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A good friend of mine found this recipe for me on http://blog.getaway.co.za/food/ultimate-chocolate-cupcakes/, for these “The ultimate chocolate cupcakes” but no true cupcake conniseur will believe that claim without getting the recipe to prove itself. At first glance, I saw nothing unusual about the cupcake recipe itself aside from adding alcohol to the ganache and the line at the liquor store on Saturday morning made me decide to make another plan. I was not going wait in line for one small bottle of rum. The amarula in my fridge would just have to do.

My first issue with the recipe was that they only want 1 tablespoon of milk for 300g dry ingredients. That just doesn’t work! I also decided up from that I wanted to flavour the cupcake rather than the ganache so instead of using the milk, I used about 125ml of amarula instead. The way to get a light, fluffy cupcake is to make sure that the batter is loose enough to plop off the spoon. Thick batter makes a dry, heavy cupcake.

The Cupcake

• 100g Caster Sugar

• 100g Butter / baking margarine , softened

• 100g Self raising flour

• 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

• 1 tbsp Milk (I used 125ml Amarula instead)

• 2 Large Free range Eggs

• 2 tbsp Cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 190 °C. Mix everything together in a bowl with hand mixer until light and creamy. Scoop into cupcake cases and bake for about 15 – 20 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. I also lowered the oven temperature to 180 so that the cupcake stays moist.

White chocolate ganache

• 100 g Cadbury Dream chocolate

• 3 tbsp fresh cream

Heat the cream in glass bowl in the microwave (about 30 sec) or on stove reaches boiling point. Break chocolate into blocks and place in bowl with hot cream. Allow to sit for about 2 minutes before stirring to help chocolate melt into the cream. Continue mixing until you have a smooth ganache. You may have to put bowl back in the microwave for another 15 seconds if the chocolate isn’t melting properly.

Once cupcakes have cooled top them with the ganache. You need to work pretty quickly before the ganache starts to set and becomes difficult to work with.

Once you have topped all the cupcakes place the remaining ganache in the fridge for about an hour or two to cool down.

Dark chocolate truffles

• 100g dark chocolate
• 2tbsp cream
• Cocoa for dusting truffles

• Heat the cream in glass bowl in the microwave (about 30 sec) or on stove reaches boiling point. Break chocolate into blocks and place in bowl with hot cream. Allow to sit for about 2 minutes before stirring to help chocolate melt into the cream. Continue mixing until you have a smooth ganache. You may have to put bowl back in the microwave for another 15 seconds if the chocolate isn’t melting properly. Allow to cool.
• Once ganche is thick, place small spoonfuls onto plate covered with clingwrap and place in fridge again. After about 30 minutes, remove from fridge and sift about 2 tbsp cocoa over. Lift up all 4 corners of the clingwrap and gently shake to coat truffles. Open the plastic and gently roll truffles into balls. Place back in plastic wrap again and gently shake again for final coating with leftover cocoa in the plasticwrap. This is a messy job and your hands will be covered in chocolate and cocoa.

Now place your  chocolate rum truffles on top of your cupcakes and serve.

This recipe was tweaked to death so if you want to try the original recipe of Chocolate Rum cupcakes, please use the link I placed at the top of this post – I would still recommend you use your discretion with the milk and use a lot more than suggested. So, was this “The ultimate chocolate cupcake”? Mmm…it was nice but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it “The ultimate”…

80 minutes in a queue, 2 free Lindt chocolate balls (they sent a Lindt employee out with free chocolate to keep the peace) and R235 later and I’m back from the Lindt buy-one-get-one-free sale in Cape Town. Wow! It was quite an experience. There were such good spirits in the line. See…chocoholics are a friendly bunch. I am happy to say it was well worth the wait. By the time I left the shop at 10:30am, there was not much left in the way of variety (not my doing, I promise) and a lot of people had clearly given up but I would definately do it again. Next time, I’ll get there at 8am though ;o)

There is something about the word “crumpets” that makes me think of Valentines Day. As far as I know, I have no special memory of crumpets on Valentines Day but when I thought of what I could make for the kids lunchboxes for this auspicious day, that is the first thing that came to mind.

