S'mores cupcakes

I want to be able to share these cupcakes with EVERYONE this week.  I would have too, but before I knew it I had eaten half of the batch! I kept telling myself I was doing taste tests to make sure they tasted ok but really, I couldn't get enough of these babies.

S'mores are a classic treat eaten around a campfire.  Graham crackers, roasted marshmallow and a small bit of chocolate are sandwiched together to create something wonderful and leaving you wanting some more (hence the name).  Because I am loving graham crackers this week and because I love cupcakes I searched the web for S'mores cupcakes.   I was wanting a cupcake that tasted like a graham cracker but the only ones I could find called for actual graham crackers as replacement for the flour.  I was disapointed with this option as I knew it would leave the cupcake too dry and probably a bit heavy so I decided to invent my own.   This is the first cupcake recipe I have actually invented and I will have to say I am super pleased with the results!  I used a vanilla cupcake recipe as the base and then modified it with ingredients found in the homemade graham crackers I made the other day.  On top of the cupcake I put a dark chocolate ganache and then placed a large marshmallow on the top.  I then placed the cupcakes under the broiler and the marshmallows turned gooey and soft and the chocolate melted into the cupcake creating a yummy chocolatey mess, which is what essentially a s'more is! Not to mention so so good.  These are best served right after being placed under the broiler otherwise you may want to heat them before serving.  

This weeks cupcakes go to a single mum of four kids who has been struggling with a bad illness recently.  Being a single mum must be hard enough but having to raise your kids when you can hardly care for yourself must be incredibly difficult.  I find it hard enough when I have a bad cold and I have my husband at home to help me!  

Ingredients

1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup milk

Dark chocolate ganache

12 large marshmallows

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Line a muffin pan with 12 paper liners.

2.  In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter for 8-10 minutes.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition.  Combine flours and baking powder and set aside.  Whisk together honey, milk and vanilla.  Add the flour and baking powder mixture to the creamed mixture alternating with the honey and milk mixture until all just combined.  Be careful not to overmix. Spoon batter with an icecream scoop into each liner.  

3.  Bake 20 to 25 minutes.  Cake is done when it springs back to touch. 

4.  Spoon the chocolate ganache over the cupcakes (for this recipe go to: http://www.joyofbaking.com/ganache.html)

5. Place marshmallow on the cupcakes and place under the broiler.  Watch carefully.  When the marshmallows are golden, the cupcakes are done!

Homemade Graham Crackers

I'm on a graham cracker kick this week.  One of the American classics that I occasionally come to miss.  Especially when I get a hankering for s'mores or a cheesecake.  For those who don't know what a graham cracker is, its a honey flavoured biscuit with a cracker crunch, similar to a digestive or a wheaten biscuit.  Its often used as the base for cheesecakes and is one of the main ingredients for S'mores.  Its also a great snack for kids.  I remember eating it when I got home from school with butter or peanut butter smeared on top of it.

It occured to me last week that surely there must be a recipe for graham crackers so I searched the web and sure enough, I found a winner!  These graham crackers taste so similar to the real thing and surprisingly easy to make.  The link makes them sound somewhat complicated but they are easier to make than they sound. You can make them into rectangles to look similar to the real graham crackers (pictured below) or you could do what I did and cut them into shapes.  My daughter was able to help me with this.  While I cut the shapes out she stuck them on the tray and sprinkled the cinnamon and sugar on them.  She loved doing this and surprised me by placing the shapes into individual groups.  These crackers did not last long and even my six month old loved eating them.

You can find this recipe on this link: http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/05/graham-crackers/

Toy Story Cake

This cake ended up being a huge project!  When my friend came to me wanting a toy story cake I dreamt too big!  I envisioned having buzz and woody in the rocket flying above the cake and RC the car.  This of course ended up being way too complicated and time consuming so I ended up having to make the rocket taking off behind the car.  I also made everything too big for the cake so I had to extend the cake out the back which did work well with the smoke from the rocket.  In the end I am extremely pleased to have pulled this cake off but I can appreciate why cake decorators will often purchase character figurines and not make them.  Talk about a major!  You will never get them just like the character and always be slightly disappointed. But, I am pleased to have pushed myself and taken a risk.  Its the only way I am going to get better!

Vintage Flower Cake

I have had pretty busy week this week with managing a couple of cakes and a sick baby so apologies for my lack of posts!  One of my good friends had birthday drinks this week with just the girls.  What a great night!  Sharing stories of motherhood and just relaxing for the evening.  This particular friend has been a huge encouragement to me and my cakes.  She has given me tons of great ideas and has given me the push I needed to start getting myself out there.  Her and her husband even came up with the name of Mrs Woolleys Cakes so it was very fitting that for her birthday she got a special Mrs Woolleys cakes.  This was my first cake covered in black fondant which can be tricky but I was quite pleased with the results.  The flowers and the tiles are all made from modeling chocolate and the cake is a chocolate mudcake.

