The Melbourne Zombie Shuffle...

The boys and I went to a Halloween party last night, the boys dressed as ninjas and me in my regular duds, as per the invite. It was fun, lots of kids and as the night wore on, Mr 6 stuck closer and closer by me, eventually saying "it's just a little bit too scary for me mum". 

Think life-sized skeleton bride standing in one corner, massive spiders and webs everywhere and a cackling witch head on the table. Not being brought up with Halloween, all this spookyness is pretty new to them; in general, they coped admirably.

I even made these cupcakes for school on Friday. 

Because I, in my genius-ness, thought Halloween was today, Sunday, thereby making Friday the logical day for bringing Halloween cupcakes to school. Now I feel really smart. 

Never mind, they were cute and everyone enjoyed them.

And have a look at this, the 2010 Melbourne Zombie Shuffle.

Freaky stuff!

BOO!

To market to market........home again, home again

Well first up let me confess I forgot my camera....... in my defense, the market is 1 1/2 hrs away and we had to be leaving home at 7.30am with both kids and their supplies for the day, lots of cupcakes and ourselves. We being hubby and I.

The whole market-stall-for-a-day thing came about because my hubby is a good friend of the Nut Bloke, who asked hubby and me if we could mind his stall for the day because he would be out of town. The Nut Blokes stall on Saturday was at the Yarragon Market....no link 'cos it's just not very big in market terms!...., so we were happy to help out, because my mother-in-law lives in Yarragon so she was more than happy to have our boys for the day so we could man (and woman, haha) the stall.

And the Nut Bloke was happy for me to put some cupcakes on his stall for the day. However, it was a very quiet day, much quieter than usual according to the CFA ladies across the aisle who are there every market day (and who are doing their best to marry the Nut Bloke off to any eligible female who comes along!). So not a great deal was sold, maybe about half of what I'd made, and at the end of the afternoon I gave some away to other stall holders, who were busy trying to give their unsold goods away too. Now I have some lovely organic sourdough bread from a local farm, a bunch of beautiful fresh silverbeet, and other bits and bobs of fresh-but-looking-slightly-wilted veggies.

But fun was had, it was just hubby and I which happens very, very, very rarely. In between serving customers, which was fun too as many of them are locals and know my hubby from when he was a little tacker, we talked, laughed, joked and didn't get interrupted by small piping voices once! Much as we love our little monsters, it was heavenly :)

So no photos, sorry but you have already seen the varieties I made. Chocolate with chocolate ganache and white chocolate with raspberry.

Now, I did make one more variety, caramel, and they were first out of the oven the night before the market. And this is how they look now...

They sank. Yes, actually sank. Not just not-rounded on top, but sunken a bit in the middle. I have made these before and they were delicious and perfect looking, so I have yet to figure out where I went wrong, but I suspect it was in the caramel that gets mixed into the batter. Hmmmm. So, I'll figure out the problem there before I put that recipe up.

I got hubby to peel them out of their wrappers and dump them in a bowl, from where they were transferred to the freezer. I now have the perfect excuse to try my hand at cake balls. Yes, sad I know, hehehe....

And I've had a play around with my new cookie cutters, how cute are these little guys? They're on a bread and butter plate, if that gives you an idea of their size.

Hubby thinks these may go down well at a market and I think perhaps cake balls might too.

Lots of ideas floating round in my head...

I christened them!

With Billy's vanilla vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting...

This is quite a good recipe, but reading through the comments a few people managed to get it wrong. If you've ever made cupcakes you'll find the way the recipe is put together a little odd......so I used my own tried and true method instead.

And tweaked the ingredients just a tiny bit too.

Yes, once again I cannot just blindly follow a recipe. However, apart from the fact my buttercream separated (my fault), they turned out admirably. So much so that I might put this on my master list of cupcake flavours.

Now in the interests of sharing good cupcakeness around, I'll put up my version of this recipe sometime over the next few days. Vanilla is a classic after all, and we should all be able to pull a great vanilla recipe out of our sleeve at short notice.

Right?

Oh and the cupcake courier works admirably, hubbby's taking them to work tomorrow in it.
And it has the added bonus of keeping small fingers out...

Here's my birthday present!

Ok, not a great picture but here they are...

The 3 large boxes are cupcake couriers, which I finally received on the weekend. (Not the company's fault, I was waiting on my sis-in-law to fly them down with her when she came)

And on top of those is a cupcake stand that I recieved from my mother-in-law on the same day....hehehe, I'm easy to think of gifts for at the moment, yeah?!

I have another offer of some space on his stall from The Nut Bloke, so I'll be baking up a storm for Saturday 24th Oct. And now I can pack 'em all up and carry them.

Isn't it funny what gets me all excited these days?!

I thought I might christen my cupcake couriers with Martha Stewart's Chocolate Salted Caramel cupcakes, but I didn't really like the resulting chewy caramel encased in chocolate cake thing. It may have been because my caramel was several shades darker than it appears in this photo, and had a distinct burnt sugar taste to it......

The actual chocolate cupcakes part was fairly good though and easy to make.

That bit of the recipe is worth keeping.

