Happy Halloween my lovely ones!!

Halloween has finally arrived and so had the day of my first order :D

I stuck to my original plan and made vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes and pumpkin cupcakes.

I'm soooo happy to have had the opportunity to make these and actually get some money out of it. But the smile they put on people's faces while eating them is still the best feeling ever!

I will post the recipes next week. For now some photos for your indulgence!

Top: Vanilla batter, Bottom: Chocolate batter

Pumpkin Cupcakes with vanilla/lemon Cream Cheese Frosting. Decoration : Orange food colouring and Black sugar bats.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. Decoration: Black food colouring (which makes your teeth and tongue go black) and white sugar ghosts.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. Decoration : (Not enough) green food colouring and sugar pumpkins.

The black food colouring worked quite well. It's more like a paste and I had to add quite a lot of it even though the buttercream was already brown (coz of the choc(: ).At first it looked more silvery/grey but after a while it turned pretty dark. These Chocolate Cupcakes are actually the same recipe as the first cupcake I got for my birthday some years back (see The Story Behind The Blog).
The lady owning that shop wrote a book full of recipes :)

And I actually wanted the green of the vanilla frosting to be even more green. However, I didn't have any food colouring left. But they look quite cute :)

Final product all packed and ready to be picked up. The boxes are great even though depending on the size of the cupcakes it can be kinda hard to put them in/ take them out again.
But I already ordered some other ones which I will show as soon as they'll get here.
I also ordered some more decoration for christmas as I will make some christmassy ones for a christmas market at the end of november..

but I will keep you posted about any sugary sweet news :D

Halloween decoration arrived!!

On monday the ordered candy halloween decorations arrived!!! I am so excited!

I got them from the UK and they are gorgeous!

straight to the photos I would say! see what I got:

Cupcake cases in orange and brown. I wanted to get black but they were out of stock. But brown will work as well

"Pumpkins and bats" sprinkles!!

extra black food colouring for the frosting

Candy pumpkins and candy ghosts.

I just need to make the cupcakes now. I will post some pictures of the end result:D

Family reunion cupcakes...

The past weekend has been a busy one. Even though I only made 3 batches of cupcakes I had a few time management problems :)

I planned on doing cupcakes for our family reunion on sunday so I had to do them on saturday. Friday would have been a little too early. well so I worked on saturday and during my 3 hour break I made the cakes. On sunday morning I made the frostings and finished the cupcakes which took up more time than I expected.

I never realized how much time it takes to make the frostings and pipe them on  as I always made the whole cakes at once.

So we ended up being a little late:) but the cakes turned out well.

I made double choc cupcakes, orange cupcakes and coconut malibu cupcakes with mango.

The orange cupcakes were wonderful, so were the malibu coconut ones. I think I might have taken out the choc ones a minute too early. but they still tasted nice.

well, onto some photos!!

and action!

 Almost finished

Ready to go

left : orange cupcakes with orange frosting, right: Malibu coconut cupcakes with mango surprise

Halloween is coming up!!

As Halloween is coming up in two weeks I received my first order ever! I have made loads of cupcakes so far but just for friends and family.


However, today a new chapter of my cupcake life began. I get the opportunity to make some Halloween cupcakes for a friend's party. I can choose the flavours myself. I haven't decided yet what I will do but I think of doing double choc, vanilla and spiced pumpkin.
I also just ordered some decorations as I haven't really moved on to making my own decoration from scratch (which I really want to try as soon as I have enough time on my hands).


I also ordered some boxes to be able to provide safe transportation. I just really hope that it will all arrive in time. So as soon as I get all the things I will let you know and of course I will post some pictures of the halloween cupcakes :D


I will also be doing some cupcakes for our family reunion next weekend.


So next post should be up by the end of the week.


but for now: enjoy the rest of your week!!

Banana Cupcakes with Honey - Cinnamon Frosting

I had 2 bananas at home and thought I could make some cupcakes :) That's what turned out when combining me, bananas and my kitchen aid.




Banana Cupcakes

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, (spooned and leveled)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 ripe bananas), plus 1 whole banana, for garnish (optional)
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
2. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Stir to incorporate flour mixture (do not overmix). Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
3. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack. 

• Honey - Cinnamon Frosting
• 1 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Beat all ingredients for about 4 to 5 minutes.

Pipe the frosting onto cupcakes. If you want you could add a slice of banana on top of the icing. I didn't do that as I didn't have any bananas left :D But they tasted good anyway!


Onto some photos:

Cupcakes and Frosting: http://www.marthastewart.com/314063/banana-cupcakes-with-honey-cinnamon-fros

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

This is the first recipe out of Jenny Colgan's novel "Meet me at the Cupcake Café".

Maybe just a short input on the novel itself. The story told is about a woman losing her company job. She doesn't know what to do now and decides that she could turn her hobby into a profession. The recipes are embedded into the storyline. This recipe is the first one she does for her own shop.

Here you go quoting from the book:

Double Chocolate Cupcakes (commercial)
Makes one morning's worth.

2500ml double cream
4500g good-quality dark chocolate
50 eggs
1650g caster sugar
1500g plain flour
10 tbsp good-quality cocoa powder
5 tsp baking powder
sugar flowers to decorate

Chocolate Sauce

1000g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
800ml single cream

Stir double cream and chocolate in a pan over low heat until smooth. Cool slightly.
Place eggs and sugar in the bowl of your industrial mixer, and beat on high until pale and doubled in volume. Slowly beat in chocolate mixture.
Sift in flour, cocoa and baking powder and combine.
Divide the mixture between the cases. Bake for 15- 20 minutes at 180°C until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool slightly in pans, then remove cakes from cases.
Drink a pint of water.
Meanwhile, for the sauce, place ingredients in a heatproof bowl over a vat of simmering water (don't let bowl touch water). Stir until the chocolate has melted. Consider calling ex-boyfriend and old boss and crawling on hands and knees begging till he gives you back your old paperwork job.
Remove from heat and stir until smooth. Wonder how much weight you'll lose doing this. Taste delicious mixture. Decide, probably not that much.
Cool slightly. Serve cakes topped with sauce. Decorate with flowers if using. Collapse in heap, convinced this is never, ever going to work on a daily basis.

So this is what I started to work with. Or this was the original idea. Obviously I didn't want to make tons of double chocolate cupcakes. So I divided the amount of ingredients by 25.

I also didn't like the idea of just adding chocolate sauce instead of a proper frosting. So I googled for some frostings.

So here's what I did:

Double Chocolate Cupcakes (makes bout 12)

100ml double cream
180g milk chocolate
2 eggs
66g caster sugar
60g plain flour
1/2 tbsp cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder

Sugar hearts to decorate

Directions for cupcakes see above.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

250g softened butter
2 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 cup milk

Whisk the butter for about 6-8 minutes. Add icing sugar, cocoa and milk and whisk for another 6 minutes.

Now pipe on cooled cupcakes and add sugar hearts or any other decoration you want/ have.

Onto some photos:

ENJOY!

Cupcakes: Jenny Colgan "Meet me at the Cupcake Café"
Frosting: http://bossacafez.blogspot.com/2010/04/donna-hays-double-chocolate-cupcakes.html