Chocolate Raspberry Cake

So the two things which make up the title of the cake are actually in its topping. But it's still a chocolate and raspberry cake. You know how people say rice or pasta are like these somewhat flavourless dishes which means you can experiment a lot with them? I think the same way about vanilla cake. Well obviously it's sweet, you putting ketchup as frosting won't really work, but it's quite a good base if you want to get creative on the sweet side of the tastes spectrum.

I found this wonderful chocolate and raspberry jam from Cocomaya in London and ever since I bought it a couple of weeks back, I've been dreaming of using it as frosting on a nice bundt cake. I love the way icing/glaze just drizzles down in a bundt cake. I've never had mine look that professional but I'm hoping to get there. I used a spoon and then an offset spatula when I frosted mine. I think if you're using a runny glaze simply pouring it down the cake will achieve a nice old-fashioned look but my topping was more of a thick frosting so I had to apply it using a spoon.

Recipe:
Ingredients
230g unsalted butter, softened
230g caster sugar
4 eggs
230g self-raising flour, sifted
4 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
-for the frosting
70g heavy cream
1/2 cup fresh raspberries
1/2 cup raspberry and chocolate jam (if you can't find the jam I think you can achieve something similar by mixing equal parts nutella and raspberries and whisking it together with around 2-3 tablespoons of heavy cream)

Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and lightly flour a bundt cake pan.
Beat together butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs one by one, whisking well after each addition. Add the sifted flour and fold in using a metal spoon. Add the milk and vanilla and mix well together. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 25 minutes. Once baked, allow to cool completely before frosting.

for the frosting: 
take the chocolate/raspberry jam and whisk until smooth. Add the cream and beat until color has lightened and mixture has become fluffier. Gently spread over top of cooled cake. Arrange raspberries around center and in the middle of cake.

Swirly Glittery Cupcakes Tutorial

OK, well this isn't exactly a tutorial if there aren't step-by-step photos. I made these without the intention of blogging about them but a lot of people have been wondering how to get swirly frosting that holds its shape.. and even to get the rose-like look on them. So I decided (since these looked so pretty) to share these pictures with you and also explain verbally (as best as I can) how to get frosting like this.

 

1. I never make frosting with measured or weighed ingredients. I use my intuition- or I just see how well it's progressing.. But let's say for ingredients- I use 50g of unsalted butter (give or take 20g either way) that is softened. It is extremely important for the butter to be softened. I then mix in around 350g of icing sugar that isn't sifted. For one, I find sifting icing sugar extremely frustrating- you get little icing sugar smoke all around you. And two, I don't think the sifted factor makes much of a difference.

2. For cupcakes like these, you need frosting that is "tough".. or more solid.. Runny frosting won't do. Once you've mixed the butter and the icing sugar, add around 2-3 tablespoons of milk and beat well until combined. Add the gel food coloring at this point. Gel is best since you only need to add a very small quantity for strong color, and its nature doesn't change the consistency of the frosting-whereas liquid coloring would.

 

3. The longer you beat, the more fluffy and incorporated the entire mixture will become.

4. If the mixture is too runny, keep on adding more icing sugar to tighten/harden it up until you reach what you think is the right consistency. A lot of this is done by eye.

5. Take a piping bag (plastic or paper one) and pop a 1M nozzle inside. This is the most important part. It has to be 1M otherwise the size/shape of the piping will be different. Hold the piping bag open over a jug, and with a spatula, pile in the icing. Make sure that the piping bag is a bag which is floppy and not one of those mechanical syringe like ones. It's more challenging to use an actual piping bag but the results are so much better because you have a lot more control over it.

6. Hold the cupcake in your left hand if you are right handed and in your right hand if you are left handed and with the piping bag (nicely secured at the top) in your dominant hand, pipe from the center, bringing the bag around like you're drawing a snail pattern anticlockwise. Loosen your hand as you reach the outer edges of the cupcake (this will create somewhat larger swirls which will overlap creating petal-like features).

7. Release the piping bag from cupcake once you have covered the entire cupcake. Do not abruptly pull away as that will show on the cupcake. Instead, "seal" the frosting in by making the last bit of piping extremely thin and tight.

