Cupcakes. They’re all the rage right now – and why not? Dainty little morsels of cake topped with icing, and decorated so adorably that they make even the grumpiest old man I know laugh and feel tempted to enjoy one! As for the women…well, watch the entire female population of a large office swoon over an army of little cakes decorated with sprinkles and little smiley fondant bees, and you’ll be aware of the power that cupcakes hold.
During my “time off” (which is now what I’m using to refer to the time my blog was offline), I started work on a Cupcake Compendium encompassing tried and tested cupcake recipes as well as some tips for how to decorate them. Consider this the introductory post, in which I share with you my best-selling lemon cupcake recipe!
Ellie’s Lovely Lemon Cupcakes
(adapted from Amy Sedaris’s vanilla cupcake recipe)
Ingredients (makes approx. 36 small-medium sized cupcakes)
180g butter, softened
400g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 a lemon (about 1 1/2 – 2 tbsp)
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
450g all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1. Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C, and cream together your butter and sugar till creamy (sorry, pictures for this step are the wrong way around!)
2. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, salt and baking powder and continue beating till the mixture is light and fluffy, then add your lemon zest and juice and beat in for another few minutes.
3. Add your milk and flour in 3 alternating batches, beating well after each addition. Once all the milk and flour has been added, beat at top speed for about 30 sec – 1 minute or till the mixture is smooth and shiny.
4. Line your cupcake baking tray with cupcake liners and fill each liner about 1/2 – 2/3 full – it depends on whether you want the cake to peep over the top of the liner, or stay completely contained. I personally prefer to underfill as it means you have a ‘tidier’ cupcake once they’re baked, iced and decorated.
HANDY TIP: Being the control freak that I am, I weigh out the amount for each cupcake on my electronic scales. This takes a little bit longer, but means that you get exactly the same amount of batter for each cupcake, meaning that they’ll all be quite uniform in shape and size once baked. This also makes the decorating process easier as it means not having to worry about any lack of uniformity in the cakes you’re dealing with.
5. Place your lined and filled cupcake tray into the oven, and bake for 15-20 minutes, or till a toothpick inserted into each cupcake comes out clean.
HINT: These cupcakes are far better if you don’t let them brown (they will actually be done a few minutes before they start browning) so keep a very close eye on them after the 15 minute mark. Be advised that this particular recipe will result in very dry cupcakes if you overbake them.
6. Remove them from the oven and place on a cooling rack till they have completely cooled. While they are cooling, start to prep your lemon buttercream 
FINAL NOTE: Although not included in this step by step, something I actually like to do with my lemon cupcakes is to cut out a cone from the top, fill it with homemade lemon curd and then replace the tops. This give extra lemony goodness and a nice slightly sour note which offsets the sweetness of the lemon buttercream very nicely!
Lemon Buttercream Frosting
(adapted from the Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Buttercream Frosting recipe)
Ingredients
225g unsalted butter, softened
6-8 cups icing sugar
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon
HANDY TIP: I find that most frostings are FAR too sweet for my liking, so I actually like to replace my icing sugar with icing powder instead. The reason for this is because icing powder is a mixture of icing sugar & corn starch, and the latter helps to provide bulk and thicken the frosting without as much sweetness as using pure icing sugar would.
1. Beat the butter till it is creamy, then add 3 cups of sugar, milk, vanilla extract, lemon zest & juice and beat at high speed for 5 minutes.
2. Gradually add the rest of the sugar, adding 1 cup at a time and beating for 5 minutes after each addition. Once all the sugar has been added, continue beating at high speed till the mixture is extremely pale, light and very fluffy. Use immediately, or cover tightly with cling wrap if you’re not ready to ice your cupcakes just yet.
3. Once you’re ready to ice your cupcakes, the quickest and easiest way to do so is to use a large piping bag with large piping tips. I have a plain tip and a star tip, and I find that between the two of them, they cover all my frosting piping needs.
