40th birthday and going away cupcakes

This week has been a busy week of cupcakes.  It started with mothers day and three mothers day bouquets sold.  I then had a failed attempt at making gluten free cupcakes.  I am working on finding a good gluten free cupcake and cake recipe so if you have one and want to share, send it my way!  On Tuesday a friend of mine called needing 60 cupcakes by Wednesday.  Fortunately she reached me on my big baking day so it was no problem.  These cupcakes were for her husbands 40th birthday and were a combination of chocolate mud and white chocolate mud.

The week finished with cupcakes for my dear friends who are leaving to move to Sweden.  Although I am very happy for my friend who will get to share her daughter with her family in Sweden I am very sad to see her and her partner and daughter go.  Goodbyes are always hard.  For their cupcakes I wanted to do a New Zealand themed cupcake for them to remember us by so I made a Koru to go on top of each cupcake.  We will miss you guys!!

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

I am seriously frustrated right now.  I have been trying to post this particular blog for several days with no luck as the blogger website has been down.  Technology.  You love it and hate it.  

When I was younger my dessert of choice was lemon meringue pie.   I loved lemon meringue pie.  The beautiful creamy tartness of the lemon curd topped with a sweet and light meringue.  Perfection.  Now its a dessert very rarely seen on the menus.  I think it probably hit its popularity in the 90s and hasn't really made a comeback.  There is a new meringue back in town and its in the form of cupcakes.  Lemon Meringue Pie cupcakes.  

I started with a beautiful moist and light lemon cupcake.  These cupcakes are beautiful and are great even on their own.  I may even be tempted to use them in place of a vanilla cupcake, they are that good.  I then made a lemon curd, cheating a little by making it in the microwave.   I filled the cupcakes with the lemon curd by placing the metal tip of my piping bag into the cupcake and squeezing it so that it filled the cupcake.  Finally I topped the cupcake with a meringue, finishing it off under the broiler for 2-3 minutes and placed a tiny lemon wedge made out of fondant on top. 

Now these cupcakes sound hard work and they are a little time consuming but they are a pretty impressive little package.  They are good but I will say they are not jaw droppingly amazing as I was hoping.  This was because of one very crucial mistake I made and I do believe if corrected these will be incredible!  Rather then filling the cupcake I should have cut a dome out of the cupcake and spooned the lemon curd into it as I was wanting a much bigger bite of the lemon curd.  

The cupcakes this week were nominated by cool bananas (http://www.coolbananas.org.nz/).  In order to do the work they do with children they require the help of many volunteers.  One particular lady Jackie has been a wonderful blessing to them giving up part of her holidays to cook for the kids at their camp.  

For the recipe for the lemon cupcakes go to:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Lemon-Cupcakes-2/Detail.aspx?prop31=3

For the microwave lemon curd recipe go to:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Microwave-Lemon-Curd/Detail.aspx?prop31=2

For the meringue recipe follow the instructions on this blog for the meringue part (you could also follow the whole recipe if you like for the cupcakes and the curd):

http://bakingbites.com/2006/01/lemon-meringue-pie-cupcakes/ 

Bolillos and chicken taco soup

My daughter had her very first day of kindy today.  Most parents would probably have been a nervous wreck so I can't help but feel a little guilty that I may have done a little dance walking out of the kindergarten.  It's fair to say that she was very ready for a break from me and she wasn't the least concerned to see me go.  In fact I think she may have done a little dance herself! 

So I feel a little lighter today with this extra few hours on my hand and I probably should have done laundry or cleaned out the fridge or tidied the bedroom but who really wants to do house chores?  What I really wanted to do was make bread.  I have made bread before but cheated a little with my bread maker.  I really felt like making bread the good old fashioned way so decided to make bread rolls and I love a good bread roll.  Especially with a beautiful hearty soup and I love soup on a cold rainy day.  