8. For the glitter, take a very thin (un-used!) paintbrush and open a pot of EDIBLE glitter, Dip the brush in the surface of the glitter in the pot. Bring the brush (whose tip is now coated with glitter) over the cupcake and with your index finger tap the brush. This will release all the glitter from the tip of the brush onto the cupcake. Tap the brush lightly while moving your hand around the entire cupcake so the glitter doesn't end up all in one place.

9. If you're using edible pearls, carefully place them around the swirls with your fingers.

  

Teatime Treats

These are all adorable tea-time treats that are for the most part bite-sized. I used the same ingredients in a many of them. The tart filling is the same as the filling in the Victoria Sponge Cake. And the buttercream on the heart shaped cakes is the same that is in the mini tarts.. and the berries, well they're in everything. Almost.

I got around 30 little tarts, 4 big tarts, 20 heart-shaped cakes, and two 5" cakes from one pie dough and one cake batter. My dad took the Victoria Sponge (which was coffee-infused, tiramisu style) to his office, and I sent the rest of the cakes to friends' homes and took some to uni with me.

These are all pretty simple to make.

For the Victoria Sponge, make two vanilla cakes and when they're cool mix together 250g of mascarpone, 284ml of double cream, and two tablespoons of coffee together. Spread over one cake, top with berries, and place the second cake over it.

For the heart shaped cakes, either use silicon heart shaped cupcake cases, or a heart shaped cupcake tray. Make and bake them just like cupcakes and then pipe the frosting on top.

For the tart crust, make a normal pie crust and put them into pie tins for the normal sized ones and for the mini ones, place them in a mini cupcake tray. The berry tart's filling is the tiramisu filling and the mini tart filling is vanilla buttercream (tinted pink!)

#BakefestDXB

Does anyone actually eat cupcakes like this? (I don't).

I haven't blogged in ages and I miss it entirely! I actually miss cooking and baking for the PURPOSE of blogging about it, and I miss spending ages taking photographs of my food, and I miss writing these posts and reading your lovely comments. Mostly, I miss reading through all your blogs and getting inspired by each and every post. The creativity, innovation, talent, and love that goes into each of your posts is just phenomenal and I quite love being part of an international community of food bloggers. I feel as if we all share something special and can relate to each other in a way not many other people can!

I also miss taking part in all the amazing blog challenges that go on every month- the creativity in them is wonderful and the best part is the round-ups where we see all the pictures!

My awesome new invention of serving cupcakes in drinking glasses.

Attempting food photography

I've been baking and cooking quite a bit recently- I had a couple of dinner parties and one afternoon gathering that kept me busy in the kitchen. And today, I took part in Round 2 of #BakefestDXB which you might remember from an earlier blog post.  The event was lots of fun with a few familiar faces from last time and lots of new ones.

My dessert table.

I made raspberry cream sandwiches, chocolate shortbread drops, a three toned pink layer cake, vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, and some mini cupcakes (made from left over batter and frosting!) -That's why I love mini cupcakes so much.

You can find the recipe for my raspberry cream sandwiches here. I made them early this year and they were a huge success. The cream is made out of pureed raspberries and white chocolate and the cookies have vanilla beans in them (which, in my opinion, make ALL the difference).

And here's the recipe for the vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting.

Oh, and GUESS WHAT? My mixer broke. Again. The new one. So all of this I made by hand. I also made risotto yesterday after baking the cupcakes so my arms got one hell of a workout. It's a handheld Kenwood electric mixer- just like my old one.. very basic, no fancy attachments or anything.. and now the whisks just won't move.. I think it's the icing sugar. The last one stopped working as I was making frosting. And my cute mechanical sifter also gets jammed with icing sugar! SIGH.

Anyways, here are some pictures from the event. As you can tell (I hope you can- it's not too subtle!), I went on a pink theme. Mainly because Spontaneous Euphoria (both the catering business and the blog) are pink. And also because I had been coming across lots of pink dessert tables recently and was just INSPIRED.

