Cakey Goodness!

So, recently my hub & I have moved house, and let me just say, our new kitchen is SO. SHINY. I adores it, I do, I do! So lately I've actually been doing a bit of cooking; last week, for example, I made not one, not two, but THREE cakes! Not sure why the sudden spurt in cakeish activity; partially because we had a church fundraising auction on Saturday night, so I volunteered to make a cake for that. But also because cakes are FUN, and I haven't done anything fun with baking in a while.

I learned three new techniques in this latest baking escapade, nearly killed my wrist with the amount of beating required, and totally trashed the kitchen. Several times. Good thing my husband loves me.

So, in order of appearance, here are my latest experiments:

1) Buttercream.

I've made buttercream before, but just your average butter-and-icing-sugar variety, not anything fancy or Proper. This time, I decided to try some recipes out of one of the cake books I got back in (I think) February:

I was going to make one of these recipes with the intent of trying the chocolate painting method - more on that at #3 - but for this cake I thought I'd do something different and try the cream-on-cream method.

So I made the cake - supposedly an orange cake, but given I used one lemon, one mandarin and one tangello, I'm calling it a citrus cake; made the filling - orange mousse, YUM; and then the next night spent ONE HOUR - that's right, a whole hour - making the buttercream. Italian meringue buttercream, to be precise. Quite possibly some of the most decadent stuff EVER. Boy, was my wrist sore after all that beating - I used an electric beater, sure, but it took HALF AN HOUR of constant mixing. So you know.

But the results were worth it, I think:

See? Much pretty :o) And it tasted amazing, though in small pieces. Quite rich.

2) Chocolate Collars.

I've seen chocolate collars before, though perhaps not in real life. So when I knew I'd be taking HALF the orange cake for the auction and needed to pair it with another half cake, and of course knew I wanted to do a choc mud cake, the collar seemed like the best idea to jazz up the choc cake. Although I learned many things - like don't do one end significantly before the other so it starts to dry while the rest is sloppy; and don't try to make the collar too tall because if it's still sloppy when you put it upright the chocolate will all run down onto the cake; and don't bother flooding the top of the cake with ganache until the collar is in place - it was fun and it came out well in the end.

The cake is chocolate mud (though slightly undercooked since it cooked weird - see picture - so more like a fudge cake, very yum) filled with homemade cookies and cream, topped with chocolate ganache.

3) Chocolate painting.

This was perhaps the most fun technique I learned. It's exactly what it says: painting with chocolate. For this first experiment I kept it simple and piped bees to top the plum cake with honey buttercream :)

So, thus my exciting week in baking. Yay!

Plum and Passionfruit Cupcakes

So, after deliberating all night, I finally figured how I wanted to do these. I remembered some other cupcakes that had a dual flavour combination, and thought about how they'd balanced the flavours... And these are what I came up with. Yes, they're tomato and basil cupcakes. And despite the fact that I can't stand raw tomato, I'm intrigued by these cupcakes. They're just the type of crazy thing I'd do.

As with the tomato cupcakes, the plum and passionfruit ones are not something that you can throw together in half an hour - though if you wanted to just make the cupcakes, I'd wholeheartedly support you as they're gorgeous.

As the recipe stands, it took me about seven hours to complete, with lots of waiting time and washing of dishes (and making of dinner) in between.

The truffles recipe is based on one I found at Gastronomicon. The cake recipe is my standard wet-ingredient cake which I modified from one I found ages ago on the internet. The glaze is based on the glaze from the tomato cupcakes at Cupcake Project, though mine's a lot runnier, and the cream... Well, it's just cream and passionfruit, after all.


Truffles

170g white chocolate, chopped
1/2c double thick cream
1/4c passionfruit pulp
1 1/2 T butter

Melt butter and chocolate. Stir through cream and passionfruit. Put in freezer for 4 hours, or overnight.

Scoop the ganache into balls with a melon baller or a teaspoon. Freeze again for 2 hours.

I was impatient waiting for the mixture to freeze the first time, and made it into balls after just two hours. Consequently, it took about three hours for the balls to freeze J

Melt some white chocolate. Dip the ganache balls into the chocolate and roll to cover. Place on a tray, and place in fridge to allow chocolate to set.

I think I just have issues with truffles. I've tried them once before, and the insides refused to set even after a couple of days. I decided it was cause I'd used plain cream, rather than double. So this time I bought double cream especially.

The insides got to a reasonable level of set-ness, but when it came to 'enrobing' them... Ick. The first three were okay, but the ganache melted so quickly that by the time I came to pick number four up it was a gooey lump. I still coated it in chocolate, which worked okay because the chocolate set, allowing me to recoat it without fear of melting, and resulting in some okay-ish looking truffles... But it was incredibly messing. I wonder if I should try to be patient and wait over night next time...

I still have rather a lot of ganache balls left that I couldn't be bothered to coat (I only did enough for the cupcakes), so maybe I'll try those tomorrow.

