Spring Cupcakes (Eastern)

Hello my dears!

And again... I'm sorry, that I didn't post for so long! Now I just have a quick Chocolate-Cupcake recipe with a simple icing/decoration but it looks really cute! ^.^

Did you notice the little flowers growing out of the earth? This looks so much like spring, so I tried to bake something look-alike. So the cake is the ground, that's why it has to be a chocolatey dough!

First, here's the recipe:

For 24 Cupcakes or 48 Mini-Cupcakes

100g cocoa powder

400g flour

450ml boiling water

3-4 teaspoons baking powder

300g butter

400g sugar

4 eggs

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Just mix it all together and bake it on 180°C for about 15-20 minutes!

For the icing I just used regular icing with egg white so it dries and it's much more applicable with a piping bag! ^.^

Add green and yellow food colouring (seperate, for sure!) and use a leaf pipe for the leaves. It should look like this: 

If you want, I can make a little tutorial how to make leaves or even how to handle a piping bag! :) Just leave a message and I'll try to explain it as easy as possible!

For the petals you use a petal pipe! :D Petals are even more difficult than leaves, I think, because you have to wait to make it look perfect, so it can dry. 

I also created a few nests and put some chocolate eggs inside!

With best regards,

Francine

Christmas Special: Baked Apples

Hello my dears!

First: I wish you all a happy new year! *~ ^.^

It was very stressy, again, but I hope I'll find the time to make something extravagant soon!

So here is my 'not so special' - Special. These are just apples, but really delicious and quite rich... :) And I tried to make some nice photos, but... the apples just don't look so great. I did the best I could, and maybe you'll try these, because they are easy and tasty!

Here is what you need for 6 people:
6 large apples à ca 160g
80g butter
80g sugar
80-120g ground nuts (It depends on the size and you can use whatever you want. I used ground hazelnuts and almonds.)
3 cinnamon sticks
5 star anise
runny honey :)

First, you cut the cores out of the apples and melt the butter. (And wash the apples before you core them :)!)
Mix together the sugar the the ground nuts on a flat plate. Place the melted butter on an other flat plate.
Roll the apples in the butter and then in the sugar-nuts mixture and place them in a baking dish.
Break the cinnamon sticks into two halves and place one half in each apple. Sprinkle the star anise on top and then pour honey over all. (Well, don't use too much honey, just make about two or three circles on each apple.)
Bake them for 45-50 minutes on 200°C. You can serve them with vanilla ice cream ^.^ !

With best regards,

Francine

White Christmas Cupcakes

Merry Christmas, my dears!

I hope you're enjoying the holidays! :)

In Germany we already received our presents and now I want to share some more Christmas cupcakes with you.

Apparently, it doesn't snow so there is no white Christmas this year. 

These are really festive cupcakes and they don't taste too rich, so you can even serve them after diner! (This is not my 'special' but it will come soon)

What you need for the dough to make about 16-20 cupcakes:

1,5cups spelt flour

75g dark chocolate

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon mixed christmas spice

pinch of salt

1/8cup instant coffe

1/2cup boiling water

100g butter

3/4cup dark sugar

2 eggs

3-4 tablespoons sour cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place the chocolate, the coffee and the water in a small sauce pan which swims in another sauce pan filled with water. Stir continously until the chocolate has melted.

Then mix it all together and bake for 15minutes on 200°C. It will rise a lot!

For the icing you need:

1 egg white

180-200g icing sugar

Just mix it together and then cover the cooled cupcakes with to layers. After that you can sprinkle it with silver balls and paint some silver pearl dust on top after the icing has dried. 

I decided to make some baked apples with nuts, honey and cinnamon for tomorrow. It's not a cake but you bake it so I'll post it ^.^

With best regards,

Francine

Christmas Cupcakes: Apple and Cinnamon

 Hello my dears!

I'm sorry I didn't post for so long, but everything is very stressful at the moment. I scarcely had time to bake... but finally I managed to make some Cupcakes! ^.^

I try to avoid wheat and use spelt instead because it's much healthier. So the following recepies will be with spelt flour but you can replace it with wheat flour easily.

I baked apple cinnamon cupcakes with honey buttercream.

What you need for the dough (to make 28 cupcakes):

400g spelt flour

250g butter

280g sugar

4 eggs

10ml milk

4 apples

1,5 tablespoons cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon lemon zest

2 teaspoons baking powder

First you mix everything together except the apples, cinnamon and lemon zest.

Wash the apples and then grate them. In a seperate bowl stir together the grated apples, the cinnamon and the lemon zest. Add it to the dough and then fill into cupcake papers.

