Sweet and celebratory engagement cupcakes!

Chocolate and vanilla, peanut butter and jelly, caramel and banana....these classic flavour pairings all represent the union of two elements that are seemingly meant for each other. Whilst these flavours are undeniably delicious and exciting on their own, it is in combination that they attain a truly timeless appeal, complimenting and counterbalancing, enhancing and enticing. If peanut butter did not have its characteristic salty crunch, would it make such an ideal foil for the sweet and acidic stickiness of jam? If vanilla did not possess its mild and fragrant warmth, how could it balance the rich decadence of chocolate?

In much the same way, I believe that the secret of a truly timeless and enduring relationship between people lies in the fusion of two perfectly suited personalities and temperaments, the ability of two people to foreground the great qualities in each other without overshadowing their individual qualities, all whilst subtly disguising any (potential) flaws. Whilst the match may seem at first incongruous or arise through pure serendipity, the union created is irrefutably perfect and makes it difficult to imagine either individual without the other. And so, as chocolate once met vanilla and peanut butter was once introduced by chance to jam, my brother Daniel met Michal...the rest, as they say, is history...

The occasion of my brother's engagement to Michal presented me with the wonderful opportunity to create festive cupcakes. The timing of this simcha was less than perfect, as an unfortunate wrist injury that had required my right arm to be encased in a restrictive fibreglass cast posed a significant obstacle to my baking and decorating abilities. However, I was undeterred, and set about to create chocolate and vanilla engagement cupcakes that would perfectly evoke the sense of romance and celebration that this happy occasion inspired.

Vanilla and chocolate celebratory cakes for Daniel and Michal's engagement party!

For the engagement party, I created an assortment of different sizes of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, allowing me to create a more striking display. The cupcakes were then frosted in romantic pink and bridal white, with an array of heart-shaped decorations and floral sugar motifs. I also used some miniature liquor chocolate bottles to add to the celebratory theme.

I used an assortment of romantic and floral sugar decorations as well as miniature liquor chocolate bottles and heart-shaped chocolates...luckily, Valentine's Day meant that the stores were filled with romantic themed decorations!!

 As can be seen above, I created two miniature 'bride and groom' wedding-style tiered cakes as a centrepiece for the display, with a vanilla one for Michal and a chocolate one for Daniel.

Adding the finishing touches to the display...note the wrist cast!!

Mazel Tov Daniel and Michal! I hope your future together involves many cupcakes :)

The occasion was a huge success and cupcakes definitely seemed to be enjoyed by the happy couple...I am now very busy planning for the wedding cupcakes, and hope to keep my blog updated with new posts.
xoxo
A

Cointreau and dark chocolate cupcakes to bring in the new year!

After a brief hiatus in my blogging career (largely due to the unrelenting study demands of my med degree followed by a whirlwind two-week trip to India), I am back in the blogosphere and more ready than ever to share my passion for cupcakes with you all! Whilst my blog posts of late have been few and far between, rest assured that my baking and cupcake decorating has continued in full force, and in between study, travels and much needed relaxation time, I have been devising many new recipes and decoration ideas. Now, feeling refreshed, rejuvenated and on the verge of a new and exciting year ahead, I am thrilled to share my latest cupcake project, crafted to evoke the celebratory mood and festive charm of New Year's Eve.

Sparkle cupcakes for a festive NYE!

My cointreau and dark chocolate celebration cupcakes embody the classically indulgent combination of rich, dark chocolate and fragrant, zesty orange. Being New Year, I decided to add a naughty alcoholic kick to the recipe with a (very) generous dash of cointreau liquor, once again pilfered from the family liquor cabinet! To further the decadent taste of these cakes, I used the best quality Lindt Orange Intense chocolate, and added creme fraiche to the basic recipe for an even moister, denser crumb. Here is the recipe I used for these cakes...
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line 12-hole muffin pan with silver foil liners
2. Melt 75g of orange flavoured dark chocolate and set aside to cool slightly
3. Cream together 85g of butter with 115g of caster sugar and add two eggs seperately to the mixture
4. Add 3 tablespoons of creme fraiche and mix in the melted chocolate
5. Sift 115g of self-raising flour into the mixture
6. Add 2 tablespoons of Cointreau liquor (or similar orange liquor) to the mixture and fold in
7. Bake for approximately 18 minutes or until risen, then remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack

For decoration, I sought to recreate the sparkle and glamour of NYE in all its glory, using edible glitter and gold and silver cachous to embelish each little cake. The cakes were frosted in a decadent dark chocolate and orange ganache, made using the same Lindt Orange Intense chocolate as was incorporated into the cake batter (simply pour warm cream over the chocolate to melt and create a luxurious, flowing ganache, adding a little butter for extra glossiness).

As a girl known well for my love of bling (no doubt a reflection of my Eastern European heritage, the same lineage which has given me a passion for all things leopard print!!) these cakes are the perfect reflection of the essence of NYE. A final decorative touch when serving the cakes will be provided by lit sparklers, ensuring that these cakes are as much an attraction as the fireworks themselves!

Happy NYE! Hope your new year is filled with sparkle, excitement and most importantly, cupcakes!!

Wishing everyone an amazing NYE and a wonderful year ahead and looking forward to sharing lots of cupcake projects with you all in the near future!!

xoxox
Anne

Turkish delights, to keep you out of harem's way...

It's been quite some time since I last had a chance to post, so it is with great excitement that I present to you my latest creative cupcake endeavour, guarenteed to entice and please with its intensely evocative flavour combinations and exciting contrasts of texture in every mouthful. My Turkish delight cupcakes are inspired by the beautiful fragrances and flavours of Middle Eastern deserts, from the alluring and intoxicating scent of rosewater and the gorgeous green crunch of pistachio nuts, to the sticky sweetness of Turkish delight,enrobed in its delicate dusting of powdered sugar. For me, the essence of these cupcakes is the fusion of the fragrant floral notes of the rosewater with the intense sweetness of the Turkish Delight, counterbalanced by the warmth and subtle smoky flavour of the toasted pistachio nuts.

My Turkish delight cupcakes, the epitome of decadent indulgence! Might I suggest they be consumed after a luxurious Turkish bath and massage for complete relaxation?!

The basis of these cupcakes is a white chocolate, pistachio and rosewater infused sponge. The rich sweetness of the white chocolate is perfectly offset by the aromatic rosewater and the earthy flavour and crunch of toasted pistachio nuts. By means of decoration, each individual cupcake is drizzled in a layer of white chocolate and topped with a mountain of sticky rose-scented Turkish delight and more toasted pistachio nuts, before receiving a final drizzle of white chocolate. Whilst these cupcakes may sound almost excessively indulgent, they make a perfect afternoon tea treat and are equally suited to being served as a decadent dessert finale at the conclusion of a Middle Eastern themed meal with a cardamon-laced black coffee or a steaming cup of fresh mint tea.


My ability to decorate cupcakes is clearly superior to my technological skills, as I was completely incapable of working out how to rotate this photo.....despite it's curious orientation, it does evoke the decorative charm of these little cakes!

I first made these cupcakes as a dessert dish to serve at the end of a Middle Eastern themed dinner party, along with other fragrant Middle Eastern inspired dessert dishes such as cinnamon honey and poppy seed biscuits and a lemon syrup infused poppy seed and semolina torte...



The honey, cinamon and poppy seed biscuits



Semolina and poppy seed cake drizzled in a lime infused syrup and topped with zesty shards of lime...

Stay tuned for more blog posts, hopefullyin less sporadic intervals than my recent track-record would suggest!
xx
Anne

Spring fling treats to tempt...