French Toast for my dad

Happy Fathers Day to my wonderful Dad.  Its not fathers day here so my poor dad often gets forgotten as here fathers day is around September sometime.  So when he reminded me yesterday that it was fathers day I knew I had to do a little tribute to him!  

My dad is a pretty incredible guy.  I feel pretty blessed to be landed with such an awesome father! He is a very hard working, honest man with a great sense of humor.  You have to have one to father 5 children where the 3 oldest are girls!  He only had a brother growing up so he did surprisingly well to handle a large population of girls in the household.  He did have his moments but you really have to give him credit!  I certainly do.  

As I said yesterday my dad has a thing about breakfast.  His specialty has always been french toast although lately he has started making omelets as well.  The thing about my dads french toast is that it really cannot be beaten.  So much so that I very rarely order french toast in a restaurant because I know I will probably be disappointed. Whenever I am home I don't feel as though my trip has been completed until Dad has made his french toast.  Now I don't know what his recipe is, he has kept it a secret.  I do know that he does make it heavy handed on the salt and this last time I saw him I learned that he cuts the bread up the night before and lays it out on a cooling rack so that the bread is nice and stale in the morning. This is pretty key to french toast.   

So, I braved it this morning and attempted to make my own french toast.  I picked the top rated french toast recipe.  Thousands have rated it as very popular.  Normally when I choose a recipe like this it is pretty right.  Today, it was good.  But, it wasn't dads.  Do I recommend you try this recipe?  Of course!  Will it taste like my dads?  Most definitely not.  You will have to visit him to try it. 

If you do make this recipe make sure you whisk the batter each time you dip the bread in as the flour tends to settle at the bottom.  This recipe can be found at:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fluffy-french-toast/detail.aspx

The Best Pancake recipe

Cooked breakfasts are a special thing in this house.  They are usually reserved for a lazy weekend morning and only ever made by my husband.  He doesn't cook or bake so considers it to be a bit of a specialty of his.  Funnily enough my dad did the same growing up.  Maybe all guys do this? Anyway, it is somewhere I never tread because its his thing.  He has great pride in his pancakes and found a great recipe and I will admit that they are really good!  They taste just like pancakes should taste (I am talking about American hotcakes here and not a crepe or a pikelet).  They are fluffy and light and not too sweet.   To be honest I felt they were about as good as they could get.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) I did the unthinkable the other morning.  We were out of all breakfast foods so I quickly made up a batch of these pancakes!  So.........can I make breakfast as good as any man? The answer if a very large YES.  I hate to gloat here but these were amazing.  My husband even admits this and even took the extra pancakes to work and was still raving about them that night.  The key to these really good pancakes?  I will say it again and again in so many things I make: DON'T OVERMIX.  In fact as soon as it comes together, STOP.  This is the key to achieving a light and fluffy scone, muffin, cupcake, cake and pancake.  Any artist knows that there is a point where you have gone too far and baking is the same.  Learn to pull back and you will create beautiful results.

To see this recipe go to:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fluffy-Pancakes-2/Detail.aspx

Carrot Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

I had great plans this week to make my cupcakes a special project for an important group of people but for the first time I will say I wasn't all together happy with this weeks cupcakes.  This was not the fault of the recipe either.  I made a crucial mistake to the cupcakes.

My daughter loves carrots and for the last couple of weeks the carrots I have been getting from the supermarket have been really good! I am not one to eat carrots on their own but these have been really sweet. So, I decided to make carrot cake and when I found this recipe with a white chocolate cream cheese icing I was looking forward to trying it.  Now I have never made carrot cake before and in fact I think I have only eaten it a handful of times but I do remember liking it.  When it came time to make the cupcakes I realised I hadn't purchased walnuts in my shop.  It was too late to get them and I was already half way through making the cupcakes.  I figured to myself that surely they don't need walnuts.  I often will leave walnuts out of my baking to save on cost and it usually doesn't matter too much. WELL, I was very wrong.  I took one bite of the cupcake and knew that walnuts are one of the most important components of a carrot cake.  The cake tasted great but every single bite I was just hoping and expecting for that extra texture that walnuts bring to a carrot cake.  This is coming from someone who has hardly eaten it so you can imagine I was not really wanting to give these cupcakes away this week in case I got a die-hard carrot cake fan!

I did share them with my grandparents and my husband was more than happy to have them as you can imagine.  He did say as well though that he kept expecting the walnut crunch and never got it.  I will say that this recipe will be very worth it if you do put the walnuts in because the cake itself was beautiful and the icing is divine, just please remember the walnuts.