White chocolate cupcakes with raspberry icing....or frosting, if you prefer

This is my latest creation, white chocolate and raspberry, ooh yum yum!

Easy to make and very delish too....

Mmm mmm!


This recipe is a keeper, it is veeery easy to make, it certainly makes plenty, they taste fantastic and, they freeze well too. What more could you ask for?

The following recipe is from the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery book.



White chocolate mud cupcakes

4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
500gm butter, chopped
2 cups milk
4 cups caster sugar
300gm white chocolate, chopped
4 eggs, whisked
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• Preheat over to 155 c and place cupcake liners into molds. (Recipe said 24 cupcakes, I got more like 48, so I must be using smaller liners)

• Sift flour and baking powder together in a large bowl, make a well in the center and set aside.

• Put milk, butter, caster sugar and white chocolate in a metal bowl and place over large saucepan of simmering water. Stir continuously using a wooden flat bottomed spoon, until choc has melted and sugar has dissolved. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

• Use a rubber spatula to fold the eggs and vanilla into the cooled chocolate mixture. Pour this mixture into the well in the flour and fold together until well combined.

• Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full and bake for 25-30 minutes or until skewer inserted comes out clean.

Now, I was a bit stumped as to what to ice these with, the book makes them in dariole molds and pours ganache over them, then ices the tops with a very simple mixture to drip down the sides.

I wanted something simpler and more cupcakey so to Master Chef Google I turned.....
and found raspberry frosting and raspberry buttercream frosting.

Right, raspberry it is.
I went with the first frosting recipe, mainly because I didn't have cream, and it worked a treat.

Although I didn't strain the berries as per the recipe (forgot) so my icing is a lot deeper in colour and has bits in it.
Which I like, except for the fact that the colour and texture makes me think of sausage meat, which is sooooo not something I want smeared on a cupcake. Also it didn't pipe well, although I am still using my too small piping nozzles, so bigger ones may fix that problem.

The flavour is wonderful, definitely reminiscent of raspberries, but to eliminate the mental image of sausage meat on cupcake, next time I will use less berries and straaaiiiiiin them well.



Here are my efforts to apply the icing....

Yep, I still need practise.

But YUM!

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache - mmmmm

My next lot of practice cupcakes are chocolate and coffee, although I think you're not really supposed to taste the coffee, as it's not included in the title. Anyway, I won't be making them again, they are somewhat dry and flat, even though I followed the recipe to a T and watched my cooking time carefully.

But they were fine for decorating practice, so I made some chocolate ganache and got to work.

Working on my handmade swirl mostly....

I still haven't got myself another piping set, hence working by hand. I was pleased with the results although a tad inconsistent.

This is the swirl I'm trying to emulate...





These sweet looking things are from the Crabapple Cupcake bakery in Melbourne, topped by their signature swirl, the details of how to recreate it are in here...their tell-all-secrets-book.





Which if you desire it, you may buy from The Bookshelf of Oz, currently on special.
Or probably any other major bookstore too. It's a great book for ideas and just general drooling over.

(Crabapple Cupcake Bakery in their original form has closed down, they now have an online presence as Crabapple Cupcakes and Supplies).


But the ganache is yum, yum, yum! I can think of 100 ways to use that, except that I might need to join Biggest Loser if I put my thoughts into practice...

Sent them with hubby to work as usual, where they went down well.......maybe they're just too polite to say anything else!

Well I made some practise cupcakes....

After my recent cupcake decorating workshop, I've decided I need more regular decorating practice. I tried out a new recipe yesterday, which turned out to be a flop.....all my cupcakes had flat tops......and then found my piping set in the very back of the pantry. Once I'd washed the cobwebs off it, I filled it with buttercream icing and got to work , trying out some of the techniques I'd learned at the workshop.

I figured out why you need cupcakes with a lovely rounded top, that's so you can put a beautiful swirl of icing on it that comes up to a point. It doesn't have quite the same effect if you have a flat top to begin with.

Anyway, the only photo I have of my efforts is of these two little ones that I used up the remainder of the icing on. Perfect kid size.

So not a true record of my endeavors, as I sent all the larger ones to hubby's work, with strict instructions for him to make it known that these are PROTOTYPES only, PRACTICE cupcakes, not a true showcase of what I can do. I can't help but be slightly vain!

Decided I need a different piping set, the one I have appears as if it's better suiting to decorating cookies, making fine lines etc. Or is it a case of a workman and his tools............?

Rocky road cupcakes

My latest cupcake effort is for H's daycare class, being that it is his fourth birthday this week. 

I am sure his teachers will NOT love me, because the cupcakes themselves are chocolate and coffee (can't taste the coffee though) and the decorations are marshmallows, white chocolate, milk chocolate and gummy lollies. 

All stuck on with a butter cream icing. How else would I make a rocky road cupcake? My initial idea was to also pipe melted chocolate over the top.....but my choc wasn't smooth enough and wouldn't come out of the piping bag properly, so I ditched that idea this time round. (It was late, I was tired, first time with the piping bag. That's my excuse, lame I know.)


Here they are...

Hubby took a few to work, where they were veeeerrry well received. 

I however didn't eat one, as my sense of taste is still on holiday thanks to my stuffed up nose and head cold, sigh...