Today has been just that. Cold, miserable and rainy.  But I was nice and cozy indoors enjoying making yummy chicken taco soup, making beautiful mexican bolillo bread rolls and enjoying my new found freedom.  How I love a good rainy day. 

These bread rolls have a hard crust on the outside but are nice and soft on the inside with the slightest hint of sweetness to them.  I was pretty pleased with their outcome although I didn't get the split down the middle but it was my first attempt!  They were the perfect accompaniment to one of my favorite soups.

To see the recipe for Bolillos check out: 

http://www.food.com/recipe/mexican-bolillos-crusty-oval-rolls-12298

To see the recipe for this easy slow cooker chicken taco soup:

http://www.food.com/recipe/mexican-bolillos-crusty-oval-rolls-12298

Lemon Cake Cookies

I'm focusing on lemons this week.  My husband was away last week and came home sick.  I do not want any of the kids or myself to catch his bug so what better way to keep everyone healthy than to give them lemons! Well I suppose it doesn't really work when you add tons of sugar to it, but wouldn't it be great if it did?

My desert of choice is usually anything with lemon in it.  The more tartness the better! I found these lovely cake like cookies with a beautiful lemon glaze and decided to try them out.  They were relatively easy to make and my daughter seemed to enjoy zesting the lemon for me.  So much so that she wanted to tackle all of the lemons!

Without the glaze these cookies are pretty good.  I didn't get a chance to ice them right away and my husband and daughter must have eaten half of them before I got around to it.  With the glaze these biscuit are really lovely!  Looking at them I expect a nice shortbread like texture but they are almost like a cupcake.  In fact these soft little cookies remind me of a lemon loaf or lemon bread in both the taste and the texture.  I didn't have creme fraiche so I did use the sour cream.  Also, I only just had enough icing for the remaining cookies so if you want every cookie iced you may want to increase the amount.

You can check this recipe out at the following blog:
http://amandeleine.com/2010/09/17/lemon-cake-cookies/

Zebra Cake

Happy Mothers Day to my lovely classy mum.  I wish that I could be spending mothers day with you but as I am not I made a cake in honor of you.  

My mum is a beautiful woman who I would consider to be very chic.  She has often been mistaken for my older sister over the years and not my mum.  I am sure she is often ahead of herself when it comes to the styles of the time and one of those styles is the animal print craze.  Now I love my mum immensely but she can be a very difficult person to shop for.  Years ago I stopped trying to figure her out and I think my poor dad still tries hard and most of the time fails miserably!  Dad its about time you knew the secret to mums happiness when it comes to gift giving that I have learned recently: You cannot go wrong with animal print!  So, I thought it would be perfect to make my mum this zebra cake that I found. 

I have to say that this cake could quite possibly be the coolest cake I have seen.  It looks really impressive and is super easy to make and it tastes pretty good too!  You will be the talk of the evening if you make this for your next dinner party.  I foud this recipe on the following blog site:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5isHwZ/thewhimsicalcupcake.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/zebra-cake/

Unfortunately I made the mistake of putting baking paper on the top of the cake to try and even out the baking and it took part of the top of the cake off so do not make the same mistake as me.   This cake doesn't need any decorations but i had to decorate it a little to doctor up my mishap.  Just a little whipped cream or ice cream would go nicely.  I just used regular flour in the recipe as we do not have King Arthur Flour available here.   It would be great to experiment with this cake with colors and as possible cupcakes!  

Cupcake Bouquet

Where would we be without our mums?  Well lets face it, nowhere as they gave birth to us and that in itself is reason enough to honor your mum on mothers day but they are so much more than that.  I know that every time I am feeling under the weather or having a bad day the first person I want is my mum.  In fact I find I want my mum around even more so now that I have kids myself.  I don't even necessarily want her help, I just want her around to be with, to talk with, to share the joy I feel with my kids and to share the frustrations!  I don't think my mum has gotten more phone calls than recently as I find I miss talking with her so much and I value those phone calls immensely. If my mum was here I would definitely be giving her my cupcakes this week as I think she is the best mum ever but as I can't really ship cupcakes thousands of miles I will have to give them to someone else.

