Chocolate Toffee Cupcakes

As the name may suggest, these are very sweet and sickly. My favourite kind of cake!
They use a plain cake (though you could just as easily use chocolate flavour, or banana if you are feeling really adventurous) with a toffee sauce and them covered in melted chocolate. Mmmmmmm!!


Ingredients - makes 18 nicely

100g (4oz) butter or margarine

125g (5oz) sugar

150g (6oz) self raising flour

2 eggs

2 tbsp milk

½ tsp vanilla essence

Icing

1/2 can (200g) of sweetened condensed milk

50g (2oz) caster sugar

65g (2.5oz) butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

100g (4oz) plain chocolate

100g (4oz) milk chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 190*C. Line 2 bun trays with paper cases. Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl, and add in the eggs. Beat until mixed.
2. Fold in the flour, milk and then vanilla essence. Divide into cases. Bake for 15 mins or until golden brown on top (and a skewer inserted comes out clean).
3. Cool on a wire rack. While cooking, start on the icing.
4. Put the condensed milk, sugar, butter and golden syrup in a medium heavy based pan and heat gently stirring until all the sugar is dissolved. Cook over a gentle heat for 5 mins or until a pale fudge colour.
5. Leave to cool until thick and spreadable. Then spread onto the tops of each cake.
6. Melt the chocolates (separately) in double boilers or in the microwave. Spoon the melted chocolate onto the tops of the cakes and make pretty patterns - i.e. swirl the two with a cocktail stick, or pipe one onto the other etc.
7. If you are like, decorate the tops with slivers (or curls if you can make them) of chocolate.

For chocolate cakes, add a bit of cocoa to the cake mix for chocolate (15 g (0.5 oz)), or for banana, remove 15 g (0.5 oz) of sugar and butter/margarine and replace with a mashed banana. Cook for roughly the same amount of time. Enjoy!


MMFC

Fruity Lunchbox Muffins

Number 2:


These are a bit like the raspberry muffins I wrote about a few posts ago, but are a bit less sweet. They keep for only a few days though, so don't make too many at once! I used frozen raspberries in mine, and Muller light yoghurt borrowed from my housemate - about 1 of the big pots is 150g. I also used 200g plain flour instead of wholemeal, as I have nothing else to use wholemeal flour on.

Ingredients - makes 12 normal size cakes or 6 muffins


100g (3.5 oz) plain flour
100g (3.5 oz) wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
75g (3 oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp mild olive oil or veg oil
40g (1.5 oz) butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g (5 oz) red fruit yoghurt
100g (3.5 oz) fresh raspberries or strawberries, cut into small pieces

1. Line a tray with cases. Preheat the oven to 200*C. Put the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl.
2. Whisk together the eggs, oil, melted butter, vanilla extract and yoghurt with a fork and add to the bowl.
3. Mix gently with a metal spoon until the ingredients have started to blend together. Scatter with half the berryy pieces and mix a little more until the ingredients are only just combined. Divide amongst the cases and scatter with the remaining berry pieces.
4. Bake for 15 mins or until well risen and just firm. Allow to cool. (A warm one is quite nice to eat though!)

Mine turned out a little paler, due to the lack of wholemeal flour, but tasted great. The sponge turns blue around the berries as the colour of the berries seeps out into the sponge. Overall a very nice not-so-sweet cake for a lunchbox.

MMFC

Mile High Marshmallow Cupcakes

Its been a long time since my last post - apologies! I've been rather busy in labs and such (though as anyone will tell you, I still haven't done any work). So to make up for it, I'll (barring any disasters) put up 3 posts this weekend :D.


Firstly, these are some Marshmallow cakes. They have lots of marshmallows in (duh) that caramelise in the oven. mmmmm. Plus a huge amount of icing - make these a nice little treat.

Ingredients - makes 12 normal size cakes or 6 muffins


50g (2 oz) Marshmallows
125g (4 oz) butter
100g (3.5 oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
150g (5 oz) self-raising flour
0.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract


Icing


75g (3 oz) Marshmallows, plus extra chopped for decoration
300ml (0.5 pt) double cream

1. Line a 12 hole tin, preheat the oven to 180*C and cut the marshmallows into small pieces. Either: Put all the other cake ingredients in a mixer and mix until light and creamy, then skip to part 4 or
2. Cream the butter and sugar. Blend the eggs and vanilla essence in.
3. Slowly add the flour and baking powder, mixing constantly until thoroughly mixed.
4. Stir in the marshmallow pieces and divide the mixture amongst the cases.
5. Bake for 20 minutes or until risen and just firm.
6. Icing - Cut the marshmallows into small pieces and put about a third in a small saucepan with half the cream. Heat very gently until melted. Tip into a bowl and leave to cool.
7. Whip the remaining cream until it forms soft peaks. Stir in the marshmallow cream and remaining marshmallows pieces, then pile onto the cakes. Scatter with extra chopped marshmallow pieces.

(This one looks strangely yellow - I think it was the lighting of the room)

The icing may be better if you use more (0.5 or 2/3) of the marshmallows in the melting stage, and then use the rest to scatter, omitting stirring any pieces in. This should make the icing very easy to pipe and so make more fancy looking cakes :D

MMFC