Cake Pops!

The other new recipe this week was cake pops. Didn't buy a book (yep, shock horror!) so just looked at the general gist on the internet and made it up as I went along...

My friend and I were talking about cake pops a while ago and I thought I'd make him some and send them down to Liverpool. Hopefully they'll make it.

First, I made a chocolate cake. I used the cupcakes recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery book which made a single (quite slim) layer of chocolate cake. I got 12 quite large pops out of it but could have got 18 smaller, or if I'd used the full recipe for a double layer cake I'd have got about 24-30.

Anyway, I made a cake. Tasted good.

Then I broke it all up and put it in the mixer. Nearly broke my heart to just make it then destroy it!!

Afterwards I mixed in a good dollop of frosting. I should probably mention at this point that when buying the ingredients for this weekend I seriously toyed with buying premade frosting in a can. I know, I know... But I stood in the baking aisle of Tesco and desperately tried to reason to myself that it was an ingredient and wouldn't be tasted by itself so wouldn't it just be easier to buy it? Needless to say it wasn't my morals that put me off, but the £3.50 price tag that Mrs Fields charges. Bandit. Moving on.

When it was all combined I used an ice cream scoop to put little balls (about 2 inches?) onto a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. I poked the lollypop sticks into the balls to create little holes then I melted a little bowl of blue Candy Melts and dipped the end of one stick into the melted chocolate, then placed it into the hole to create a cake lollypop.

At this point they went into the freezer for an hour to make sure the chocolate holding the stick in was solid. I ended up taking the whole top drawer out of the freezer just to make them fit (well I wasn't bloomin going to all this trouble then falling over THIS particular hurdle!).

After the hour was up I brought them out, melted the rest of the bag of Candy Melt and dipped the chocolate cake into the frosting.

The problem of where to put them while the chocolate hardens is given different solutions depending on what blog you're on. I'd decided to get some polystyrine and put them in there but when looking in the cake decorating aisle in Hobbycraft I noticed they actually had a Wilton's Cake Pop Stand. I literally cannot stress enough how AWFUL this product was. Its two circles of cardboard held together in the middle by folding other bits of cardboard. I put one cake pop in and the whole thing collapsed, taking my carefully sculpted cake pop with it. Damn Wiltons...I can't actually find it anywhere online so it could be they've realised how dire it is and discontinued it. So anyway, after being really careful I had to make stands out of random things I found in the kitchen by poking holes in boxes - not bloomin easy!

After dipping the cakes in chocolate I rolled some in sprinkles, sugar etc and dusted blue glitter over a couple.

Again, for a first attempt I'm fairly pleased with how they've turned out. Definitely some things to take on board next time but overall not too shabby.

PS - always remember to put your dishcloth over the mixer when making frosting.....or else.....

Raspberry White Chocolate and Peanut Butter Chocolate....

I've not blogged for over 2 weeks....really was starting to get bloggers guilt! But after the fiasco of a few weeks ago my heart really hasn't been in baking mode. Luckily I enjoyed the cupcakes I made yesterday SO MUCH that I've definitely got the bug back. :)

Also I joined the wonderful Baking Mad a few weeks ago and it turns out when I registered I entered a competition and won a copy of Home Bake by Eric Lanlard. I haven't made anything from it yet but the recipes look absolutely delicious!! I'd heartily recommend both the book and Baking Mad - their site is fantastic and has a great community of bakers.

Anyways onto the actual baking I made this week...

It was my aunt and uncles 50th birthday party last night and since I've got myself a bit of a reputation for making cupcakes for special events, I offered to make them cupcakes for their guests. I couldn't decide for a loooong time what kind I was going to make because I was given open choice to do whatever I liked (often a bad thing!) but ultimately settled on a batch of chocolate and peanut butter and a batch of raspberry jam and white chocolate.

The chocolate peanut butter was a mixture of the chocolate base recipe from Hummingbird's new Cake Days book and the peanut butter frosting was from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. I was a little wary of the latter to be honest - there seemed to be a fair amount of cream in it and I was worried it wouldn't taste 'sticky' enough. Luckily I was wrong.

The chocolate bases from Cake Days were extremely easy to make. Brought together the butter, sugar, flour and cocoa powder to resemble breadcrumbs, then add the milk and egg which you've already whisked together. Easy peasy!

Like I said, I was a touch nervous with the frosting but I didn't need to be. Peanut butter, cream cheese, cream and icing sugar mixed together to create a frosting that tasted strongly of peanut butter (with that slightly salty taste) but not too 'lip smacking'!!

I was worried it was essentially going to taste as though they were smeared with peanut butter but luckily they worked really well.

Initially was going to top them with a slice of Snickers bar but in the end went for a peice of chocolate covered popcorn. It went really well with the flavours.

Next up was the raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes. The base and frosting was taken from the Primrose Bakery book which I always know I can have confidence in.

The bases were a straight vanilla base with goobers of raspberry jam swirled through. All extremely easy. Then once they were baked and cooled, I cored out the centre and added a dollop (official baking term) of raspberry jam inside and topped with white chocolate frosting. Their frosting recipe is normal vanilla with 100g of melted while chocolate added. The recipe also calls for 3tbsp of cream but I left it out, quite happy with the taste and consistency after adding just the chocolate.