There isn’t even anything special about the recipe. Just a basic that has always been in my recipe book made up of print outs from the Internet so it required some tweaking. Here is the basic recipe, originally from Food24 http://www.food24.com/Recipes/Crumpets-20091103-2 . I have added my tweaks in bold. I got the idea of using my heart shaped cookie cutters (coated in non-stick spray) from Jan’s Valentines post http://blogs.food24.com/janicetripepi/2012/02/13/v-day-is-d-day-with-heart-shaped-blini-roasted-ginger-figs-and-parma-ham-chevin-parcels/. The pegs didn’t work for me so I flipped them over using two egg lifters and had to work very fast to stop the unset crumpet mixture from not running out of the cookie cutter when turning it over.

Ingredients

250ml self-raising flour

2ml bicarbonate of soda

pinch salt

250ml plain yoghurt, buttermilk or sour milk

1 extra-large egg

15ml melted butter

25g dark chocolate roughly chopped (feel free to add nuts, berries, dried fruit but adjust the flavour of essence accordingly – when it doubt, vanilla works for most things)

5ml orange essence (or any other flavour that tickles your fancy)

your choice of food colouring to suit the occassion if necessary – in my case, I used a tiny splash of pink gel colouring

Method

Granola, nuts and cranberries…the perfect anytime treat. Now put all that into a cookie and you’re sorted. As healthy as it sounds, I don’t think you can really justify having them for breakfast but we’ve all had those days where a cookie would make it all better and this is a good contender.

In late January, Spatula Magazine published this recipe and it has take me this long to get the ingredients together. Mixed nuts, granola and dried cranberries are not usually on my shopping list but this recipe sounded so tempting, I had to make a plan. The original recipe can be found here: http://www.spatula.co.za/granola-cookies/ but I copied and pasted it for your convenience.

Wishing you and your family every blessing in 2012. May your year be filled with love, laughter and new experiences. This weekend has given me lots of food for thought. Not necessarily new thought, as I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, but discussions this weekend have urged me to put a plan in place to accomplish this.

I have recently baked a batch of cupcakes for a friend who paid me for the priviledge and have recently been asked how much I would charge to do the baking for a birthday party. This has encouraged me to put some thought into this and actually take a few steps closer to fulfilling this dream. My style of baking leans more to the homebake variety rather than the flash and glamour of Charly’s bakery but I’ve been told that I bake well and they cakes are always delicious.

My post therefore is to get your advice. How do I start? Where do you start when making a price list? Do you have any hints and tips or are you willing to share some of your personal experience in  this regard of what to do and what not to do? If you have never been paid to bake but you have paid someone to bake for your before, what did you like about the experience? What didn’t you like? I have listed the items I thought may be often requested and attached a guideline pricelist to start with (based on the price of ingredients). Do you think this is too much…? Too little? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Lemon Meringue (serves 6-8) R60

Lemon Cheesecake (serves 8-10) R80

Amarula Mud Cake (serves 10-12) R120

Cupcakes (chocolate/vanilla/strawberry/lemon) from R7 per cupcake (discount rates for orders over 3 dozen)

Red velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese frosting) R12 per cupcake

Koeksisters R20 for 12 medium koeksisters

Muffins (chocolate/apple cinammon/banana/cappucino) from R12 for 6

Chocolate Brownies (with or without nuts) from R20 for 12

All baking is done within 24 hours of delivery. Orders to be placed a minimum of 5 days in advance and payment is cash on delivery.

Breaking News: The website for cakes orders is live. For more information go to http://homebakes.wozaonline.co.za/home . Looking forward to supplying you with delicious treats ;o)

Butter cookies dipped in chocolate

When Ishay posted a link for her spiced-cocoa-cookies-with-roasted-hazelnuts-rosemary-cape-towns-first-cookie-swap and mentioned the twivite for #cookiecheer at Cutnbake for this past Saturday, 17 December 2011, I jumped at the oppurtunity. Since we each had to bring 5 dozen cookies, my mind immediately went to my recipe for Butter Shortbread because it yields 90 cookies and it meant that I wouldn’t have to double or triple any of the ingredients. The great thing about this recipe is that it is a great basic but has quite a number of variations. The recipe was originally published in the You magazine many years ago and was apparently sent in my Mrs IA du Plessis from Parow.

