Pimm's Cupcakes

After six months away I have decided it is time to bring bakes-a-lot-lady out of retirement. The last six months haven't involved all that much baking after gaining what I can only assume is the weight of a 5-year-old child. But I am back, and what comeback could be better than one involving PIMM'S?!

Pimm's Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream Icing

Ingredients
125g caster sugar
125g butter
2 eggs
½ tsp vanilla extract
125g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking powder
50ml Pimm's
For the buttercream
8 strawberries, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon Pimm's
100g icing sugar
60g butter

Little Nutty Cupcakes

These little cupcakes have complimenting textures of the nut butter and the ground almonds with cocoa and dark chocolate pieces to add flavour. If you want a crunchier texture use chunky peanut butter instead of the smoother almond nut butter. They are quick to prepare and brilliant for satisfying a sweet craving. They don't have much fat (in my book fat from nuts is good for you and so doesn't count!), they are sugar-free and low carb so you can eat away without feeling guilty.

Ingredients
¾oz butter
1½ tablespoons almond nut butter
1 egg, beaten
½ teaspoon baking powder
2oz ground almonds
2 teaspoons cocoa
1½ teaspoons stevia or other sweetener
2 tablespoons whole milk
¾oz dark, sugar-free chocolate (Sainsbury's do one which is good for baking with)

Almond and Lemon Cupcakes

These low-carb cupcakes have a lovely texture, as the ground almonds makes them light and moist. Even though they don't contain sugar they have a great cakey texture. The best fake cakes yet I think! Plus they are very quick and easy to make, you can easily whip up a batch if you have a sweet craving.

Ingredients (to make 6)
1oz butter, softened
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 egg
finely grated rind of ½ lemon
2¼oz ground almonds
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon Stevia or other sweetener

Chocolate Courgette Cupcakes

Courgette is a great vegetable to put into cakes as it is bland in taste but moist in texture and helps make cakes light and airy. I made my cupcakes dairy-free, gluten-free and sugar-free. This may sound like all you're left with is an egg but read on...

Ingredients
3 tablespoons sunflower spread
¾ cup courgette, peeled and grated
½ banana mashed
6g Stevia (if you can't get hold of Stevia use a different sweetener such as xylitol) 1g of Stevia is equivalent to 2 teaspoons of regular sugar 
1 egg, beaten
1 cup ground almonds
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
⅓ cup mixed chopped nuts

Chocolate Fakes

Nope it's not a typo...these are fake cakes. They could be called cakes, but they aren't full of sugar or fat (and don't taste as good) so I have decided to call them Fakes...

To make about 8 Chocolate Fakes you will need:
1oz butter, softened
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon fruit puree (I used the pots for babies, Apple and Blueberry)
3oz ground almonds
2 teaspoons cocoa
½ teaspoon baking powder
1½ teaspoons stevia or xylitol (or sugar to taste if you can have it)
½oz mixed chopped nuts

Victoria Sponge Cupcakes

I love Victoria Sponge, sweet light cake with a generous layer of strawberry jam and cream in the middle. I saw a picture of mini victoria sponges a while ago (I can't remember where) so I gave them a go myself. I made them for my sisters who aren't fans of cream so I just put jam in the middle of mine. If you do like cream, whip up a couple of tablespoons until it holds its shape and spread it on after the jam.

Ingredients
4oz (125g) butter, softened
4oz (125g) sugar
2 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
4oz (125g) plain gluten-free flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
approx. 2 tablespoons strawberry jam

Doughnut Cupcakes

My friend Sophie is having a birthday party this evening,  I wanted to bring along some kind of baked goods and decided these doughnut cupcakes were the perfect birthday treat! They aren't hard to make and are a nice change from regular cupcakes.

1. Put 250g self-raising flour (regular or gluten-free) and 1 tsp baking powder into a bowl. Dice 50g butter and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in 80g caster sugar.

Strawberry Almond Cakes

After my recent biscuit baking binge I was left with a surplus of egg whites, so I cracked out one of my new recipe books and found these! The ground almonds in these cakes make them light and fluffy and the strawberries add a lovely sweetness.