The second person on my list of course would be my husbands mother who has been a great surrogate mother in place of my own mother all of these years.  She is always putting herself before others and is a wonderful Nana.  I value her help and support so much and I would not be making cakes if it were not for her getting me started!  Unfortunately I cannot share my cupcakes with her either as she is on a strict diet and that would be just cruel of me so I opened up mothers day cupcakes to the public.

The cupcakes this week are a dark chocolate mud cupcake with a white chocolate truffle icing.  They are going to the mum of friend Kerryn who I consider her to be a supermum herself.  Somehow (Im not sure how) she manages to work part time, raise two beautiful kids and study part time and somehow manages to keep her sanity.  She says that she wouldn't be able to do this without her mum.  Her mum will take her kids whenever she has class or has to work and is more than happy to do this.  In the weekends when her husband is working nights and has to sleep during the day, her mum lets her crash her house with the two kids.  A very talented lady, she has made Kerryn and her son a quilt and is currently making her daughter a quilt.  Kerryn says she always puts others before herself even to the point of quitting her job next year so that she can watch the kids while Kerryn finishes her schooling.  I hope that this very deserving mum enjoys this cupcake treat!

You can purchase this bouquet of seven chocolate mud cupcakes with white chocolate truffle icing if the recipient lives in Tauranga for $25 for your mum or wife or for any other occasion.  Please add another $5 for delivery or they can be arranged to be picked up.  If the bouquet does not capture your interest you also have the choice of sending your mum a box of cupcakes, 6 for $18 or 12 for $30.  These can be in the flavors of chocolate mud cake, caramel mudcake or white chocolate lemon poppyseed mud cake.  The icing can be white chocolate truffle or dark chocolate truffle.  If you would like cupcakes for mothers day I need orders to me by Saturday morning.  Email me to mrswoolleyscakes@gmail.com or send me a message on facebook.

Amish Oatmeal Whoopie Pie Cookies

So I have had whoopie pies on the mind lately. It seems to be one of the latest food trends and I have been reading about them everywhere.  The enticing thing about these indulgent treats is that they can be anything you want them to be. They can be a pie, a cupcake, a cookie, whatever you feel like calling them you can.  Yummy cake like treats that are more like biscuits, sandwiched together with creamy goodness between them.

I have been wanting to make these for several weeks now and had great plans for today.  I was pretty devastated when I went to my cupboard to find that I didn't have enough cocoa.  I had already braved the shops once today with two kids and was not prepared to do it again so I went online to search for an alternative whoopie pie recipe.  I knew immediately that I would be making these Oatmeal Whoopie Pie Cookies when I saw them.

When I was a kid we lived around the corner from a dairy (convenience store) and every time I could rummage up spare change I would walk to the dairy and would buy tons of treats but occasionally would purchase Little Debbies Oatmeal pies.  These were soft chewy oatmeal biscuits sandwiched with a sweat cream in the centre. I think I probably would eat an entire box in nearly one sitting.

These whoopie pie cookies are definitely a recreation of the Little Debbies Oatmeal pies that I loved as a kid but probably sweeter and richer.  I definitely liked them but next time I would make the cookies smaller as you don't need many of these.  I would also only cook them only 13-14 minutes so that they are soft and chewy.  The filling is runny but you don't need much of it and it does set pretty well.  I'm not too sure why wrap them in glad wrap but I did anyway.  Maybe it keeps them soft?

I've been playing around with lighting and my camera to get better photos.  I need to make my own lightbox but thought I would try out using a shelf we have in our lounge.  With the lighting right it might just work.

To see the recipe go to Food.com: http://www.food.com/recipe/amish-oatmeal-whoopie-pie-cookies-118749