After adding the jam I topped it with the frosting and a red fondant crown. Initially was going to put little 50s on them made from Candy Melts but decided to save that particular experiment for another day.

Took them to the party and they were really well received. In the early stages I was tempted to make Pina Colada cupcakes but then thought I'd end up just drinking the rest of the bottle and thought better of it!!

Would definitely use all the recipes again (particularly the peanut butter frosting) as they were all so easy to make.

Chocolate and Coffee Loaf

Its been yet another weekend full of baking.


Yesterday I spent the day making applesauce spice cupcakes for my aunts birthday today and then tonight I've made the Chocolate and Coffee Loaf from Hummingbird's Cake Days book. I remembered late this evening that I'd promised to make some 'thank you' cookies for a friend's dad tomorrow but because of the solid two weekends of baking, I didn't have any plain flour left so it became the gift of cake!

It was actually really simple to make (and thank goodness for that because I was shattered...). SR flour, brown sugar, cocoa, eggs, butter, a tablespoon of coffee and milk. Lined a loaf tin and that was it!!

Just waiting for it to cool now so I can slice it and pop it into a box for him. Lets hope it's all nice and consistent all the way through!!

Not Nutella Cupcakes

Was following a recipe from my Hummingbird book for Nutella cupcakes - was half way through before I realised it wasn't hazlenut chocolate spread at all...just chocolate. Ah well.

The base didn't have Not Nutella but has cocoa powder in it. Has anyone seen any low fat cocoa powder? I do prefer to stick with Bournville but might try some Skinny Cow or Weight Watchers drinking chocolate next time, with a touch of coffee to really bring out the chocolate flavour. I was a bit worried that the mixture looked really runny - hoped it wasn't the margarine throwing off the chemical balance...

But after their alloted twenty minutes they looked pretty good!

I then cored the middles out and filled it with Not Nutella and topped them with chocolate frosting.

I was experimenting with 'I Can't Believe it's Not Butter' in both the cake and the frosting. In the cake it seemed to work fine but the intial batch of frosting I did just became a horrible goopy mess. It was like gross runny custard. And when you tasted it, you certainly could tell it wasn't butter (in fact you could certainly tell it was full of chemicals - yuk!!). So with the second try I went with Stork instead of butter (mainly because I didn't have any in the fridge) and it worked much better. Had to add a little more icing sugar to get it just right but they've come out beautifully. And you save nearly 100 calories per cake because there's no butter in the cupcake base. Total calorie bargin :-)

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 10
Calories: 292

Vegan Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes

Tonight I tried a recipe from another book I bought this week called Cupcake Heaven. There's a section in there for healthy cupcakes. I didn't trust it to be healthy at first because it was surrounded by recipes for Caramalised Banana Split Cupcakes and Fudge Frosted Peanut Butter Cupcakes. Luckily.....I was proved very wrong and they've turned out delicious!

As they're vegan, they didn't include eggs, butter or milk - another thing that made me suspicious (I should say at this point I'm naturally cynical when it comes to things being called 'healthy', hence the blog...). I admit I didn't choose them because they were vegan, instead I just went through the book, looking at the Weight Watchers points and picking the recipes that actually looked tasty. Some plain flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, sugar, water, vegetable oil and white wine vinegar all bound together to make yummy cupcakes.

Possibly my favourite thing about the book though is that there are no airs and graces. None of this 'mix in a freestanding mixer with a paddle attachment' which any baker recognises as 'mix in a £350+ mixer'. I do have an old Kenwood Chef but am just as happy to mix things in a bowl, old fashioned like, so just did that in this case (was one less thing to wash too. ;)).

The mixture looked fab. Runny and the complete opposite to yesterdays 'lumps'! When baked they were a glorious dark brown colour and I just knew they were going to taste beautiful. I let them cool and made the frosting a few hours later. It was made by mixing vegetable oil, cocoa powder, boiling water and icing sugar which created a shiny and spreadable glossy frosting which spread really easily over the cupcakes. I'd be keen to make the same frosting for any chocolate cupcakes I make in the future - it would also go well on top of brownie.

Needless to say, they're delicious. I was a bit wary of continuing yesterday after neither recipe went flawlessly but these definitely smashed one out of the park.

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 6

Calories: 177

Healthy Fudgy Chocolate Brownies

The 'Secrets to Fat-Free Baking' book is split into sections about what to substitute for a 'fattening' ingredient. This particular brownie recipe features in the 'prune butter instead of real butter' section. Initially I'm thinking that prune butter sounds gross. Well, actually, my first thought was 'what's prune butter, is this another weird American thing I've never heard of?' (The book is American, my first hurdle was working out the cups in grams but I was worried the second would be strange ingredients...) It turns out the minor panic was for nothing - prune butter is just blended prunes with a touch of water. Sure it still sounded pretty gross, but at least I knew I could make it!!

A lot of the other ingredients for the brownies were fairly normal: egg whites, sugar, cocoa powder etc. So they weren't a problem. It was my first time cooking with oat bran so I was interested to see how they would pan out. Brought everything together and the mixture looked fab - really chocolatey and lovely. My concern though was that there was no raising agent whatsoever in the recipe. I know brownies are meant to be dense so I wasn't too worried....but maybe I should have been! The brownies came out the oven extremely pancake like - delicious but slim. If I were making it again I'd definitely include some self raising flour just to give them a little lift!

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 2
Calories: 76