Plum Sauce

340g plums, de-stoned and roughly chopped
1/4c sugar
1/3c water

Stir over heat until sugar dissolves – about 1 minutes. Bring to the boil then simmer uncovered for 6 minutes. Allow to cool for 2 minutes, then puree if necessary (I didn't).

This makes slightly over the necessary cup. I added the leftovers into the glaze.

Cupcakes

1/4c sugar
1/2c margarine
1 egg
1/4t vanilla extract
1c plum sauce
1 1/2 c plain flour
1t baking soda

Cream sugar and margarine. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Alternately fold in plum sauce and flour/soda mix, some at a time, till all mixed.

Half fill cupcake tins, bake at 180C for 12mins. Tops will still be light when cooked. Cool on rack after 3 mins.

I got 19 cupcakes out of this, although they didn't rise as much as I was expecting - hardly at all. However, given the sweetness of the overall creation, this is probably a good thing.

Cream

mL cream
1/4 tin passionfruit

Whip cream. Fold in passionfruit.

May benefit from some icing sugar.

Glaze

1c honey
2 plums, chopped

Bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Cool for 10-15 minutes.

I had a whole honey-jar full of this left over. I guess I'll use it on ice cream or something, though it's not as scrumptious as the plum sauce.

Assembly

Cut a small cone out of the top of the cupcake and hollow the cupcake out a little. Fill with passionfruit cream; replace top. Dip cupcake upside down into the plum glaze – twist as you bring it out to catch drips. Allow first layer of glaze to soak into cake, then redip. Top with a truffle & serve. Mmm.

Don't they look awesomely shiny with the glaze? The colour is stunning, especially compared to the rather bland colour of the un-glazed cake. And surprisingly, they hold the second layer of glaze well - three hours later they look just as glazed.

Results

My first reaction when I tasted the batter was: ho hum… my goodness these are good! The batter, which just tasted like batter on first contact, has this amazing plummy kick to it which is just… amazing!

Fresh out of the oven and I just couldn’t resist, even though I knew there wasn’t many… So I only had a third of one. And they are just as good as the batter promised. A non-descript grey colour with flecks of red, these are the ugly ducklings of cupcakes – they taste SO good. The plum flavour is absolutely perfect, a great balance between tart and sweet, and you can taste it through the whole cupcake, not just if you happen to get a piece of plum. I just love the plum sauce, and will definitely make it again even just as an ice cream topping…

So now I’m wondering about the watermelon and pineapple cupcakes… Does this recipe just need saucy ingredients? I wonder how a watermelon sauce or a pineapple sauce would work… Would it work? Thoughts, thoughts…

…back to the cupcakes. The problem I had at this point was that the cupcakes were SO good I didn’t want to tamper with them and risk making them worse… Even the thought of icing them was scary. But I had a plan to follow, so follow I did despite my doubts.

As it turns out, they are absolutely brilliant. The passionfruit cream, which I feared might be too overpowering, was exactly strong enough to combat the strength of the plum flavour, and the glaze, which was a bit sickly on its own, was just right on the cake. And the truffles? To die for… However, a word of warning - these are sweet cupcakes. If sweet's not your thing, stick to the cake and cream combo and skip the glaze (very sweet) and truffles (good until about number five, then sickening... But then, I can't eat too much white chocolate at the best of times.)

Regardless, I would definitely make these again.

Definitely.

Dreaming of Cupcakes...

Wow, this has been a busy month! I meant to put up a notice here to say I'd be back after Christmas... But I got busy :(

Anyway, the month of hecticness is over, and I finally have my kitchen back. Over the next few days I'll post some pictures of my kitchen from the last six weeks - we've been renovating, and the kitchen has been... cramped, to say the least.

I had a dream a few weeks ago about some interesting cupcakes (ha! Not obsessed, really...) and now I finally have the chance to make them. Hoorah :)

What were they, what were they, I hear you asking, jumping up and down with anticipation... Oh wait, that's me jumping O:)

They were, in fact, plum and passionfruit. Perhaps inspired by the gorgeous plums I've been having for morning tea for the last few weeks. *drifts off into dreamy thoughts of tasty, juicy, sweet plums...*

Okay, I'm weird, I know. But you have to admit, plum and passionfruit is really quite tame compared to some of the things I do... And am planning O:)

So, I bought plums and passionfruit today... and sat down to look for recipes. And guess what. There are none.

*sigh*

So, I'm going to have to weigh up my options. I could try that recipe I found for applesauce, that I've since used with watermelon and pineapple. The drawback here is that neither of these particularly tasted like their title ingredient. It could just be the nature of the ingredients, but I'm not sure I want to risk it.

I could try a plum teacake recipe, and see what I can do with it... This of course relies on my ability to alter recipes, which I don't have a terribly large amount of confidence in...

OR, and here's an idea, I could search for passionfruit recipes. Hmm. Okay, off to do that now...