Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Icing

More birthday cakes - my newly 6-year-old had his birthday in the school holidays, so he missed out on taking cakes to share with his classmates.

I'm not a big fan of making (or eating) cupcakes, but I know it's a lot easier for a teacher to share small cakes around the class than to cut slices of a bigger birthday cake.

So this evening I made some cupcakes for him to take tomorrow. I made a simple cake batter from Tessa Kiros's 'Apples For Jam' (the Tiny Cakes recipe) and it produced lots of little cakes....

...lots and lots of little cakes.

I know that for most children the cake topping is the most interesting part, so I made a chocolate icing that tastes good and is really easy to make.

Melt butter and milk in a small pan. Sieve cocoa powder into a large bowl. Pour melted butter/milk mixture into the cocoa powder, add vanilla extract and stir together. Sift in icing sugar and mix well.

It starts to set as you are spreading it on the cakes, so stir in a few drops of milk as you go if it's getting too thick to work with.



There wasn't enough icing to cover all the cakes I made, but double the recipe would have done it easily.

Now I have plenty of chocolate icing and raspberry jelly sweet-topped cakes to send to class KF tomorrow (and I only needed 22!)

Chocolate Icing ingredients:
65 g butter
3 tbsp milk
25 g cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
225 g icing sugar

Chinese Pancakes

I was reading about Chinese Pancakes on George's blog and she included a link that showed how to make your own. I was suddenly inspired yesterday to give them a go.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, then mix in boiling water to make a sticky dough. Sprinkle more flour over the dough, and over the work surface then knead until smooth, elastic and no longer sticky. Cover and leave for half an hour.

With a floured rolling pin, roll out dough to half a centimetre thickness then cut out circles. Once cut, cover circles to avoid drying out. Re-roll leftover dough and continue cutting until used up.

Lightly brush each circle with oil, and stick circles together in pairs, oiled sides facing each other. Roll each pair of circles out with a floured rolling pin until paper thin.

Heat a pan to medium-high heat (don't add oil) then put a pancake in. Cook for about 1 1/2 minutes and then turn over and cook the other side. Some of the pancakes puffed right up like little balloons.

The idea is that you separate each pancake into two thinner pancakes while they are still warm. When separated, one side will have the cooked and slightly charred look, and the other side will be smoother and softer looking.

As I made these on the spur of the moment, I didn't have any delicious fillings prepared, but as the frying pan was already warm, Stephen had the bright idea of eating them with fried eggs as a filling. He added a sprinkle of salt to his, and to mine I added some soy sauce. Tasty!

Ingredients:
300 g flour
1 tbsp sugar
240 ml boiling water
sesame oil for brushing (I used olive oil)

Brownies

These are the famous 'Hevz's Brownies' that quite a few of us from Vi's Pantry rave about. They are very quick and easy, and use cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate.

I decided that I would make the simplest (and therefore cheapest) version of the recipe to see how they turned out. No vanilla extract, choc chips or nuts.

Melt butter in a pan and whisk in the cocoa until smooth. Measure out flour, beat eggs in a large bowl and mix in sugar.

Add butter/cocoa to egg and sugar mixture and mix well. Fold in flour.

Pour mixture into lined pan (I used a square Pyrex dish roughly 20 x 20 cm lined with two strips of baking paper).

Cook at 180 C for 20 mins or so, in middle of oven, until brownies are firm to touch and the top is matt and cracked looking. Don't overcook - the inside should still be quite soft.

(This time the top of my brownies looked bubbly rather than cracked; the same bubbling happened with my Malteser Cake sponges - I'm not sure why this is happening but luckily it doesn't affect the taste.)

Cool 10 mins in tin before cutting into squares.

These turn out really well, and are still delicious without all the extras, which is great if you have to make a dessert or treat with not a lot of money!

Ingredients:
100 g butter
50 g cocoa powder
2 eggs
200 g caster sugar (I used 150 g because I like things not v sweet)
50 g self-raising flour

*If you want to add the extras: before folding in flour mix in 1 tsp vanilla extract and 50 g chocolate chips or chunks (milk or white choc) or chopped pecans.*

Malteser Cake

Just three days after making the Honey Bee Cake, it's now my middle son's birthday, and he has chosen the Malteser Cake from Feast.

This one takes a little more concentration because you can't just put all the ingredients in the processor. Eggs and sugar are beaten together in a bowl; milk, butter and Horlicks are heated in a pan, and flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb are mixed together in another bowl.


Then the hot milk mixture is beaten into the egg mixture, and the flour mixture is folded in at the end. The runny mixture is divided between two 20 cm baking tins, and cooked for 25 mins at 170 C.

