Easter Cup Cakes

We had a bake sale in aid of The Heart Yard on Friday at work. The Heart Yard is part of Kids Company which was set up by the wonderful Camila Batmanghelidjh.  As a team from the office, we're going to be doing some gardening at The Heart Yard as part of a bigger campaign (more of which I'll write about at a later date) and we were raising money though this sale to buy the seeds and other bits for the kitchen garden. Any herbs and veg grown will then be used by the kids there during their cooking lessons and eaten by them.


These Easter Cup Cakes were my contribution to the event. I have to say I love any excuse for getting out the mini eggs and fluffy chicks so I needed no persuading to get baking! I made half chocolate and half vanilla cupcakes topped with a vanilla buttercream frosting and of course Cadbury's Mini Eggs.  I find that other miniature eggs just don't cut it for me. I recently got given a 'cupcake corer' so I used this for the plain cupcakes to take out a section of the middle and fill it with strawberry jam.  It's quite a nifty little gadget and definitely makes creating a hole in them a lot quicker and cleaner.


We ended up raising just over £200 which should go a long way to getting the kitchen garden looking good.  


This is also my entry to April's Tea Time Treats whose theme is, of course, Easter, hosted by Kate from What Kate Baked and Karen from Lavender and Lovage. Happy Easter!


The Recipe


280g caster sugar
280g butter
5 eggs
280g self raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder


For the frosting:


200g butter
400g icing sugar
1 tspn vanilla extract
dash of milk
red food colouring
strawberry jam if filling the centre of the cakes


1. Preheat oven to 180c.  Line a cupcake tin with cases (this recipe makes around 26 regular cupcakes). 
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Then add the adds and beat again. Finally mix in the flour.  
3. Spoon half the mixture into the cupcake cases.  Mix the cocoa powder in the remaining half of the mixture and then place the remaining mixture in the cases.
4. Bake for around 20 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
5. To make the frosting beat together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla extract and milk until smooth.  I used half the buttercream to decorate the chocolate cupcakes and then added a tiny bit of red food colouring to create pink icing. I then used this on the plain cupcakes. 
6. Decorate with mini eggs, chicks etc. 

Forever Nigella - Street Party

This is my first entry into the Forever Nigella challenge created by Maison Cupcake and I'm just squeezing it in before the April challenge deadline ends. The theme for this challenge was 'Street Party' and is being hosted by Mardi at the lovely Eat Live Travel Write blog. I thought that Nigella's book Feast would be the perfect choice as it covers food for all kind of celebratory events. As we were having a little party for a certain wedding on Friday I decided to make her recipe for 'Love Buns' to celebrate William and Kate's big day. The recipe can be found here on nigella.com. The topping on these cakes is like a pillowy cloud of marshmallow - very indulgent. So the cakes got eaten, the Pimms got drunk and we partied for the new Duke & Duchess of Cambridge!

Spanish Vanilla Cake

I'm not going to lie, I was a bit gutted when I saw this month's We Should Cocoa Challenge set by Choclette. The secret ingredient for April is marzipan. I loathe marzipan - the flavour, the smell, everything! However the key word in the title is 'challenge' and I was determined to try baking with it - maybe it would change my mind about the evil almond paste. I trawled the internet to find a recipe which combined marzipan and chocolate and eventually came across this one for Spanish Vanilla Cake on cooksunited.co.uk. I was with Mr CB when buying the ingredients - I didn't realise that he too has a shared dislike of marzipan, even commenting that he couldn't have a packet in the house. He is prone to exaggeration so I did ignore this comment and buy it anyway!

I ordered a bundt tin specially for this cake but it unfortunately hasn't arrived yet so I had to make do with a normal springform tin. I really like the fact that this mixture was so light due to the beaten egg whites and it does result in a great springy cake. It is very similar to those little madeleine type cakes you get in bags in Spanish (a clue in the name of the cake maybe?!) supermarkets - a little bland but strangely moreish at the same time. I would prefer this cake without the marzipan - while the flavour isn't overpowering it is definitely there. Mr CB however did manage a whole slice....

The Recipe

250g marzipan

150g sugar

1 vanilla pod

pinch salt

1 egg

6 eggs, separated

150g plain flour

50g cornflour

60g dark chocolate, roughly chopped + extra for decorating

1. Grease a springform tin and preheat the oven to 190c.

2. Whisk the marzipan with half of the sugar, the scraped out vanilla seeds, salt, egg and 6 egg yolks. Stir until creamy.

3. Beat the egg whites with the remaining sugar until stiff and fold into the mixture.

4. Sieve the flour and cornflour over the batter and fold in. Finally fold in the chopped chocolate.

5. Pour the dough into the tin and bake for 60 minutes.

Just Cupcakes

This is the cupcake, or I should say fairy cake as they were then, recipe that my Mum taught me when I was about 5 years old. We used to finish ours as butterfly cakes with a little bit of butter icing. These ones have evolved more in the style of cupcakes. I usually measure everything in metric when baking but when it comes to these cakes it's in my head in ounces.

The Recipe

60z butter

60z caster sugar

60z self raising flour

3 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 180c.

2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat. Finally add flour and mix until smooth.

3. Put into individual cupcake cases and bake until golden springy to the touch (around 15 - 20 mins).

Topping

Icing sugar

Butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

I don't have the exact quantities for the topping - I just adjust until it all tastes right! I finished with mine with some Rainbow Sugar sprinkles that I got in Dean & Deluca in NYC.