Strawberry Almond Cakes

Ingredients (to serve 6)

3 egg whites

90g butter, melted

60g ground almonds

120g icing sugar, plus a bit extra for dusting

35g plain flour (I used a gluten-free blend, but normal is fine)

75g strawberries, thinly sliced

Chocolate Chip Fairy Cakes

So last Friday was the start of 'summer hours', a perk of the publishing industry whereby you can leave work at 1pm on Fridays. To celebrate the start of this grand tradition I knocked up a batch of fairy cakes to take in for my work colleagues. Fairy cakes are one of the easiest things to make, brilliant for the novice baker to try, and you get to have lots of fun decorating them!

Stout and Beetroot Cupcakes

Today's guest post comes from my friend Ellie, we have got together a few times for baking sessions, our latest being Lemon and Courgette Cupcakes, read the post here.

Stout and Beetroot Cupcakes

Try this recipe for an unusual but yummy treat to discover who the adventurous folk are amongst your friends!

I found this recipe a while back and was so excited to try it as I was newly venturing into the world of vegetable-based baking. I got all my bits together one Sunday afternoon only to realise I had everything but the cupcake cases, and the shops were closed! So I got my thinking cap on and made my own cases from squares of greaseproof paper. They were 5-inches squared, a great size for my muffin tin, and I squished them into shape using a glass pressed into the tin. I later used 4-inch square pieces and had a great result with that too... it really depends how much cream cheese frosting you’re going to pile on that needs to be contained!

It’s an easy recipe and they came out of the oven very spongy and tasty looking as you can see in this photo.

Chocapple Cakes

Yes I made the name up, but they do have cocoa and apple in, and I wrote the recipe so I get to call them what I like.

This is the second recipe in my no-sugar, no-butter baking crusade/experiment.

11-Calorie Cupcakes

If you are a regular reader of my blog you may remember my ‘Week of Cake’, where I ate nothing but cake, and then there was my trip to the US where I ate my own body weight in waffles, cookies and pizza. Needless to say the jeans are feeling a bit snug, and so I’m having a detox which sadly leaves little room for sweet treats.

I developed this recipe with that in mind, instead of sugar I used pear & apple spread (100% fruit with no added sugar) and I left out the butter. It was a real experiment so I made a small amount of mixture to test – and somewhat surprisingly, not only did they cook like normal cakes they also tasted great.

Ingredients

1 egg

25g pear & apple spread

25g wholemeal flour

⅓ tsp baking powder

½ tsp cinnamon

(my mixture made 20 mini cupcakes)

Step 1

Separate the eggs into 2 small bowls. Whisk the whites into stiff peaks.

Step 2

Add the fruit spread to the egg yolk and whisk until creamy.

Step 3

Using a metal spoon fold the egg whites and flour mixture (flour, baking powder and cinnamon) alternatively into the yolks.

Step 4

Bake in a preheated 180°C/Gas 4 oven for 8 minutes.

The cakes had a light texture because of the lack of butter and the cinnamon complimented the fruit spread well. Plus, each cake has a mere 11 calories so I can definitely have second helpings...

Lemon and Courgette Cupcakes

Carrot cake is an old favourite, yet when adding other vegetables to cakes people often scoff. It's time to embrace vegetable cakes! Courgettes add moistness, and make cupcakes light and fluffy, and don't have a strong taste. This recipe is a standard cake recipe with courgette added.

Ingredients
6oz butter, softened                                           Makes 18 cupcakes
6oz sugar
3 eggs, beaten
6oz self-raising flour
grated rind of 1½ lemons
6oz raw courgette, peeled and grated
For the butter icing:
4oz butter
8oz icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon
decorations of your choice

A Week of Cake - DAY 5 - Blueberry Cupcakes

Now then...day 4 passed in a blur, all I know is I ate a breakfast cupcake, a Welsh cake, a slice of nutty chocolate cake, a slice of nutty apple cake, a slice of apple and carrot cake, a blueberry cupcake, more nutty chocolate cake and chocolate beetroot cake (a girl at work gave it to me, so tasty!)

This morning was a real struggle, no proper dinner and a glass or two of red wine left me feeling more than a little delicate. A slice of chocolate cake and custard for my breakfast didn't help matters, all I wanted was wholemeal toast with lashings of butter, but alas the cake challenge continued...