In honour of the first beautiful days of Sydney springtime, I was inspired to create a batch of cupcakes that combine the fresh and delicate flavours of the Spring harvest with whimsical floral decorations perfect to herald the arrival of the new season. This week, I was particularly inspired by the beauty of Spring blooms, which offer a glorious palette of vibrant colours and enticingly sweet fragrances. Recently, I was lucky to have the chance to see the incredible floral displays at David Jones as part of the Floriography festival, and I dutifully battled the crowds of fellow floral enthusiasts (largely of the octagenerian set...) to capture some photos of the stunning blooms.

One of my favourite vibrantly coloured floral displays from this year's Floriography...

I looked for a fellow floral-enthusiast to capture my photo with the gorgeous floral display but given the average age of Floriography spectators was around 80, I didnt have much luck finding someone with the skills to operate my Iphone camera, so settled on some 'autoportraiture'!!

 When my mind turns to the tastes and scents of springtime, I am immediately drawn to the zingy sweetness of succulent red berries combined with the aromatic sweetness of vanilla. It was this fusion of flavours that inspired me to create my Teddy Bears' Picnic cupcakes, miniature vanilla-infused sponge cakes studded with juicy mixed berries and flecked with toasted almonds.

Teddy Bears' Picnic cupcakes, a celebration of spring-time flavours and colours!

For the decoration, I created a simple but luscious strawberry frosting to complement the vanilla cake and the sweet, slightly tart berries within. I then drew on my considerable passion for all things floral, embellishing each frosted cupcake with miniature sugar flowers, honey-flavoured tiny teddies, and pastel-hued hundreds and thousands!

My first attempt to distill the flavours and colours of the season into cupcake form...

My absolute favourite flowers from the Floriography display

The official season of pastel-coloured floral cardigans is definitely something I can embrace!

As spring has most definitely 'sprung', I am excited by the prospect of all the wonderful things this season has to offer, from delicious sweet flavour combinations, the scent of spring flowers, more days spent in the sunshine, and more chances to sport light springtime cardigans!
xx
Anne

All cupcakes great and small

When I was informed that August is the month of 'Cupcake Day for the RSPCA', I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of getting involved in an initiative that combines my passion for cupcakes with the chance to get my ever-enthusiastic friends together and support such a good cause. Essentially, the Cupcake Day encourages animal-lovers to host a morning or afternoon tea and collect funds for the RSPCA's various programs. This year, I was inspired to host a cupcake day for my girlfriends, the perfect occasion to create some animal-themed cupcake...

My chocolate-vanilla swirl cupcakes with chocolate and peanut-butter frosting and assorted animal themed decorations!

I felt that it was fitting for this particular cupcake day to create some vegan cupcakes, the obvious animal-friendly choice (also cakes without dairy are suitable for lactose intolerant people like me!) I decided to create a fairly simple cupcake base, drawing on elements from several different vegan cupcake recipes that I have tried and tested over the years. For both visual appeal and taste, I settled on baking a batch of marbled chocolate and vanilla cakes, with beautiful intertwined swirls of cocoa and vanilla scented sponge. Making marble cakes always produces a striking result and is relatively easy to master - just add spoonfulls of different flavoured batters into the cupcake papers and use a knife or a skewer to create a free-form marbled design.

The marbled cakes just prior to icing - the marbled effect is best appreciated when the cupcakes are actually cut in half (or more accurately, when someone takes a bite out of one!), but this still gives a general sense of the technique

For decorations, I went with two different frosting options, a light, fluffy peanut butter frosting, and a richer chocolate one. I then exercised a great degree of creative licence to add all manner of critter-related decorations, from little chocolate cookies depicting Australian native fauna to candy farm animals and the slightly more tenuous 'tiny teddies', not exactly a species of note in Australia but still delicious and worth including on my animal cupcakes!

The finished product, my celebration of all creatures great, small, and largely fictional (tiny teddies), perfectly framed against an animal-print themed serviette!

 

 

I hope to post again an update of the event and also with the vegan chocolate swirl recipe for those interested! I am looking forward to seeing the creative cupcake skills of my good friend Kate tomorrow and also having a chance to embrace the animal loving theme in all it's glory!

xx
Anne

Planning to add some animal-themed flair to the proceedings in a leopard print dress...matching outfits to serviettes is becoming a habit!