 

Floral Pastel Feminine Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for a friend's surprise birthday party that was yesterday. I wanted to go for something cute and pastel. And I wanted to use both the new fondant cutter set and drying roll slider that I had got. And so I came up with these. Light and moist with a vanilla buttercream topping. Only when I was icing the last batch did it strike me to add more icing sugar and see how the texture would change. Adding more icing sugar made piping the buttercream a lot better, the shape held more strongly since the buttercream was stiffer.

Here's the recipe I adapted from Magnolia's Bakery and The Hummingbird Bakery:

Yields about 55 mini cupcakes or 24 regular sized cupcakes.

Vanilla Cupcakes
1 cup butter, softened
1 and a 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 and 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 and a 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup milk
2tsp vanilla extract


Combine the flours in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, gradually add the sugar to the butter and beat until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each addition. Add a third of the flours to the butter mixture, beat well. Follow with a third of the milk and vanilla. Repeat until all flour and milk are incorporated. Spoon into paper cases and bake at a preheated oven of 180C.

Vanilla Buttercream
85g softened unsalted butter
350g icing sugar, sifted
30ml milk


Beat the icing sugar with the butter until fully incorporated. Gradually add the milk while beating at slow speed until mixture comes together and is of the right consistency. Once all the milk has been added, increase the speed to high and beat for a couple of minutes.

To decorate, color the icing whichever colour you like. I used Wilton's gel food colouring in sky blue, creamy peach, and ivory. Use any piping tip ( I used a small and medium sized star tip) and piped a border and kept going further in until I had a little pile of icing at the top.

For the fondant decorations, color some fondant in the color of your choice by applying a little gel colouring to the fondant with a toothpick. Keep kneading the dough until the color is even throughout. Roll out on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar and cut out shapes of your choice. If you'd like the shapes to be inverted, place them on a sloped or curved surface and allow to dry. Simply place the fondant decoration on top of the buttercream. To stick a smaller fondant decoration over a larger one (as in the picture above) use a little melted white chocolate or egg white. 

 

Cappuccinos and Cupcakes

Or both in one.

The minute I spotted these adorable silicone cupcake cases by Fred at Selfridge's, I snatched them. I could just imagine all the different scenarios I'd create with these teacups: elegant garden parties, a breakfast snack, an optical illusion..

Last week, I got this idea to make cupcakes in them and frost them in a way so that they look like the froth on a cappuccino. I was extremely adamant to capture them in natural light and so I baked the cupcakes last night and made the frosting this morning. Well, I didn't make the frosting. I bought the frosting. Shocking, isn't it? I had a huge internal battle with myself over that. But the pros outweighed the cons and so I crossed over to the dark side. Just for today though. I didn't have much time, and I really wanted the frosting to be perfect.. so I opted to use ready frosting. The idea of it is so appealing to the time-constrained.. Just frost it on! No mess, no dishes to wash, no consistency to get right. But no, I will not use ready frosting again. SIGH. Anyways, I frosted the cupcakes with Betty Crocker's rainbow chip frosting.. The pastel multicoloured quality of the frosting made the cupcakes look super cute.

I sort of compensated for using ready made frosting by using a recipe that I had developed myself.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

120g butter

120g caster sugar

120g self raising flour

2 eggs

1 and 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons cocoa powder.

Procedure:

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Sift flour into mixture and fold in. Add vanilla extract, stir. In a small bowl mix cocoa powder with milk and stir (not thoroughly though... do not dissolve the cocoa entirely..) Add cocoa/milk mixture to batter and stir well. Yields about 9 cupcakes.. (five regular paper cased ones, and four silicon cupcake mould ones) Baking time around 12-15 minutes at 180C.

I had a lovely time styling these today though. Sorry if the pictures are repetitive.. I'm really proud of them though! There's nothing like using unobstructed natural lighting! Whenever I manage to take pictures of food it's always at night.. or outdoors with sunlight that's too harsh.. or in rooms where the sunlight enters but isn't that bright. I used the window of my bedroom for these shots today. I didn't add a diffuser with a soft sheer curtain either. I just positioned the table in such a way it caught the best lighting. And I experimented a lot with shutter speeds, ISOs, exposures, and apertures..