Christmas Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Icing

Just one of the various things I've been forcing my brother to take to school this week (well what else am I meant to do in the holidays?) other delights include some dubious looking cheesecake-cupcakes (not to be posted) and sweeter-than-sweet coconut florentines...The old 'stuffing oneself with food at Yuletide' trick is fully in force.

The basic cupcake recipe was taken from ‘Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery’ by MarthaSwift and Lisa Thomas, although the idea is from a Hummingbird Bakery recipe. My version was a bit haphazard, so this may need some tweaking (partially because I can’t really remember what I put in them, except it’s a mixture of lots of Christmassy tastes)

This recipe made 24 mini cupcakes and 6 normal sized ones

Ingredients

105g butter

10g (ish?) marzipan, cubed and softened

225g caster sugar

2 eggs

275g self raising flour

100ml milk

20ml orange juice 

(a good one like Innocent Juice is fine)

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)

A couple of handfuls of raisins, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries or any other dried fruit you fancy

A good glug of brandy 

Spiced Cream Cheese icing

(this is half the recipe in the book, and was just enough for my amount of cupcakes)

85-90g cream cheese

225g icing sugar

60g unsalted butter

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon mixed spice (again, or to taste)

Some dried cranberries to decorate

First put your dried fruit in a bowl and glug the brandy over it. Leave this for as long as you dare. Overnight would work, so would an hour or two (depends how spur of the moment your baking is)

Make your icing before you start if you like, so that it can firm up in the fridge if necessary (especially with lower fat cream cheese) Beat the butter and gradually add the icing sugar a tiny bit at a time, keeping it light and fluffy. When you’ve added as much as possible, then beat in the cream cheese (keep adding the icing sugar) and the spices.

Preheat your oven to 160 for a fan (180 for normal) and line your muffin trays

Cream the butter, marzipan and sugar together, then add the eggs, beating after each one. Mix the flour with the spices and alternate between this and the milk, adding it to the butter and stirring in. Move on the orange juice when the milk is gone. Fold in the boozy fruits, and a bit of the leftover brandy if you like. Spoon into the cases and bake for around 15 minutes for the little cakes, and 25 for larger (check with a skewer, the amount of liquid/fruit means they may require longer) Inhale the spiced brandy smell…and let them cool before icing and decorating!

Cococacupcake

First off, apologies for the title. There is no real excuse. 

 

 These are, as per usual, completely out of sync with real life time as I made these for my lovely sister's 21st birthday. Which was back in March. Nevertheless, I am slowly getting through my recipe posts as well as learning to juggle uni again, and this was next on the list before Easter rudely interrupted. The macaroons here probably won't get their own post, they were a first attempt and though they were rather tasty (if very cracked)I could definitely do better over the summer when I'm back in a place with an oven. Sigh. 

Sarah’s 21^st birthday cupcakes

Roughly adapted from ‘cupcakes from the primrose bakery’ Martha swift and Lisa Thomas

110g unsalted butter

180g caster sugar

3 medium eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla syrup (or vanilla extract)

120g self raising flour, sifted

100g plain flour, sifted

25g ground almond

125ml milk

25g desiccated coconut

Icing

110g unsalted butter

60ml milk

500g icing sugar, sifted (I used natural golden icing sugar here, which has a lovely slightly caramelly taste and gives a more golden, dusky pink to the icing)

Red food colouring

Desiccated coconut

(edible pink glitter optional)

Made about 36 mini cupcakes?? Or I estimate around 16 normal sized ones

Preheat oven to 180 for a fan

Cream butter and sugar together, add the eggs gradually and then vanilla syrup

In a separate bowl combine the two flours and almonds. Add small amounts of this and the milk in alternate steps to the butter mixture, beating after each until it’s all mixed in and then fold in the coconut.

Fill the cases and bake for around 15 minutes for mini ones, or 25 minutes for larger ones

Meanwhile to make the icing, beat butter, milk and half the icing sugar together with a hand whisk until its fluffy and creamy, then gradually add the rest (do it all in once and you’ll end up with a kitchen full of icing sugar clouds) add the colouring drop by drop towards the end of beating

When the cakes are fully cooled, pipe or spread the icing thickly and then sprinkle with generous amounts of coconut(and glitter or almond flakes or anything else you fancy) and leave to set slightly so they stick.

Before icing...not especially inspiring

After icing...I use a little syringe looking piping thing, but do whatever works for you

Carroty goodness

To give these carrot cupcakes their full name, one ought to call this post 'Low fat low sugar carrot muffincakes'...but quite frankly that sounds silly. What these are is my attempt to be at least a little bit health conscious in my baking once in a while. And although obviously they aren't as good for you as, say, eating a carrot, they're a lot more fun; just a nice light carroty little cake (which i have taken an uncharactistcally few photos of so apologies!)

