chocolate buttercream cupcake burgers

Yes you heard me, cupcake burgers!

banana date muffins

A foggy Thursday with nothing to do. This calls for banana date muffins, definitely.

Ingredients
1 cup self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1/4 cup firm packed brown sugar
1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup seeded chopped dates
1 egg lightly beaten
1/6 cup veggie oil
1/6 cup milk

Directions
Grease 9 hole muffin pan
Sift dry ingredients into large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. 
Spoon mix into prepared pan, bake in moderately hot oven about 20 mins 200 - 210 celsius.


Nutritional Info
161 calories per muffin

lemon coconut cupcakes

It's cupcake season! Yes you heard me. Having a sore back which doesn't allow me sit for long periods of time = many many cupcakes.

This time it's lemon cupcakes topped with vanilla butter cream dipped in coconut. Yum.



Ingredients

1 large egg
3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
50 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoons lime or lemon peel
1/4 cup milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 185 degrees C and lightly butter or line 9 muffin cups with paper liners.

Separate the egg.
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.
In another bowl, cream the butter. Add a little bit more than half the sugar, and beat until light and fluffy.
Add egg yolk, and mix through.
Add vanilla and lime peel, and mix.

Then, with the mixer on low, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk, in three additions.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the rest of the sugar gradually, and keep beating until it's all dissolved in the egg whites.
Fold the egg whites carefully into the batter, do not over mix or the batter will deflate.

Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18 -20 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely. With a knife or offset spatula, spread regular buttercream frosting on each cupcake, and then dip it into a bowl of dried coconut shavings.

Enjoy!

vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling and milk chocolate glaze

Yesterday was cupcake day, and I wanted to try out my first filled cupcake ever. I got the recipe here http://mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/ (see cupcake 29) , and tried to follow it but somehow it just didn't work out as expected...

The result was good, but no matter how hard I tried I just could not follow the instructions. The first and biggest problem was this:

The recipe asks for you to beat room temperature butter straight into the flour. As you can imagine, all this produced was a big mess. So, I ended up doing all kinds of crazy things to get the butter into the flour, and in the end I will say this: just put all the ingredients into the bowl at the same time and mix the heck out of them :) Problem solved.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
110 grams butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup raspberry jam

Directions
Preheat oven to 200 celsius
Sift the flour baking powder and salt into a big bowl. Add everything else and beat on high until everything is nicely mixed.
Grease your cupcake tin and fill the liners 1/3 full of batter.
Drop a small spoonful of jam into each cupcake.
Cover with batter.
Bake for 15 minutes or until browned on top and kitchen smells delicious :)

Frosting
50 grams of butter, melted
3 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk

Directions
Mix the cocoa and sugar in a bowl.
Pour over the melted butter and remaining ingredients.
Beat on low until well mixed.
Dip cupcake into the glaze and top with sprinkles.
Enjoy!

pumpkin muffins

I made these muffins for Dalila's going away party, and they were such a hit that I decided to make them again last week and post them to Robbie in Barcelona! Surprisingly he said they were still delicious after spending 5 days in the post, and were mostly crumbs by the time he got them :)

I tried for the first time to make some decent photos of the cooking process, and realised how hard this actually is. I'll be definitely be working on my food photography skills... Anyway this recipe is fantastic, so I thought I would post it, bad photos and all. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Muffins
(This is half of the original recipe, it made about 10 small muffins)


Ingredients
3/4 cups all-purpose flour (half of which is whole wheat if desired)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/6 cup vegetable oil

1 large egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
½ cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts plus some for decoration

Directions
Preheat oven to 185 c. Grease your muffin tins with butter.
In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and spices.

In a larger bowl, whisk pumpkin puree, oil, eggs and sugar until smooth.
Using a spatula, fold in the flour mixture until just combined, making sure to not over-mix the batter. Fold in walnuts.
Add the batter to the greased/floured muffin tins, decorate each one with a walnut, and place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes or until tops are brown, they smell good, and a stick inserted in the middle comes out clean.