Basic Butter Biscuit Recipe

500g unsalted butter (room temperature)

400ml castor sugar

2 extra large egg yolks

5ml vanilla essence

100ml cornflour

5 x 250ml cake flour

5ml salt

75g glazed cherries, halved or 100g dark chocolate, melted

Cream butter until light and fluffy. Add small quantities of castor sugar while beating constantly. Add egg yolks one by one beating well after each addition. Add vanilla essence and beat. Sift in corn flour (Maizena) and beat until well blended. Sift in small quantities of cake flour and salt while blending thoroughly with your free hand to make stiff dough. Press dough into a ball and wrap in cling wrap and chill for 30 minutes. Divide dough into 4 equal parts. Roll each part into a long thin roll about 4cm in diameter and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for 1 hour until the rolls have hardened.

Preheat 180. Spray a large baking sheet with non stick spray. Cut cookie dough into 7mm slices and arrange on prepared baking sheet. Decorate each cookie if preferred.  Bake for 15 minutes or until cookie turns straw coloured (pale gold).

Cool on baking sheet and store in air tight containers. Makes 90 cookies.

Variations:

Chocolate centered cookies: Additional ingredients – 4 x 100g milk, dark or white chocolate. Make a batch of cookie dough and, after chilling for an hour, halve the dough and roll out to 5mm thick. Line prepared cookie sheet with the rolled dough. Break chocolate into squares and arrange on top of the dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the remaining dough until 5mm thick and place on top of the chocolate squares. Firmly press dough down aling the sides of the pan, taking care that the chocolate squares don’t pierce the dough. Bake for 50 minutes at 160 until the dough is pale gold in colour and allow to cool before cutting into squares. Makes 80 squares.

Orange sandwich cookies: Additional ingredients – 125g soft butter, 375ml sifted icing sugar, 5ml orange essence, grated rind of 1 orange. Roll out cookie dough until 3mm thick. Cut out shapes with cookies cutters (since these are sandwich cookies, you will need to ensure that you have a pair of each shape)  and place on a prepared cookie sheet (these biscuits do spread so leave enough space between each cookie). Bake for 15 minutes at 160 until light gold in colour. Allow to cool on baking sheet before transferring onto a cooling rack. While you are waiting for the cookies to cool, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add small quantities of icing sugar while beating continously. Add orange essence and grated orange rind. You will have a lemon cream type filling. Sandwich cookies together with icing. Makes about 75 sandwiched cookies (depending on size of cookie cutters used)

Almond cookies: Additional ingredients – 500ml finely chopped almonds, 80g glazed cherries cut in quarters. Add chopped nuts to basic cookie dough and mix well. Divide dough into 4 equal parts and roll each part into a long, thin roll about 4cm in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour until the rolls have hardened. Cut into 7mm slices and arrange on prepared cookie sheet. Decorate each cookie with a cherry and bake for 15 minutes at 180. Cool on baking sheet and store in air tight containers. Makes 90 cookies.

These cookies make great edible gifts and only need to be packaged in lovely bottle with some pretty ribbon ;o)

The silly season is getting to me. The shops are crazy…the roads are insane and, as much as I hate wishing my life away, I wish Christmas would just come already and I can have a bit of a holiday. I’m trying to compensate for this end of year fatigue by eating more fruits and veggies in the hopes that by getting the right vitamins, it will boost my immune system and make me full of festive cheer.

Now I know that many muffins are actually just un-iced cupcakes in disguise but blueberry muffins are definately one of my favourites. I like this recipe in particular because it is made with frozen berries (easy to keep on hand in the freezer) and buttermilk. The recipe even gives you the freedom to use any berry or your preferred combination of your favourites. I found this recipe here: http://www.food24.com/Recipes/Berry-buttermilk-muffins-20091103 ages ago and I have used it ever since.

Berry buttermilk muffins

Ingredients

375g all purpose flour

120g sugar 

10ml baking powder

4ml bicarbonate of soda

5ml ground cinnamon

 2ml salt

 200g frozen berries

 2 eggs, beaten

400ml buttermilk

80ml sunflower oil

Method