 

Adapted from ‘Muffins, fast and fantastic’ Susan Reimer, this is an even more low sugar offering, with lots of lovely warming spices. I used low fat cream cheese in the icing, which didn’t turn out very well to start with so I did have to add butter. It ended up more pourable than spreadable and I almost gave up on it, but it did firm up slightly in the end and actually tasted lovely with the cakes…lesson to self, don’t panic! I chopped up bits of dried apricot for the tops, but thats just me trying to make them a tad more aesthetically pleasing

Ingredients

10oz self raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

½ teaspoon ground ginger

1 egg

60-90 ml milk

3 tablespoons honey

2 ½ oz caster sugar

12oz carrot, finely grated

1 tsp vanilla syrup

90ml vegetable oil

2 oz sultanas

Cream cheese icing (optional if you want to be even more virtuous)

2oz low fat cream cheese

110g icing sugar, sifted

½ tsp vanilla syrup

30g unsalted butter

Preheat oven 180 fan over

Sift together flour, bicarb and spices. In a different bowl beat the egg and add the milk, honey, sugar, carrot and vanilla, and then the oil and stir v well (to get all the honey bits that will inevitably settle to the bottom) Pour the carrot mix into the flour mix and stir, adding the sultanas at the last folds. Bake for 20-25 minutes

Icing – stir cream cheese and icing sugar together as briefly as possible, then add butter if necessary and beat until smooth (again as briefly as possible, and omit the butter if you can and want a smooth icing rather than buttercream) add the vanilla last of all, and spread on the cakes once fully cooled 

One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Cupcakes

So I didn't technically make hot cross buns, but that song just popped into my head and who was I to resist? This will be the last post from my current location, for tomorrow I'm heading back into the academic bubble where I hide for around 27 weeks of the year, so farewell Cheltenham for now

Tomorrow also happens to be Easter, so i thought I'd bake something seasonal for once (more on my less appropriately timed baking later)to take with me. Happy Easter! 

Easter cupcakes

Basically a hot cross bun crossed with a simnel cake crossed with a cupcake. These have all the tastes of Easter baking, even including chocolate or marzipan mini eggs (green ones are marzipan filled.) The piping is rather irregular, I started with a very narrow nozzle to do a sort of basket-y nest around the eggs, but that was taking too long and it's so hot at them moment that the icing was just turning too gooey and the strings of piping ran together so I got impatient. I’ll pretend it was for artistic variation…

Yummy little marzipan eggs, thank you Waitrose 

 Ingredients

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

1 tablespoon orange juice (you could squeeze your own, but I just use a good quality juice like Innocent instead)

150g self raising flour

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

50g grated apple

30g dried pear (or apricots if you prefer)

25g sultanas

25g grated marzipan and 20g cut into small chunks/rolled into little balls

Cream Cheese Icing

125g cream cheese

50g unsalted butter

300g icing sugar (I used natural golden icing sugar here, which gave a nice almond-y colour)

½ tsp vanilla syrup/extract

Pre heat oven to 170 for a fan

Beat the butter and sugar together then add the eggs one at a time and beat between each. Gradually sift the flour and baking powder into the buttery mix, still beating.

Rub the fruits with a little bit of flour so they don’t sink in the oven, then add to the bowl with the spices and grated marzipan and beat again. Then fold in the marzipan chunks so they stay whole.

Fill the cases (again I did a mixture of normal and small, I reckon it would make around 16 just standard sized) and bake for 15 minutes for the little ones, 20mis for the larger ones. Ice when cold. 

Raspberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Considering this blog was partially meant to be a way to share recipes, I have been remarkably quiet on the cake front as of yet. So here's a nice spring-ly simple little cupcake for the gorgeous weather we've been having today. Admittedly they aren't the most beautiful things in the world, I made them in a rush a few weeks ago so didn't have time for pretty photos, but believe me they taste light and sunshiney. Or don't believe me...and try them out for yourself!

These are adapted from the ‘Goodfood Baking’ magazine but I didn’t really have to change them very much (I’d only just started using cream cheese in baking so didn’t want to risk much) I just made them a little bit healthier, and added lovely fresh raspberries in.

 These could be made with any sort of jam (or indeed lemon curd; that idea courtesy of my fellow baking enthusiast and her ‘jar full of sunshine’ curd) The recipe says it makes 12 standard size, but as you can see it did a few more than that so I made a mixture of normal sized ones and mini ones. The normal sized were made to try out some reusable silicone cases that the lovely people from my course bought me at the end of last term. I do like having paper cases for extra decoration sometimes, but these actually worked really well and are brilliant for a simple little cake like this – plus the occasional exploding raspberry can be seen better 

Note the top right hand corner

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter

220g caster sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract*

200g low fat cream cheese

2 eggs

300g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

5 tablespoons milk

4 tablespoons raspberry jam

10-12 raspberries (?) it’s up to you how many you put in really, this is just a guesstimate. 

*I frequently use a vanilla syrup which we got from a food fair and I have just managed to track down, so if you live in gloucestershire please do try this out

Preheat oven to 160 for a fan oven

Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla extract with electric hand whisk until light and fluffy, and then add the cream cheese and beat briefly (try not to over beat, which is quite easy to do with low fat cream cheese, or it’ll go too runny…then again, don’t panic too much if this happens) then add the eggs gradually, beating after each.

Sift flour and baking powder together in another bowl and add this and the milk alternately to the butter mix and beat until it’s all mixed in.

Fold in the jam and raspberries – ideally you don’t want them to break up completely so some cupcakes will have a nice little fruity surprise in them.

Spoon them into muffin cases (use an ice cream scoop for the normal sized ones – sounds odd but it works) and bake for around 30 minutes for the larger ones, 20 minutes for the smaller. 

The rather exciting silicone cases pre-baking

And post-baking...not my most uniformly baked effort

You could ice these with a cream cheese or vanilla icing, or dust them with icing sugar, but I like them pure and simple, so you can see the oozy bits of jam and raspberry. 

And some exciting news, my mother came home from work today having won this nifty little instant camera through some optician-y thing or other. So I may or may not be planning a sneaky commandeering of said camera posthaste. Hopefully more news on that later...