Nacho Cupcakes

Today was the day I decided to step away from superheroes and focus on some more fun cupcakes. I wanted to make cakes that look like something else (I've tried spaghetti bolognaise in the past - thinly piped yellowish icing all over the cakes topped with ferraro roche dipped in jam) and settled on nacho style cupcakes.


I used this recipe which is the same as always and just some pretty standard, nothing flash, vanilla cupcakes

• 200g self raising flour
• 200g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200g butter
• little bit of vanilla

Just creamed together sugar and butter, added the eggs, sifted in the flour and then mixed it all together. Alternatively you can add chocolate chips, any kind of flavouring you want, cocoa powder instead of some of the flour to make whatever cupcakes you wanted. Then they were put in the oven on 190 degrees for 20 minutes.

Once they were out, I set about making some nacho style biscuits.

The recipe for the biscuits was as follows:

• 225g (8oz) butter, softened
• 110g (4oz) Caster sugar
• 275g (10oz) Plain flour
• Drop of orange flavouring (although any other flavouring could be used)

And then that was all mixed together until it formed a dough. Once the dough was solid and not too sticky, I placed it on a floured surface and rolled it out into a thin shape. I then cut nacho shaped biscuits out of the dough and placed them onto a baking tray before placing them in the oven on 170 degrees for about 15 minutes.

After that, it was just time to decorate. For cheese, I made an orange coloured icing and for salsa I mixed red icing with a few small green and red jelly sweets (although I'd advise using jam instead, I only used the red icing because I had no jam and was too lazy to walk to the shop ... the red can be a bit too fake looking). Then, just place a couple of nacho biscuits into the top of your cake, drizzle with cheese and add a dolop of salsa. Easy!

Avengers Cupcakes

After Batman and with the release of the film, it only seemed right that my next task would be Avengers cupcakes. Let me just start by saying they were bloody hard! Pretty much all of them had to be made completely free hand and I'm not the best drawer. But I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.

Used this recipe which is super standard and what I use for a lot of cakes I make.

• 200g self raising flour
• 200g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200g butter
• little bit of vanilla

Just creamed together sugar and butter, added the eggs, sifted in the flour and then mixed it all together. Alternatively you can add chocolate chips, any kind of flavouring you want, cocoa powder instead of some of the flour to make whatever cupcakes you wanted.

Then they were put in the oven on 190 for 20 minutes. Once they were cool, it came to the tricky part. Had to cut out all the icing and delicately place it all together. Took about 2 hours all together but it was worth it.

Giant Kit Kat Chunky

So for a friend's birthday, she decided she wanted me to make her a special cake of some kind. Knowing she loves kit kat chunkys, especially peanut butter ones, so I figured what better birthday treat than a big, special, kit kat chunky.

For this you'll need a hell of a lot of chocolate (I think I went throuh 28 big bars), a bag of ice cream wafers and a jar of peanut butter.
You'll wanna use a mould that's as close to the shape of a kit kat chunky as possible. I used a long rectangle mould but it was a little fatter than I would have liked. Melt some chocolate and allow a layer of about 1-2cm to set in the bottom of the mould by putting it in the fridge for a little while.
When that has set, start building up the filling of your kit kat. I'd put down a line of wafers, then a VERY thin line of melted chocolate, then another line of wafers and finally a pretty thick layer of peanut butter. Once you've done that, repeat until you've nearly filled to the top of the mould.

Once the filling is complete, melt the last of the chocolate and completely fill up the mould. Set the bar in the fridge and once it's finished it should be good to take out of the mould.

Final stage that I did was cutting in the Kit Kat logo and then glossing the bar with sugar and water so it was shiny. The picture was taken before the glossing so it still looks pretty rough but you get the idea.

Batman Cupcakes

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that Batman is my all time favourite superhero. I love the movies, I love the games, I love the merchandise, I love everything everything everything. So, what better way to celebrate that than with some Batman themed cupcakes?

