laurasaur

I was working from home today – by that I mean I was feeling like crap so I did 2/3rds of a day in bed on my laptop I was so drawn to the bottle of rosewater that has been in my cupboard for a long time I just had to make something.

So here it is. A vanilla rosewater cake, with a ground pistachio filling and a sweet rosewater glaze. The glaze tastes like roses, pretty amazing but I made it too runny and I don’t like how the photos have turned out. Oh well. I’m sure the recipient of my cake will be happy tomorrow.

I kind of ran out of time to decorate these guys but I was going for flavour over looks in this case anyway.

Base cupcake: Almond cupcakes
Filling: Caramel (1 tin of condensed milk, 2 tbsp golden syrup, 30g butter – heat until thick then cool)
Icing: Basic Buttercream
Topping: Crispy M&M’s speckled eggs and coconut.

Frosted with mocha buttercream and garnished with a rose (ok, a crappy rose) from my course tonight. Perfect light moist rich chocolate cupcakes, you can’t go wrong with this recipe.

The original recipe calls them “Old Fashioned” and they are just that. Perfect base recipe.

They also bake lovely and flat so perfect for decorating! Because of this, you need to be careful to not overfill the cases or they will actually sink. 2/3′s full is the magic number.

113 grams / 1/2 cup  / 1 stick butter, room temp
1-1/4 cups sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk or water
1 teaspoons vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit/190 degrees centigrade.
2. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well combined.
4. Measure the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a small sized bowl and whisk to combine.
5. Measure out the milk or water and vanilla and stir to combine
6. Add all the dry ingredients and mix till just combined.
7. Scoop batter into cupcake cups about 2/3’s full. Turn oven down to 350 degrees F/180 degrees centigrade and bake cupcakes for about 22-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

So I was preparing cupcakes for my 3rd lesson of the first Wilton course and I decided to try my own recipe. Bad move, considering they shrunk so bad from the cases they are completely unsuitable.

On the other hand, I feel these are moist, Dense and Rich almond babycakes. They have a dense tight crumb and marzipan flavour… my favourite..

These pull away from the cases so are best served without.

90g cream cheese
90g butter
2 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp almond essence (optional)

1/2 cup ground almonds
1/3 cup all purpose/plain flour
1/3 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Beat butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Beat in sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time until smooth. Add essence.

Add all dry ingredients and mix all together until no flours showing.

Fill cupcake liners or a small cake tin and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly golden on top.

This is not my favourite, I don’t like butter/spongey cake.. and to be honest I don’t really love LOVE nutella, and next time I would definately increase the nutella to cake ratio.

Original Recipe from [BakingBites], adapted from Donna Hay

10 tbsp(140 grams) butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups (200 grams) sifted all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Preheat oven to 325F/160F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners. Or 2 small heart tins and 4 cupcakes.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t look smooth. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until smooth.

Fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be 3/4 full. Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 12.