To see this recipe go to:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/carrot-cupcakes-with-white-chocolate-cream-cheese-icing/detail.aspx

Brownie in a mug

Recently I have seen plenty of blog posts covering this so I thought I would give it a try!  I created a sugar addict out of my husband and he was feeling sorry for himself last night because we had no chocolate or dessert in the house.  He even went so far to suggest that I should start a dessert delivery service because he would definitely call in an order.  I told him I could make him a dessert in five minutes and possibly even between ad breaks of our favorite sitcom.  He was skeptical and told me as always that I was crazy.  I assured him he would like it (I was bluffing - I wasn't even sure I would like it).

So as soon as the ads came on I jumped up and got to work.  I mixed all of the dry ingredients in two seperate mugs (because I had to have one too of course) and as soon as I had finished mixing them the ads were over. I lost! It could be argued that I was making two so I could have finished if I was only making one.  I sat down and as soon as the next lot of ads were on I managed to finish the brownies.  I even threw in some butterscotch chips to make it a bit tastier.

The final verdict? The brownie was good.  In fact my skeptical husband really liked it.  We poured milk on top of it as we had no ice cream in the house and it was perfect!  A quick late night dessert when your reserves are a bit low.

To see this brownie recipe go to:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Mug-Brownie/

1st birthday and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream

Its been a tough week in motherhood.  Most of my week has been spent walking around in a zombie like state.  My toddler has been sick awake with high fevers at night.  On top of that my darling boy has decided to boycott sleep and I have been surviving on 4 hours of sleep a night.  Now for many mums this is a norm but my kids are generally pretty good sleepers so a week of this out of no-where had me feeling very sorry for myself. On one particular bad morning I awoke to find there was no coffee in the house!  I nearly had a meltdown!  On the upside though the week has finished with my little girl feeling much better and my boy cutting his very first tooth!  I feel as though we've accomplished something huge here and my tough week was almost worth it.  There will be many more teeth to come and many more sleepless nights (speaking from experience) but my boy has started his road to growing up.

All these firsts are very special and the first year has many ups and downs with many achievements and many stressful moments too.  Its no wonder that the first birthday is so special.  This week I was able to make a cake just for this occasion.  I enjoyed making the cake and these cupcakes to go with it.  I had plans to share this recipe with you for a vanilla cupcake with chocolate buttercream as these were also my cupcakes of the week BUT sadly for you will not be sharing.  This recipe is just too good and I may just have to keep it to myself for awhile.  Maybe one day I pass it on to you but for now it is going to join my archives of recipes I will use for my cakes.

Fairy cake and digger cake

Its been a pretty busy weekend making cakes.  I have to give my husband credit for how supportive he is when I have cakes to make.  Life gets put on hold and nothing in the house seems to get done! Poor man.  I think I will be spending tomorrow getting life back to normal!  Until the next cake that it.

These cakes were for a joint birthday party for a 4 year old and a 2 year old.   I had so much fun doing them, especially the fairy cake!  I am learning new things every day.

Oreo Cupcakes

I am glad that I have given these cupcakes away this week simply because they are SERIOUSLY good.  The whipped frosting on the top of them is unreal and if you aren't careful you will eat an entire bowl.  What a crazy silly idea to start a baking blog only a few months after having baby number two.  I'm supposed to be getting back into shape!  Instead I have too many yummy treats staring back at me going "Eat Me!!" Oh well.  You do what you have to to survive toddler-hood and baking is my way of de-stressing.

These cupcakes have a rich chocolate cake with a surprise oreo hidden at the bottom.  On the top of them sits a whipped frosting with crushed oreos.  Together the entire cupcake makes me think I'm eating a rich chocolate brownie balanced by cookies and cream ice cream on top.  Yum!  The best thing about these cupcakes is that they are relatively easy to put together.  You don't have to worry about creaming butter and sugar or worry about over mixing with your mixer.  Instead it is all whisked together by hand.  The oreo at the bottom adds a nice surprise and makes the base of the cupcake somewhat chewy.    If you like oreos and cookies and cream then this is the recipe for you!  When making these cupcakes I accidentally purchased the chocolate filled oreos and they were not double stuffed so I put some of the leftover oreo cream from my homemade oreos on top of the oreo at the bottom of the cake.

My daughter and I go to a local play centre once a week which is a parent run centre that allows you to go and be a big kid with your toddlers.  Its a great place where she can get super messy and learn valuable social skills as well as spend quality time with mum.  We have met many wonderful people here and have really been able to feel more part of our local community.  One woman in particular has been a very valuable part of this particular play-centre.  She has done so much not only for the centre but also for many people around her and for this reason has been nominated for the cupcakes this week.  I have great admiration for mothers who are able to do so much for their community and those around them as well as be a great mum.  If you would like to know more about play-centre, go to the website: http://www.playcentre.org.nz/

This weeks recipe can be found at:
http://buddingbaketress.blogspot.com/2011/03/oreo-cupcakes.html