Teacher in Need

'Hey, E.! I promised my students some cupcakes if xy happens. Now, xy happened. Pretty, pretty please?'

Couldn't let her down, could I?

These are vanilla raspberry mini-cupcakes, decorated with fondant and edible gold lustre. Oh, and M. wanted them to be kitschee. :D

Chocolate Rose Cupcakes

This year my birthday was on a Friday, so I brought these with me to choir rehearsal.

The cake recipe is the standard Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cake recipe, while I used the Peggy Porschen one with a little twist for the butter cream because the Hummingbird recipe is a bit too sweet for me. Yes, I actually said 'too sweet' ;)

Okay, so here is what you need:

80 ml oil
2 eggs
240 ml milk

200 g sugar
200 g flour
1 tbps. baking powder
40 g cocoa powder
1 pinch salt

Step 1: Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl.

Step 2: Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl.

Step 3: Add dry mixture to wet mixture in three parts and stir well after each addition.

Step 4: Bake in muffin tins at 190°C for 15-20 minutes.

Step 5: Let cool down completely.

Step 6: Level the top of each cupcake by cutting off the top bulk. Pull a tiny bit out of the centre and fill with apricot or orange preserve. See picture below.

Step 7: Mix 125 g soft butter and 125 g sieved (!) confectioner's sugar until a fluffy even mass forms. Then - and here comes the twist - add 4 tsp. mascarpone and some drops red food colour (or as desired).

Step 8: Pipe flowers onto each cupcake, using a star tip or a leaf tip. Decorate with cut out fondant leaves, if desired.

Step 9: Eat them :)

Spiced Cut-Outs

A rather lazy post today, since I will not post the whole recipe, but only the link to where I got the recipe from...

What more can I say than: I love them. Actually, I have really been into spices and herbs lately, so these cookies were perfect.

All you need is:

1 cup butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tbsp. molasses (I used honey instead)
1 egg
3 1/4 cups four
1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground cloves
2 tsp. ground cardamom
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup orange juice (from the grated orange)
1 tbsp. orange zest

For the instructions, see:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/spiced-cutouts/detail.aspx


I really recommend these, if you like spicy cookies!

Christmas Cookie Mania

As the previous two years K. and me were baking Christmas cookies again. Six people, eight hours, twelve different kinds of cookies.

You know these from last year.
Cardamom cookies

These are new though... 
Chocolate-chip cookies.

Cherry marzipan cookies

Chocolate orange crescents

Stained glass cookies
Did not work out too well, but taste good :)

Cinnamon and red currant sandwich cookies

Marzipan orange sandwich cookies

We made these (not so) thin mints last year as well... 

And new ones again.

Spiced cut outs

Cherry chocolate balls

Orange white chocolate sandwich cookies

Apricot marzipan bar cookies

Well, that was it for this year :)

Within the next weeks, I will post the new recipes.

My wedding cake

Well, what more do I have to say than quoting L.: "Sorry, but we had to out-cake you..."

Better than anything I could imagine. The top tier is still in the freezer, waiting for July 13th 2014 :D Can't wait for it.