I basically just made some standard chocolate cupcakes, nothing fancy

• 150g butter, room temperature
• 300g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 280g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 350ml water

Whisked all that stuff together in a bowl then put the mix into cases and into the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes. Obviously you could do any kind of cakes, vanilla, chocolate chip etc. But I opted for chocolate.


Then came the hard part. I had to make stencils for all of the toppings and used roll out icing in a variety of colours to make all the different shapes. I made four different kinds in the Batman theme: Batman, Robin, The Joker and The Riddler. I'd make the top of each cake by cutting a circle using a mug and then adding it on before applying all of the shapes for the different logos.


The end result came out looking like this ...

 I had a stencil for the Robin logo but I kind of messed it up so I just made them free hand. I had a different stencil for the Joker but couldn't find any purple icing in the shop I went to, bummer. But I'm pretty pleased with the end result!

Sticky Toffee Cupcakes

Cupcakes are always my favourite things to bake because theres so many different kinds you can make that you'd never get bored. This time I decided on some toffee cupcakes.

So for these, I used this recipe for cupcakes.

• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 180 g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 80 g unsalted butter
• 150 g muscovado sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

The original recipe had dates in as well but I'm not a huge fan of dates so I opted to leave them out.

Just put everything in to a bowl and mixed well. Then it was placed in cupcake cases and baked for twenty minutes on 180 degrees.

After the cupcakes were made, I used a shop bought toffee sauce and pricked the cakes a few times with a fork before drizzling the sauce over the top of the cakes so it would soak it.

Finally, I made a butter icing by just combining vanilla extract, icing sugar and butter before piping it onto the top of the cakes. They were then decorated with a few chocolate chips and more toffee sauce. Easy!

Smarties and Kit Kat Rainbow Cake

So it was my housemate's 21st birthday and she asked me to make her a cake. I thought to myself, what wonderful creation could I put together for such a monumentous occasion? And this is what I came up with.

For this cake, I had to bake three seperate layers for the inside. Each one would be a different colour. I opted for green, blue and red but you could use any colours you wished. The recipe was just a basic sponge cake.

• 225g/8oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature
• 225g/8oz caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 225g/8oz self raising flour
• milk, to loosen
  
  
  I mixed together the butter and sugar first until it had a smooth, creamy consistency and then added the eggs and vanilla extract. After all of that was mixed together, I sifted the flour into the bowl and made sure it was all mixed together properly. The mixture had to be of 'dropping consistency' and so I had to add just a small amount of milk.
  
  
  Once this was done, I seperated the mixture into three and added the food colouring to each seperate bowl. The cakes were cooked on 180 degrees for 20 minutes and then left to cool.
  
  
  The next step was decorating the cake. I chose to use a chocolate fudge butter icing, putting a small amount between each layer to hold it together before coating the whole cake with it. Next, kit kat fingers were placed around the entire cake and smarties were sprinkled on top.
  
  
  This is what the cake looked like inside ...
  
  
  
  
  
   This was a really fun cake to make and it certainly went down a treat at the party. It might have taken quite a bit of work to decorate but I couldn't have been more pleased with the end result!
  
  
  
  
  

Rocky Road Cupcakes

So today is my first day of this blog, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about it but the general idea is it's going to be about all the wonderful (I hope) treats that I bake.
Starting with this, post number one - Rocky Road Cupcakes.

So for these, I basically just made a load of chocolate cupcakes using this recipe:

• 150g butter, room temperature
• 300g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 280g plain flour
• 50g cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 350ml water

Whisked all that stuff together in a bowl and added a few marshmallows and chocolate chips. Then put those bad boys into cases and into the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes. After letting them cool, I combined icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter to make icing and piped them on to the cakes. (Side note - my piping bag actually broke before doing this is instead, I used a freezer bag with a hole cut in the corner. Does the job just fine!)
After icing the cakes I used crunchy chocolate balls, marshmallows and chocolate chunks to decorate.

I made these cakes with a 8 year old girl for a fun activity. You don't even wanna see some of the other stuff we made (lots of blue icing).