Chai Cupcakes and Samoa Cupcakes

I have been so busy lately riding my horse and doing heaps of school work preparing for the upcoming exams next week, so I haven't had a ton of time to bake recently. Anyway, this afternoon I set some time aside to do what I love and bake until my heart was content. So, me being me I got ambitious and decided to make two flavours today. I made a chai cupcake and a samoa cupcake.

Chai Cupcake: Chai cake with cinnamon sugar crust and a chai swiss meringue buttercream, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. 

Chai Cupcake

Samoa Cupcake: Coconut cake with chocolate ganache filling, caramel swiss meringue butter cream and topped with toasted coconut.

Samoa Cupcake

Samoa Cupcakes

Perfectly accompanied by coffee.

On another note, I made this cake for my godmothers partners birthday. He is really into sailing, so I made him this cake. It is a red velvet cake with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting.

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Ganache Cupcakes

Over the past few times I have tried to make chocolate cupcakes, I have had somewhat of a fail and they haven't risen the way they should, they sunk in the middle, or they were dry and crumbly. So I have decided to discard/dispose of all other chocolate cake recipes now and have found the perfect chocolate cake recipe thanks to the utter perfection of my Little and Friday cookbook. This has now become my bible (along with Magnolia Bakery's cookbook) and my favourite recipes.

My cupcakes are inspired by the Little and Friday cake transforming it into a dark chocolate cupcake with raspberry marscapone filling and covered in chocolate ganache. These are rich and decadent, fulfilling the chocolate desire of anyone.

Chocolate Hazelnut Caramel Slice

Over the past few weeks I have been introduced into the most mouth-watering, crave-worthy cafe here in Auckland called Little and Friday. So after much anticipation, we made our way down the backstreets of Newmarket to find the little hole in the wall beauty that was Little and Friday. It is quite unique in the sense that their little cafe is located inside a fabric store which gives it a bit of a homey feel. Mom and I ordered our cappuccino and just had to try the orange almond rosewater cake...my god...that was the most delicious thing I have ever put in my mouth. How could one little bite of cake be that gobsmackingly good? Well without further question, it was that good. So we just had to get both of the cookbooks so I could attempt to make those perfect little creations myself.

So after sitting down and marking everything that I could possibly want to make, I decided to make the caramel slice. It was a chocolate base with creamy caramel filling, studded with roasted hazelnuts and smothered in chocolate ganache. What more could you want from a caramel slice? This was the perfect caramel slice and my new recipe! I can't wait to try making the chocolate cake today! :)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This morning I woke up to the loud claps of thunder ringing around the lake followed by and endless amount of rain. So I decided to spend my afternoon attempting to make homemade hot cross buns...lets just say they ended up like beautiful little mounds of glazed, uncooked, dough balls. NOT the puffy, chewy and cinnamony ones that you buy in every bakery and grocery store at the moment. So they ended up being binned. Might try making some more tomorrow (Easter Sunday).

So by the end of the night, I realised that I needed to lift my spirits a bit and made my fool-proof recipe of chocolate chip cookies. I left the dough in the fridge to rest overnight and set about reading The Fault in Our Stars (I ended up in tears and had to put it down for the night, too many emotions for little me).

So when I woke up in the morning, I popped them in the oven and when they were finished, I went for a sail on the boat with my brother, Oscar. They turned out just the way they always do, soft and chewy, warm and gooey. The epitome of the classic American chocolate chip cookie.

Cheese and herb scones my Nana made

Easter Cupcakes

My school tutor group (a group of mixed year levels that gets together a few times a week) decided to have a shared morning tea on the last day of term one today. I am tutor group leader, so I decided to make Easter cupcakes. I will bring a few of the leftovers down to my nana and pop this weekend too :)

I woke up at 3am yesterday morning and decided that I would be a bit ambitious and make two different types of cupcakes to bring. After contemplating and having an internal debate about what flavours to make, I decided (with the help of my wonderful Mom) to make chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel filling and salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream and coconut cupcakes with lemon curd filling and lemon Swiss meringue buttercream. Wow that’s a mouthful to say!

To top the cupcakes I decided to make fondant bunny and egg cut-outs that I hand painted with gel food colouring. 

Coconut Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream Topped with Toasted Coconut

Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Filling

Salted Caramel Filling

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

This week two of my friends at school have their 17^th birthdays, so in order to celebrate, I decided to bake them some cupcakes. After getting inspired by flavour combinations on Pinterest (my secret obsession), I decided I would make my signature vanilla bean cake, filled with homemade vanilla bean pastry cream and topped with raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream.

So I started by making the pastry cream and considering it was my first attempt, I was thrilled with the way it turned out! Nice and thick, just like it should be with heaps of vanilla beans and no lumps.

Then I made the raspberry coulis that I would then add to the buttercream. Since I live in NZ and raspberries are now out of season, I had to settle for frozen berries but it turned out just as I wanted as well. So far so good!

After completing my favourite vanilla bean cake recipe and baking the cupcakes, it was on to the frosting…the traditional Swiss meringue buttercream. This requires whipping egg whites and adding a sugar syrup followed by adding butter piece by piece…quite the gruelling process, but completely worth it!

Now the cupcakes were ready to assemble, filling piping bags and decorating them with hand-piped chocolate ganache hearts.

Hope the girls like the final result! J

Caramelitas

Today while doing my daily Pinterest check, I came across a recipe for caramelitas. What is a caramelita? I soon found out it is an oaty slice with chocolate chips and caramel laced through them. I HAD to make them!  The recipe called for chewy caramels that are typically found in the candy section of the grocery store, but while looking today I realised that they don't sell them here in NZ! So I had to settle for some other caramels filled with chocolate and some caramel chips.

After making and baking the caramelitas, I let them cool for about 30 minutes, got sick of waiting and decided to cut them up...BIGGEST MISTAKE. The baking paper that I used ended up completely sticking to the bottom and sides of the slice, so I had a complete meltdown and pretty much gave up.

After letting it cool properly, I finally was able to cut it and take a few photos. Overall, I was happy with how they turned out and will definitely be making them again.

Recipe:

• 32 chewy caramels 
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ¾ cup butter, melted
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 oz dark chocolate chips
• 3 oz milk chocolate chips

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan until smooth, set aside. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats and baking soda. Press ½ of the oat mixture onto the bottom of an 8x8" pan lined with NONSTICK baking paper. Bake at 350 degrees (180 celsius) 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle over the chocolate chips and caramel mixture. Crumble remaining oat mix over the caramel and chocolate chips and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool completely before slicing. :)