Blueberry Cupcakes

This recipe is a really good one, I often find blueberry cupcakes to be too sweet, but I think this one gets it just right. The zest of the orange gives them that added edge.

A Week of Cake - DAY 1 - Breakfast Cupcakes

Yesterday was spent in preparation for my week of cake-eating, in total I baked EIGHT batches of cakes. During the next week I will be sharing those recipes on my blog everyday. I will also keep you updated on my daily diet (admitting to the world how much I eat!), and I’m sure my numerous cravings for fresh fruit and vegetables. I will keep a tally of ingredients used and how many different types of cake I eat each day. I have decided to modify my rules ever so slightly…as a girl should never say no to cake…if anyone happens to offer me homemade cake I will simply have to accept. I have taken my weights and measurements (a girl never tells), and I will reveal whether I have managed to maintain my healthy weight whilst only eating cake…

I’d love to read your comments about my efforts, and feel free to get your friends to head over to my blog too.

Monday morning began with…

 

Breakfast Cupcakes

These cupcakes contain muesli, orange juice and marmalade - all you could ever need from a breakfast!

Christmas Cupcakes

For the last few Christmases I have succeeded in stressing myself out making chocolate logs (the weighing scales didn't work, the sponge splits when I rolls it, the chocolate doesn't melt...) so I decided this year I would make stress-free cupcakes!

I assembled Christmas-themed cupcake cases, giant chocolate stars, silver balls and holly. I made several small cupcake mixes using a standard recipe for each (2oz butter, 2oz sugar, 1 egg, 2oz flour and 1 tsp baking powder) and added different flavours.

Chocolate brownie cupcakes

Continuing on the cupcake theme (the boyfriend gave me a cupcake recipe book for my birthday), yesterday I made chocolate brownie cupcakes. They are actually for his birthday so it is quite apt.

The idea is to make lots of mini cupcakes and put a candle in each. I didn't have mini cupcake cases, or a mini cupcake baking tray, so I made regular cupcakes...woo. I made double the recipe as I wasn't sure how many regular-sized cupcakes it would make, and it worked fine.

First melt 150g of butter and 100g of dark chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. (I didn't have dark chocolate, so I used milk and added a dessertspoonful of cocoa powder to give some added chocolate).
Allow to cool slightly, and then mix with 150g of sugar and beat in 2 eggs. Stir in 50g of flour (this didn't seem quite enough so I added a little more), and finally 100g of chopped nuts, I used brazil nuts and cashews, but I think any would be fine. You can either coarsely chopped the nuts for a thicker texture or finely chop if that's your thing.

Line a baking tray with cupcake cases, I used a heart-shaped cupcake tray for added love...
Bake them in the oven at 180°C for about 20 minutes or until they are cracking on the top, don't overbake as you want that nice moist centre.

Eat warm with a nice glass of milk, or cooled with a lovely cup of tea.

Halloween Cupcakes

I spent weeks trying to track down Halloween-themed cupcake cases but found none, so plain paper cases it was. I hope the spider web icing makes up for it!
These cupcakes use pumpkin or butternut squash, sunflower oil, and cinnamon, giving a sweet, spicy flavour. The mixture looked very runny, and my mum was convinced they wouldn't cook properly, so I hastily added a bit more flour. For once I was the one to say 'I told you so'...as they cooked well, and were a nice golden-brown.

However, when it came to icing them the cakes were quite moist and the icing didn't stick too well, so I iced some vanilla cupcakes that I had made instead. The spider-web icing is definitly the trickiest part. First make some white icing (or you can use melted white chocolate), make sure it is quite thick, and cover each cupcake. Once you have iced all of the cakes, melt 25-50g of milk or dark chocolate. Spoon the chocolate into an icing bag. Pipe a dot of chocolate in the centre of each cake, and draw 2 or 3 concentric circles around the outside. Next take a cocktail stick or skewer and draw a line from the central dot to the outside edge of the cake, and repeat about 8 times around the cake to create the spider-web effect.

And for a bit of Halloween fear have a look at my scary pumpkins...