Choca-mocha cupcakes, to awaken the senses...

Does the combination of smooth dark chocolate blended with the aromatic fragrance of freshly roasted coffee entice you? My latest cupcake creations sought to capture the harmonious fusion of chocolate and coffee, transforming the tempting flavours of a warm mug of mocha-latte into an edible bite-sized treat. This week, I drew my inspiration from the incredible coffee artistry of my friend Ben, whose beautiful caffeine-based creations would make the ideal accompaniment to a decadent chocolate cupcake (in my case, make it a soy decaf latte..).

My choca-mocha cupcakes, served cafe-style...

Ben's artistic coffee decoration, the creative inspiration for my mocha cupcakes (all credits for Iphone photography skill and coffee decoration go to Ben!)

In designing these cupcakes, I also thought that the anti-oxidant rich and caffeine-ladden combination of chocolate and coffee would provide a good little 'pick-me-up' for the notoriously caffeine addicted and sleep deprived second-year medical students who were to be on the receiving end of these cupcakes...and of course the addition of a dash of alcohol never seems to do any harm either...

The fruitful product of my trip to the liquor cabinet - dark, fragrant Tia Maria, the liquor distillation of intense coffee flavour and a key ingredient of my mocha cupcakes!

Not quite as charming or as perfect a match as my cherry-on-top themed cardigan but I couldnt resist featuring this 'tia maria' bottle inspired outfit

I set out to create a very rich, dense and decadent mocha-flavoured cupcake by infusing a double chocolate sponge with a good dash of tia maria (for a non-drinker, my little excursions to the purely decorative family drinks cabinet have become increasingly frequent!), as well as an additional hit of coffee. In an uncharacteristic display of restraint, I resisted the temptation to add any further flavours to the cupcakes, seeking to foreground the already complex flavour notes offered by the meltingly dark duo of coffee and chocolate. Indeed, the rich aroma of these cupcakes as they baked was quite intoxicating.

My cake baking and decorating skills are clearly a bit more advanced than my food-photography skills! Nevertheless, here are the finished products of my coffee-chocolate cupcake endeavours

By means of decoration, I chose a velvety and luxurious white chocolate ganache created by pouring warm cream over shards of white chocolate. The milky sweetness of the white chocolate seemed an ideal choice here, providing  'un petit clin d'oeil' to the frothy milk topping of a traditional mocha or cappucino. This allusion was echoed by a light dusting of cocoa powder, and, as a final decorative touch, a scattering of  coffee beans, ensuring my classmates would make it through to at least the end of the first hour! I also used some stencils that I have for decorated the top of coffees in order to add some flair to some of the cakes

My cocoa stencilling can be seen in the background

These mocha cupcakes also provided me with the perfect occasion to use my adorable 'cupcake-in-a-cup' moulds, re-useable silicon cases which came in a set of four complete with little saucers. Like many of my most treasured items of cupcake paraphenalia, these were sourced from the amazing home-wares emporium 'Plenty' in Bondi Junction (also the main supplier of all the pretty serviettes that I often feature in photos).An alternative way of presenting these cupcakes would be to remove them from their paper cases and place each little cake in a small espresso cup before frosting with ganache or cream and serving with a spoon to plunge into the cocoa centres...

An example of presenting mocha cupcakes 'disguised' as mini cappucinos, perfect for die-hard caffeine addicts or anyone seeking to embody the joys of cafe culture in cupcake form

For those inspired to create their own mouth-watering mocha cupcakes, here is the recipe I used:
100g quality dark chocolate
165g soft butter
1/4 cup of coffee liquor (any that you fancy)
2 tablespoons of instant coffee granules
1 1/4 cups of caster sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2/3 cup of water
1 cup plain flour plus 2 tablespoons self-raising flour
1 egg

Preheat oven to 150 degrees fanforced, prepare cupcake tin with paper cases. Melt chocolate, butter, liquor, sugar and coffee over a lowe heat and allow to cool before adding to the dry ingredients. Mix well and spoon into the cases - the mixture will be disconcertingly runny, do not panic! Bake in the oven for an even more disconcerting and lengthy 50 minutes (I have never seen a cupcake recipe with such a long bake-time, but the fluid consistency of the batter calls for this). Leave to cool before decorating, and enjoy!