I think my sponges didn't quite rise as well as they should, and they were bubbly-looking on the surface. Something didn't quite go right here, but I tested a tiny bit and it tasted fine.

The buttercream is made by beating up icing sugar, butter, Horlicks and cocoa and then you sandwich the sponges together with half the buttercream and then spread the rest on the top.

(Or you get Birthday Boy to do this bit for you, and also ask him to decorate the cake with Maltesers while he's there.)

This cake tastes just like a giant Malteser!

It turned out very well, even with my strange-looking sponges. I can imagine this cake becoming a birthday regular.

Ingredients:
Cake:
150 g soft brown sugar
100 g caster sugar
3 eggs
175 ml milk
15 g butter
2 tbsp Horlicks
175 g plain flour
25 g cocoa, sieved
1 tbsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarb

Icing and decoration:
250 g icing sugar (sieved or make icing in food processor)
1 tsp cocoa
45 g Horlicks
125 g soft unsalted butter
2 tbsp boiling water
around 80 g Maltesers (I bought a big pack)

Honey Bee Cake

This was my youngest son's choice of cake for his 6th birthday - the Honey Bee Cake from 'Feast'. It's quite easy to make, very chocolatey and fun to decorate!

Put all the cake ingredients (except hot water) in a food processor if you have one and whizz till smooth. Pour in the hot water while the processor is running. Pour the runny mixture into a springform tin and cook at 180 C for around 1 1/2 hours. Cover with foil after half an hour to avoid the top burning.

Mine rose more than I expected and touched the foil, which is why a bit of the top is missing. Maybe I processed the mixture for too long and added too much air to the mixture?

Put the cake on its serving plate and put strips of baking paper under the sides to keep the plate clean - these can be removed before serving.

For the honey glaze, heat water and honey in a medium pan (I was a little sparing with the honey as there are a few of us who are not too keen on it and I didn't want it to overpower the cake), then add chopped up chocolate. Swirl the mixture around to start the chocolate melting, then whisk until smooth. Gradually stir in seived icing sugar, then pour it over the cake.

This was the fun bit - making the bees. I coloured some marzipan with some yellow food colouring, then the children made lots of cute bees by painting on stripes and eyes with the left-over glaze, and sticking in flaked almond wings.

As my cake was a little rounded at the top and the icing was runny, our (quite hefty) bees kept sliding down to the sides. Next time I shall probably slice a little off the top of the cake to avoid this problem! And making slightly smaller bees would help too.

Add the bees to the cake - I forgot to take a photo of the cake all alight with candles but it looked really sweet, especially to a newly-six year-old who had helped make the bees!

The cake was very delicious, and I'm not the biggest fan of chocolate cake. The sponge part was soft, moist and fine, and there was only the slightest hint of honey which was good for those of us who are not so keen.

Recipe here on the Nigella Website

Meatball Casserole

This isn't exactly a glamorous or exotic meal, but it's tasty and easy to make and includes lots of vegetables. It can be adapted to whichever flavours you like and also to the vegetables you have.

Make the meatballs by mixing together the meat and other ingredients. Roll into smallish meatballs and fry in a little oil until the outsides are browned. (Or cook them in the oven at 200 C for 15 mins or so, which is what I usually do because I find it's less messy.)

In the meantime, soften the onion in a little oil in an ovenproof pan, then add the other vegetables and fry gently for a few minutes.

Blend the cornflour with a little stock and add to the pan with the remaining stock. Bring to the boil, stirring and cook for a minute.

Add meatballs, put a lid on and cook in the oven at 190 C for 30 - 40 mins. I have a big Scanpan casserole and I can reduce the oven temperature to around 120 C once it is all heated through.

When cooked, add a little more salt and pepper if needed. Serve with bread rolls.

Ingredients:

meatballs:
500 g lean minced beef
half an onion, finely chopped
2 tsp dried mixed herbs
1 egg, beaten
handful of porridge oats, breadcrumbs or semolina
good squirt of barbecue sauce
salt and pepper

rest of the casserole:
half an onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 red capsicum, de-seeded and sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
couple of big handfuls of green beans
2 tbsp cornflour
500 ml beef stock

Yogurt Cake

I saw this cake on The Goddess's Kitchen blog a while ago, and really wanted to try it. I thought it would work well in a bundt tin.

In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder and bicarb. In another bowl, gently combine yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla, oil and rum.

Add flour mixture to yogurt mixture and blend together gently.

Pour batter into an oiled bundt tin (or round 25 cm cake pan greased and bottom lined).

