eggs and about 5 kgs of butter!!). The up-side to having a lot of extra eggs and butter means that I could make lemon curd!

The recipe that I have for lemon curd is super easy and doesn't require a lot of time. In fact, you can have a look at it here.

Lemon curd - delicious AND easy!

Basically, you chuck eggs and sugar in a saucepan and mix them til they're combined. Then add butter and lemon juice. Heat over low heat and stir til thick (which, I've recently learned, means that it'll coat the back of a spoon...don't wait for it to get super thick in the saucepan or you'll wreck it!)

Anyway, moving along, so I baked a couple of days in advance. And to go back to the lemon curd, I put it in when the cupcakes were freshly baked. If you wait til the next day, the tops go all sticky and it's a MESS of epic proportions. And if you're like me, you'll get frustrated and swear...and probably have to start again!

So, the day after I baked the cupcakes (Friday), I frosted and decorated them. Here they are!

Lemon curd, with glitter and heart

Gluten free choc with marshmallow and heart

Choc mint rose with gold sprinkles

All in all, while this took a few days, it wasn't much time in total. The marshmallow I had to make the day that I decorated them (because it pipes best the day that it's made) and the mint I had already made a little while ago, but was still good to go (buttercream lasts almost forever in the fridge - it's butter and sugar after all!!)

A wedding cake

Friends of mine are getting married this weekend, and I asked them if I could give them a wedding present - their cake.

I did some preliminary planning with the bride and then spend a couple of weeks shopping for everything I needed.

Cue a heap of butter, eggs, cake mix (mud cake), chocolate transfers, a quilting tool and ready to roll icing. It was epic.

I also ended up buying tins, not only because I got 40% off (thank you, Spotlight), but also because I wanted to make sure the ratio between the two cakes was just right.

Now, I'm not going to go through this step by step, but what I will tell you is that what I learned.

1. You need babysitting for a job like this. Decorating with ready to roll icing is NOT something you can do is stages or with interruptions. I was lucky - my mum and husband helped keep Destructor occupied.

2. If you're going to make chocolate shards (like on the top of my cake), you MUST temper the chocolate. Otherwise, it tears!

3. You also need to wait til the chocolate is cool before you pour it on a transfer sheet.  Otherwise, the plastic puckers.

4. The fridge is great for keeping cakes nice and cold.

To make the corners nice and round, I mixed some left over cake (just the soft bits - I had them from when I evened the cakes to stack them) with some buttercream. It gives you something to fill and sculpt with - kinda like spakfiller. I then covered the cakes with choc mint ganache. Yes, this cake is delicious central!

Anyway, enough talk...here's the cake!

Grand Final cupcakes

So, I got invited to a friend's AFL Grand Final bbq. For those of you not from Australia, it's a huge sporting event. Not one I'm interested in, but an excuse to bake, nevertheless!

The two teams playing were Hawthorn and Freemantle, so I figured that it would be kinda fun to make the cakes in their colours.

I used a vanilla cake mix and used food dye to colour appropriately. The brown was done with cocoa (so it became chocolate) and for a bit of a mind melt, I flavoured the purple strawberry.

Getting ready for the big game!

In terms of decorating, I thought I'd disguise the colours in the cupcake. You bite into the cake, and that's the team that's going to win...or the team that you'll back...whatever. Either way, I needed something that was going to cover the entire cake.

I've got a nifty little tip that I've used to make Cookie Monster cupcakes...it makes the frosting look like hair or grass. So, we have grass on the top of the cupcake, but what else? How about a little footy? I wasn't sure what to use for a footy...I certainly wasn't going to buy a special lolly!

Luckily, being a chocaholic, it occurred to me that peanut m'n'ms look just like footballs. Hooray! So I separated all the red ones out of the pack (eating a few of the others at the same time) and I was ready to go.

Genius!

I made some vanilla frosting (with a hell of a lot of green food dye) and I was off! I have to admit, I really hate using the six-holed tip. It's bloody hard work to squeeze buttercream through it. In fact, I had a rather funny disaster, when after frosting the cupcakes, I squeezed a little too hard and the piping bag exploded, leaving me with a massive blob of frosting on my clothes. And one on the floor. Whoops!

Anyway, after frosting, I popped on a footy and they looked really sweet. Perfect for a bbq!

Go team!

Funnily enough, when all the cupcakes came out, everybody picked a Hawthorn one (purely by chance!) The Hawks ended up winning...which made the hosts very happy :)

Go Hawks!