Bon appetit!

I hope that this post has inspired you as much as Ben's coffee-decoration skills inspired me, and I am looking forward to sharing these little pick-me-ups with my beloved PBL group!
xx
Anne

Step into my opium den...

One of the most comforting and appealing flavour combinations of the baking world that translates perfectly into cupcake form is the classic fusion of orange and poppy-seed. The pairing of a moist, buttery sponge, flecked with shreds of orange zest and speckled with poppy seeds, with swirls of luscious citrus-spiked cream-cheese frosting, creates a cake that is indulgent without being too rich. The sharp freshness of the citrus zest provides a necessary element of 'zing' to the light sponge, offering an ideal counterpoint to the creaminess of the frosting. As for the poppy-seeds, aside from infusing the cakes with a subtle but no-doubt pleasing hit of opiates (!), I adore the hint of crunch that they lend to these cupcakes.

My first batch of orange and poppy-seed cupcakes, frosted with light cream-cheese frosting and decorated with citrus-flavoured jellies and poppy seeds....this photo doesn't quite capture the wonderful poppy-decorated serviette that I presented them on!

In my first foray into the world of orange and poppy-seed, I wanted to use decorations that would enhance the playful qualities of these miniature cakes. To this end, I topped each cream-cheese frosted cake with a candy citrus segment and sprinkled the edges with a poppy-seed border. I have to admit that it seemed a pity to mask the beautiful golden sponge under so much frosting, and on reflection I think I would have preferred a more restrained dollop of frosting, allowing some of the sponge to still be seen.

You can just glimpse the un-frosted cake, in its golden glory, in the background of this photo!

Luckily for me, a second occasion to make orange and poppy-seed cupcakes presented itself to me, allowing me to experiment with a different and perhaps slightly more sophisticated way of decorating the cakes:

Orange and poppy-seed cupcakes, the 'redux'...

In this second attempt, I decided to use  a simple citrus flavoured icing with a fairly fluid consistency instead of the traditional rich cream cheese frosting. This more fluid icing gave the cakes a lovely transluscent glazed effect and ran down the sides of the cakes to produce a classic home-baked look. I decorated each little cake with some beautiful crystalline shards of candied citrus peel, adding another element of textural contrast and also some additional citrus hints of lemon and lime to the orange fragrances of the cake. Other decoration ideas that I think would work well include a simple dollop of cream cheese frosting and a fresh orange or mandarin segment, or, for a more indulgent touch, a sliver of chocolate-dipped candied orange peel, a square of Lindt Orange Intense dark chocolate, or even a segment of Terry's chocolate orange.

Orange and poppy-seed cupcakes - the perfect rainy-day baking project, and even better when enjoyed with a cup of fragrant bergamont-infused earl-grey tea, a good book to read and a warm blanket to snuggle under!

For those keen to recreate these cakes in their own kitchen, here is my recipe for orange and poppy-seed cupcakes:
115g soft unsalted butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
Grated zest of one orange (unwaxed)
3 tablespoons of poppy-seeds
1 tablespoon of milk
Preheat oven to 180 degrees fan forced and prepare a tray with 12 cupcake papers. Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs and sift in the flour. Add the zest, milk and poppyseeds and stir to combine (do not overbeat). Spoon mixture into prepared cases and bake in the oven for approximately 18 minutes or until golden and springy to the touch. Allow to cool completely before frosting as desired, either with cream-cheese frosting (made my combining cream cheese, icing sugar and orange zest), or with a simple icing sugar and fresh orange juice glaze.

I hope you enjoy making these cakes, I am hoping to have more opporunities to experiment with different decoration ideas in the near future!
xx
Anne