Dark craft beer chocolate cupcakes with stout

Dark chocolate cupcakes with stout

Aren't these cute? 

I made these mini cupcakes using exactly half the ingredients of the recipe for dark chocolate birthday cake with stout. The instructions are the same, and you should end up with 36 mini cupcakes. (I used three pans similar to the Wilton 12-cup mini muffin pan.) It should also be enough to make 18 normal-sized cupcakes (three 6-muffin pans).

The dark chocolate ganache was quite rich, so I might try using cream cheese frosting next time.

In other news, I will be at the Island East farmers/craft market on March 3, selling all sorts of craft beer from Hop Leaf. I am planning to test-drive some of my baked goods there, too (this means free samples of food!). If you're in Hong Kong, please come and say hi. :)

Basic vanilla Victoria sponge cake

How many things that you learn in school are actually useful and delicious? At my high school in England, we all had to take two years of home economics (aka cooking) lessons. An elderly lady with a bouffant white hairdo oversaw my very first attempt at making Victoria sponge in a large lab kitchen. I remembered liking home ec lessons a lot - too bad there wasn't an option to continue them for GCSE!

I don't make plain vanilla sponge very often and have gone through a period of not being able to make a light airy sponge for the past few years. I blamed the humidity in Hong Kong for turning my attempts at sponge cake into dense bricks, but honestly, I think it was because I was trying to be too fancy and relied on complicated recipes. I've finally come full circle and accepted that there are some things in life you just shouldn't mess with, and Victoria sponge is one of them.

This sponge cake recipe is a good base for cakes and cupcakes.

Carrot cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut-almond garnish

Easter coconut carrot cupcakes (with chocolate Mini Eggs), with mini strawberry cheesecakes in the background. 

A simple, grown-up (?) version of carrot cupcakes.

For me, there are three cardinal rules of carrot cakes:

1. Moistness: The cake has to be moist but not dense/heavy/greasy, with a coarse but soft crumb.
   
2. Nuts (pecans, walnuts - take your pick): These can go on top as a garnish to add crunch and flavour but never inside the batter. I hate those soft mushy greasy lumps of nuts in some carrot cakes. I might consider adding raisins in the cake if I'm having that kind of a day.
   
3. Frosting: It's all about the cream cheese frosting.
   
4. The third rule is so important, it's worth repeating: it's all about the frosting.
   

This carrot cupcake looks melancholy without the frosting.

Gluten-free vanilla cupcakes with berry cream cheese frosting

A co-worker recently was diagnosed with gluten intolerance and has been having trouble finding gluten-free food (not just baked goods, but also a lot of Chinese food, as soy sauce contains wheat), so I decided to bake some gluten-free cupcakes to cheer her up.

I've never baked gluten-free before (besides some meringues), so I did some Googling and was initially a bit intimidated by the recipes I found, which all seemed to require unfamiliar and exotic-sounding ingredients like xanthan and guar gum. Luckily I found a gluten-free plain white flour mix by Dove's Farm (UK) at the supermarket, which can be used in place of regular wheat flour in most recipes.

Here's the recipe for the gluten-free cupcakes that I made. They came out lighter and looser than regular cupcakes, but I think my coworker will be happy to have these baked goods as they're equally tasty, even without the denser crumb of cakes made with regular wheat flour.

Lemon cake with caramelized lemon peel and almonds

After succeeding with Tamami-san/Coco & Me's cheesecake recipe, I decided to try her famous lemon drizzle cake recipe. I'm a huge lemon fan but have had only mixed results with the other recipe that I've been using to date (the lemon syrup cake from Nigella Lawson's How to be a domestic goddess). (Tamami-san is also working on a Coco & Me cookbook so I am eagerly waiting its release since both recipes I have tried from her blog have turned out very well for me!)

Tamami's method is slightly unusual as it requires you to whisk the eggs and sugar into a foam in a simmering bain-marie (almost like making a sabayon), but it does result in a light but airy cake. I'm guessing that heating the eggs here has a similar effect as doing the "cooked dough" in choux pastry recipes - it forces the dough to rise due to the egg content and steam.



Recipe: Lemon Drizzle Cake from Tamami-san at Coco & Me.

Alterations/tips:

Stick to the recipe.
The recipe looks a bit fussy and overly detailed (rather than my usual "mix dry ingredients; mix wet ingredients; combine both; bake) but it makes a HUGE difference in what comes out of your oven. You get a proper delicious cake made with care and love instead of something that's too mushy, too dry or too tasteless!

Scale the amounts to fit your pan.
I scaled the ingredients to fit a Japanese no. 5 / 15 cm / 6" round cake pan. I also had enough batter and icing left over for two "tester" cupcakes (shown above).

Line both the sides and bottom of the cake tin.
Instead of just lining the bottom of the tin and flouring the sides, I lined both the bottom and the sides of the tin (I had some pre-cut tin liners that I bought from the Jusco $10 store here in Hong Kong. Side note: Jusco is seriously my favourite baking accessories shop as they sell cheap cake liners, tins, chocolate moulds, ribbons, trays, decorative bags/boxes and more. I highly recommend it if you happen to live in Hong Kong.)

Almond powder/ground almonds?
I substituted ground almonds for almond powder with excellent results.

Use an electric hand mixer.
Instead of whisking by hand, I used the electric mixer to whisk the eggs. I started off with a manual whisk but my wrist quickly started to hurt. So, make sure you use the electric mixer!

Cut off the muffin top.
The only thing is that my cake was not flat (it had a muffin top) so instead of turning it upside down as instructed in Tamami's recipe, I just lopped off the top. I found that removing the top actually made it easier for the lemon syrup to penetrate and soak the cake. Being a greedy pig, I then ate the top with a bit of leftover lemon syrup - the cook's privilege! I now feel a bit sick from eating a giant piece of cake, but I don't regret it for a second! :)

Try different kinds of garnish.
Instead of using chopped-up pistachio and sugared lemon peel as a garnish, I used flaked almonds and browned/caramelized lemon peel. (To make the caramelized lemon peel, carefully cook the lemon peel strips in sugar water in a saucepan on low heat until it turns brown and sticky. Then remove from heat and add warm water to "shock" and melt the caramel syrup. You should strain the peel (which should be caramel brown) in a sieve to remove excess water and de-tangle the lemon peel strips.

This also works for cupcakes as well as regular cakes.
The cupcakes turned out pretty cute. I think I'll use this recipe for little cupcakes to bring to the office next time.




Verdict:
I am so pleased with this recipe, even though it's more complicated, I think this will replace the Nigella Lawson one that I've been using for the past couple of years.