Fill your piping bag no more than 1/2 full – the reason for this is that holding onto the mixture for too long will melt the butter in the bag, meaning that by the time the last of the icing in the bag gets to the cupcakes, it will have turned into a runny mess.
4. Pipe your frosting onto the cupcakes with a slow, steady hand, making sure you keep an eye on the pressure you are using so that you try and use the same amount of frosting each time.
You can see here the ratio of cake to frosting that I like, as well as why I like to underfill my cupcake liners. By filling the liners just halfway with batter, they rise to just 2/3 the size of the liner, meaning that I can contain my frosting inside the liner as well – and that makes transporting and handling them MUCH easier!
5. Once you’ve piped your frosting on top, you can think about what additional decorations to do. Though I prefer using fontant and a mixture of royal and buttercream icing for my decorations, I keep a stash of various sprinkles for when I need to decorate in a hurry and I don’t have time to spend a few hours making 30-odd fondant bees!
6. Use the sprinkles of your choice (or a combination of them) and then distribute to any anxiously waiting family and friends to enjoy
Starting from the top left hand corner and rotating clockwise: Silver cachous in various sizes (I keep a number of different colours and sizes of these on hand), dried sugar flower sprinkles, hundreds and thousands, coloured sugar crystals.
Now, I’ll be featuring a huge ‘Beginner’s introduction to fondant’ post next week, so be sure to drop by then to pick up some easy fondant tricks and tips And yes, this will include a photo guide on how to make the fondant bees!
Technorati Tags: cupcakes, lemon, Magnolia Bakery, Amy Sedaris, cake decorating, how to, fondant
Others who have tried this recipe:
*cough*
Hi there.
Umm, I don’t know if you remember me. You see, it’s been awhile. After a major drama ended up crushing my spirit, I decided to take a break from the blog…which turned out to be longer than expected.
To be honest, I didn’t know if I’d come back. But here I am…so please be gentle, as it seems a bit like foreign ground
While I mustered the energy to restore this blog and resume posting to it, I was still busy at work in the kitchen, trying new recipes and accumulating even more cookbooks. However, this tasty treat is adapted from an old favourite of mine – ‘Every Day‘ by Bill Granger. While Bill’s recipes aren’t exactly high-class fare, its his penchant for providing fast, family-friendly and tasty recipes for home that make me adore him. This is one of those such recipes.
This sausage, sweet potato and capsicum frittata is one of those dishes that takes next to no time to knock together, but is tasty and versatile enough to be served up a few times in different forms till it’s gone! Excellent served warm with a little spicy salsa or chutney and garden salad, it also makes a great filling for a sandwich when accompanied with some chutney and bitter greens.
Sausage, Sweet Potato & Red Pepper Frittata
(Adapted from ‘Every Day‘ by Bill Granger)
Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 spicy sausage of your choice (Chorizo or spicy Italian works great!), chopped
1 small-medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 red bell pepper (capsicum), deseeded and diced
1 large brown onion, peeled and diced
5 large eggs
4 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup light milk (I use soy thanks to frequent incompatability between cow juice and my digestive tract)
*optional: A handful of roughly chopped mushrooms is also marvellous in this
1. Preheat a cast-iron skillet (or ovenproof frying pan) with the oil, then add the onion and bell pepper (capsicum) and fry till slightly softened, then add the chopped sausage and fry till the sausage is cooked.
2. Meanwhile, either steam/boil/microwave the chopped sweet potato till it is almost completely cooked (i.e. soft enough to pierce all the way through but not mushy), then add this to the pan and stir it through for a few minutes to take on the other flavours of the dish.
3. Preheat your grill and the beat together the eggs and milk in a bowl, then carefully pour it over the top of the mixture, giving it a little stir to ensure the egg is getting right between all the chunks of sausage and veg. Sprinkle grated parmesan over the top, then lower the heat and leave to cook till the bottom and sides have just set, then place under the grill to cook the top.