Bake at 180 C for 30 - 35 mins until top is golden brown. Stand for 10 mins and transfer to cooling rack.

The cooked cake in the pan. Lovely and tangy - great with a cup of tea or some ice cream. It actually tastes a lot like cheesecake!

The finished cake, turned out onto the rack.

I often think the cake looks better top-side up when it's been cooked in a bundt tin, as below, although this one looks pretty cracked.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
2 eggs
250 ml (1 cup) whole milk plain unsweetened yogurt (I used Greek)
200 g (1 cup) sugar
80 ml (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon light rum (if you have any - I didn't add this)

Chips

I'm not keen on the bags of oven chips you can buy, so if I need chips I make them instead.

I just slice up potatoes and fry them in a little olive oil in my big frying pan.

I think maybe these should really be called sauteed potatoes, but around here they're called 'Mum's chips'.

I don't attempt to cut them into chip shapes, instead I cut each peeled potato in half lengthways, and then slice each half several times - I suppose each slice is around half a centimetre thick.

Lay them in a single layer in a medium-heated pan with a little olive oil - they will shrink as they cook, so it doesn't matter if the pan is a little crowded at first. Don't have the heat too high, as they have to cook through as well as crisp up on the outside.

You can pre-cook the potatoes to speed up the frying process, and you end up with a slightly fluffier result, which is very nice. You also end up with an extra pan to wash up!


Turn them over when they have turned golden underneath, then keep going until they are completely cooked. Sprinkle with a little salt.

Vi's Mum's Oat Cookies

I needed to make something for the boys' school lunchboxes tomorrow, and I had run out of eggs - so I decided to try Vi's Mum's oat cookies.

Melt butter, sugar and golden syrup gently in a pan, and in a large bowl combine flour, oats and bicarb.

I used half white and half brown sugar because I like the caramel-like flavour that the brown sugar adds, and I also stirred in a handful of sultanas.

Stir the melted ingredients into the flour and oats, then put dessertspoonfuls on a baking tray.


Cook at 180 C for 12 - 15 mins. Leave to cool for a few minutes before moving to a cooling rack.

Yum!

Ingredients:
100 g SR flour
100 g porridge oats
1/2 level tsp bicarb
100 g butter
100 g sugar (I used 80 g)
1 tbsp golden syrup

Baci di Ricotta

Coby inspired me to try making these. I always assumed they would be complicated to make but they are very easy. As she said, it's quite difficult to photograph these once they're cooked as they get gobbled up very quickly!

They are from Nigella's book 'Feast' and they are like little ricotta fritters, slightly sweet, tasting very much like cinnamon doughnuts.


Beat ricotta and eggs, then add flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla extract. Beat until reasonably smooth.

Heat about 2 cm oil in a shallow pan (I used a very small frying pan as it uses less oil) and heat until a small blob of batter sizzles when dropped in.

Drop in rounded teaspoons of batter, a few at a time. I found 4 was a good number - any more and there would have been too many to manage because they cook very quickly.

As they become golden brown, flip them over and let them cook for another minute or two before removing them onto some kitchen paper.

Dust with icing sugar and eat straight away.

Ingredients:
200 g ricotta
2 eggs
75 g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
veg or corn oil for frying (I used olive oil)
icing sugar for sprinkling

Makes about 30

Chicken Myers

Chicken Myers is a very tasty meal that's reasonably quick to make and includes lots of vegetables. All you have to do is cook some rice or potatoes to go with it.

I'm not quite sure what the 'Myers' means - we've been making this in our family for a long time, and originally the recipe came from 'The Dairy Book of Home Cookery' although I think we've all made changes along the way so all our versions are a little different.

Lightly steam some carrots and broccoli, and spread them in the bottom of a large baking dish.

Put the tin of soup in a bowl or large jug and stir in enough milk to make a thickish sauce. Add some seasoning (not salt as the soup is usually salty enough) - I use pepper and a generous amount of wholegrain mustard.

Cut chicken breast fillets into thin slices horizontally and lay them in a single layer over the vegetables.

Cover the chicken with the soup/sauce and then top with grated cheese.

Cook at 190 C for 30 - 40 mins until top is golden and the chicken is tender. (Be careful not to cook for too long or the chicken will be dry.)

Serve with rice or potatoes - it serves 4 people quite generously - not bad for two chicken breast fillets!

Ingredients:

2 chicken breast fillets

4 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 head of broccoli , divided into florets

1 tin of condensed 'cream of...' soup - I use celery, chicken or asparagus

milk, pepper, wholegrain mustard

grated cheddar