Cupcake Cookies and upcoming mothers day

I bought cute cupcake cookie cutters last week and was super excited to use them.  What better cookie to represent Mrs Woolleys Cakes then a cupcake? This is an example of one of the cookies I made.  I still need to a bit more practice on my cookie decorating but thought I would still share the results with you.  If you order one of my cakes you will receive up to 12 of these biscuits for free.

Mothers day is coming this weekend and I am looking for a special mum to receive my cupcakes this week.  Email me your nomination to mrswoolleyscakes@gmail.com

If you are a bit stumped on what to get your mum for mothers day, why not send her cupcakes?  You can order 6 cupcakes for $18 or 12 cupcakes for $30.  Cupcakes will be chocolate mud, caramel mud or lemon poppyseed mud with a chocolate or white chocolate truffle icing.  Check back on Wednesday to see an example of what your mum will be receiving.  Cupcakes can be picked up Saturday evening or Sunday morning or I will be happy to deliver them for your mums special day at an additional cost.  Send me an email to mrswoolleyscakes@gmail.com to discuss.

Vintage inspired birthday cake

April is a busy month for birthdays with many of my friends and I sadly missed one of my close girlfriends birthday.  Like many I have come to rely on facebook updating me with all the important birthdays coming up but facebook failed on me this time.  How did we celebrate birthdays before facebook?  I don't think I have ever gotten so many birthday wishes than in the last couple years.  Even better, the husband never has an excuse to miss his wife's birthday!  

To make it up to my friend I made this vintage inspired chocolate mudcake.  I love the combination of the colours and am pleased with how it turned out. 

Cupcake fairy cake

Its been an exciting few days with the birth of my sisters new baby, the New Zealand Breakers winning the NBL basketball final and of course you can't forget the royal wedding.  I have been busy as well baking a few birthday cakes.  This 8" cake is for a little girl who is turning four and was having a fairy themed birthday.  I made the cake inspired from her invitations and am pretty happy with how it turned out.  It is a chocolate mud cake with butter cream frosting.

Apple Pie Cupcakes

My love of baking stems from a very early age when I would spend holidays in the kitchen with my Great Grandma helping her make apple pie.  She would always let me make my own little pie with her left over crust.  I can still taste my own little homemade pie and how proud of it I was.  I think thats why I love having my daughter help me with my baking now. Over the years I have made many pies and when my husband and I were dating I impressed him with my apple pie.  For some reason or another I have not made one since.  My husband is convinced I tricked him into thinking he would have a life of homemade pies.  One day I will start making them again but for now he will have to live with cupcakes.  Its a hard life for him.

For this reason and because im into apples this week I thought I would mix a cupcake with an apple pie.  I found inspiration from the blog site Annie's Eats: http://annies-eats.net/2008/09/26/apple-pie-cupcakes/
I love her idea of cutting out a cone shape from the cupcake with a paring knife and putting apple pie filling into it.  I then used a combination of different recipes to create my own apple pie cupcake combination.  For the cupcake recipe I used a brown sugar and cinnamon cupcake and replaced a third of the butter with applesauce to give it a more apple flavor.  For the filling I found an AMAZING apple pie filling (and I do mean amazing).  This recipe is for a huge amount of apples so that you can freeze a large amount of the filling but I simply scaled the recipe down to the amount of apples I had on hand.  To do this change the number of servings you need and Allrecipes will do the calculation for you.  For the icing I used my buttercream icing and added cinnamon and nutmeg to it.  I then made little apples out of pastry and brushed melted butter and cinnamon and sugar on them and then baked them in the oven for 180 degrees C for 10 minutes.

There really isn't too much to say about these cupcakes other than WOW.  These are good.  I may be inspired to make pies again after these.  (Do not tell my husband I said this though as he may get his hopes up!) Its a very good thing I am giving these away because I might be waking in the middle of the night for a midnight snack.

These cupcakes are going to a couple that my husband and I have gotten to know in the last couple of years.  The husband has been hugely involved in organizing my husbands hockey team which is a big commitment on his part and also a huge commitment from his wife.  They have had a roller coaster of a year and I thought that these cupcakes were long overdue.

Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Recipe:
75g butter softened
50g applesauce (if you do not have applesauce you can replace it with butter)
3/4 c brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder, sifted
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, sifted
1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.  Cream butter, brown sugar and vanilla for about 10-12 minutes with an electric mixer.  Add applesauce and beat for another 2-3 minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.  Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and milk and beat until just combined.  Spoon into 12 cupcake liners and bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For the stewed apples recipe go to: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Pie-Filling/Detail.aspx?prop31=1

For the buttercream frosting add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg to my previously listed vanilla buttercream icing.

Oatmeal Apple Cookies

Day five of rain and we are all feeling a little housebound.  Today was definitely a day for baking as there was no way I was venturing out with my two babes in this weather.  After all the chocolate and unhealthy goodness over Easter weekend I was not really prepared to make what I was really wanting to make.  So a healthy cookie I went in search of.  I'm on an apple kick this week so when I came across Oatmeal Apple Cookies I knew these would be worth a try.

These biscuits are full of oats, raisins, apples and even walnuts if you choose.  To make them healthier I replaced half of the shortening with homemade applesauce.  If you don't have shortening available you can replace it with vegetable oil.  They were super easy to make and looking at the recipe I decided it was worth the risk of doubling this batch as these could be good cookies to have on hand frozen.

My first impression of these cookies were that they were more of a muffin top then a cookie.  They were very chewy and had a really nice cinnamon and raisin flavor with the nice surprise of apple. Personally though I am not crazy about them.  In fact I was a little disappointed.  I think I would prefer less oats and maybe more flour next time as I think I would have preferred them a bit softer than chewy.  I was hugely surprised though when my husband tried one and absolutely loved them and I'm guessing my daughter loved them two as I caught her trying to sneak them twice this afternoon.  Maybe I'm not really much of an oat girl?

This recipe can be found at Food.com:
http://www.food.com/recipe/oatmeal-apple-cookies-30981

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Russian Doll Cake

To top off my lovely lazy day yesterday it finished with a fabulous evening of girly dvds and junk food with some of my closest girlfriends to celebrate my dear friends birthday.   For her cake I made a Russian Doll themed cake.  I was pretty pleased with this cake as it is completely my own design from start to finish.  Usually I look at other cakes to get inspiration but this cake was a blank canvas.  It is a chocolate mudcake with a dark chocolate ganache.

Hot Cross Buns

I love lazy rainy days.  Even better are lazy rainy holiday days when hubby is home.  Today has been bliss.  Sleeping in, staying in pj's till noon, not bothering with cleaning, art project with my girl, watching movies and doing pretty much nothing but just being with one another.  I was slightly motivated to do some baking, but only slightly as I have cheated and used my bread maker.  But hey, its Good Friday and its rainy and I am loving being lazy.

As it is Good Friday I decided to try my hand at hot cross buns.  These buns are an english tradition and very popular in New Zealand.  You know easter is around the corner as soon as you see these soft sweet buns hit the shops.  I had never seen them until I moved here but I have to say they are a much nicer tradition than the easter bunny and all the chocolate.

The tradition of these buns dates back centuries and have a cross baked on the top of them in pastry that is meant to signify the cross.  They are usually eaten on Good Friday.  I like the idea of something that signifies the true meaning of easter rather than all the commercialized chocolate sold in the shops and I like it even better homemade.

I had never made them before so found a recipe off Allrecipes that looked good and gave it a try: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pull-Apart-Hot-Cross-Buns/Detail.aspx?prop31=1 
I am pretty happy with how they turned out, although I am sure I could have made them smaller and more of them as they did end up a bit big.   I do love my bread though so these will not stick around long.  Instead of the pastry cross on the top I did the cross with an icing sugar and milk paste as suggested by this recipe and I like it much better than the pastry.  It definitely adds to the buns.  I also put raisins and chocolate chips in as this is all we had in the house this morning and my husband and I couldn't agree on which flavour to do so I did both.