4. Once it’s finished cooking, remove and serve either warm or cold with a spicy tomato salsa or chutney and some green salad on the side.
Technorati Tags: Sausage, Chorizo, Frittata, Bill Granger, Recipes
That’s right.
I’ve finally got this site back into (almost) perfect working order – after manually reposting some 200+ recipes, reorganizing them and putting the recipe index back together post by post.
Not only are all the old favourites back, I’ve got some brand NEW content scheduled to go up today
So, welcome back, readers Thank you for sticking by me and not abandoning me when I’d lost hope for this blog myself!
Sorry I haven’t responded to your concerned emails, but the thing is that it’s just hurt too much and taken me this long to get over it.
The short of the story is that my host (AM internet) completely fucked it up during a database move, then refused to accept any responsibility for the fuck up, and said “Oh well, it’s your fault you didn’t have a backup” despite their own assurances that the move would be fine, was no trouble and wouldn’t be noticeable.
Useless twits. (Oh, and that email address has been added intentionally – it’s freely available on their own website, but I thought that hey, if any of you readers feel like dropping the owner of this company an unpleasant little email to advise him that his company blows chunks, then please feel free!)
A month of completely useless emails from their support staff and dismissive emails from the rest of the company have resulted in absolutely no result, therefore I’ve decided to give up and start afresh. I will get my archives back up, but it will take awhile. When you’ve got 2 1/2 years worth of blog posts to be manually entered into a system, it’s no wonder.
So folks, please learn from my mistakes – back up your blog content monthly, and stay the HELL away from American Internet and their shitful, shitful customer service.
I’m sorry for the long absence folks, but after feeling utterly burnt out for awhile with work and family stuff, I decided to take the weekend off and go to one of Victoria’s most beautiful destinations, a little coastal town called Apollo Bay
However, even that didn’t seem like a total holiday as I was only down for the weekend, so up at dawn and frantically running about taking as many photos as possible, as well as cooking up quick and healthy meals that would sustain my friend and myself so we didn’t have to leave the cosy little cottage we had rented.
Having gotten back, it’s taken awhile to work up the enthusiasm to blog (or do anything again), but hopefully today’s recipe will make you think it’s been worth the wait
This is one of my absolute favourite salads, and can you see why? Vegetarian-friendly, it is healthy and light, yet quite filling, and so amazingly filled with texture and flavour that it makes a wonderful lunch or light dinner.
Since it requires sweet potatoes and tomatoes to be roasted, it may not be the quickest salad in the world, but if you’re after a wonderful new summer dish to try then this might be it! Oh – and a hint? You can roast the potato and tomato at night and let them cool, and plate up the salad the next day for a super-fast meal. What could be easier?
Baked Sweet Potato & Tomato Salad
(Adapted from ‘The Instant Cook‘ by Donna Hay)
Ingredients (serves 2)
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes (kumara), peeled
3 medium-sized ripe Roma tomatoes
150g baby spinach leaves, thoroughly washed and rinsed
1/2 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped
60g good quality feta cheese, drained
Olive oil
Sea salt & cracked pepper
Dressing ingredients
3 tbsp honey
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Slice the sweet potatoes lengthwise into wedges, then halve the tomatoes and place on a lined baking tray. Drizzle over a little olive oil, then sprinkle over salt and pepper. Bake for 25 minutes, or till the potato is golden, soft, and can be poked straight through.
2. To make the dressing, whisk together the honey, vinegar and olive oil. Set aside for now. Take two large plates and begin to layer the baby spinach leaves, baked sweet potato wedges and tomato pieces until you have a good amount on each plate.
3. Crumble the feta cheese over the top and sprinkle a liberal amount of chopped almonds over the salad. Use a spoon to sparingly and evenly drizzle the dressing over the top and serve immediately
Technorati Tags: sweet potato, kumara, vegetables, salad, vegetarian, lunch, recipe, light, healthy