Bake for 15-20minutes (or until a fine skewer comes out clean) on 180°C.

To make the frosting:

250g butter

600g icing sugar

6 tablespoons clear honey

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3-5 tablespoons milk

Just mix it all together, and then you can use food coloring for the 'christmas'-look! :)

I topped the cupcakes by piping and then I added apple slices (which were dipped in lemon juice to avoid a browm colour) and I spread some red glitter on top <3

Finally I want to ask you wether you have any idea what I shall serve at christmas diner?! Last year we had pears in punsch with cranberries which was really delicious! 

I am looking forward to your advices! ^.^

With best regards,

Francine

Halloween Special! ~trick or treat ~

When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
‘tis near Halloween.

-Author unknown

 Hello my dears!

Halloween is always a huge event for me, so I decided to make a little Halloween-"cakes of hell"-special. 
I don't really like lying cakes, when they are not supposed to be 2D, I like them to be 3D :) (except these round cakes with several layers)  A car-cake should stand on its wheels and not look like you used a giant cookie cutter. So I wanted to make it look 'real', and a gravestone seemed like the perfekt shape! 

It's a quite complicated recipe that it's 'just' a vanilla cake, but it tastes better than the normal/simple recipes. (otherwise it wouldn't be a *special* ^.^)
What you need for the cake:
200g butter
200g sugar
200g strong flour 
4 eggs
for the flavouring:
about 70g sugar 
seeds from 1/2 vanilla pod
5 tablespoons water


You need to bring the water and sugar to the boil, and then you stir in the seeds.
Just mix the other ingredients together and add the flavouring after it's chilled. 

You're finished when it looks like this!

Paint oil in a 20cm Springform pan and then fill in the dough. Bake for 25-30 minutes on 180°C, until a fine skewer comes out clean. 


After the cake is chilled, remove it from the springform pan and then cut out a gravestone-like shape. Be careful when you lift it up!
Now cut off a bit of the sides, so it stands up straight ^.^

You're going to spread buttercream on all sides (except the bottom), so here's what you need for the buttercream:
125g butter
125g icing sugar
seeds from 1/2 vanilla pod
(pinch of salt)

Just mix it all together and spread it on the cake. 
I hate to roll out marzipan, so I bought a marzipan mat and cut out the shape of the cake. Place the marzipan on top of the buttercream and set aside for about 2 hours. 








What I used for the decoration:

I also added a bit icing sugar

I just spread in on top of the marzipan and painted R.I.P. with food colouring on the marble-like surface. Ooh, the cake is so frightening o.o! I'm sorry I couldn't make any better pictures of the whole cake, but the guests of my Halloween Party were already eating it :D ♥

how it looks inside

Bonus:
Me as a ghost bride on the Halloween Party. Sorry that it's so fuzzy!

With best regards,

Francine

Elegant Cookies

Hello my dears!

A while ago, I fell in love with the clothes from the japanese fashion brand Innocent World. Because the dresses are timeless elegant and inspire me very much I decided to jazz up some sugar cookies!

To make a bunch of quite large cookies you'll need:

200g butter

200g sugar

400g flour

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the shape of the cookies I used stencils and then cut out the dough with a knife. It works really well, because the dough is sticky, but be careful when you remove them from the oven, they break quickly!

Bake them for about 8 minutes on 180°C.

For the royal icing:

250g icing sugar

1 egg white

a bit of lemon juice (to create the right consistency)

during the frosting, the plain basic cookie

I love to experiment with food colours! :) Paste food colours are my favourite, because they are very concentrated and the jars look like you're doing potions in a Harry Potter style ♥

Enjoy the cookies! ^.^

With best regards,

Francine

Chocolatey, chocolatey cupcakes♥

 Hello my dears!

Warm, flowing light chocolate cupcakes taste the best when you eat them straight from the oven. The rich flavor of chocolate blends gently with the soft texture of the freshly baked dough... I love chocolate and I assume you do too! ^.^
For those who think chocolate is staple food, here is the recipe:

To make 12 adorable chocolate cupcakes, you'll need this:
1.5 cups flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2teaspoon salt
1/2teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 cup lukewarm water
100g butter
1 cup sugar (you can use a little more sugar, if you like it to taste less bitter and less like coffee)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons instant coffee powder (it's the same as with the sugar ^.^)

Mix it all together, then bake the cupcakes for about 20 minutes on 170°C.

You can eat them straight from the oven when it's still warm, or you can set aside to cool for 30 minutes and then add a delicious frosting.
As the topping I use good old buttercream! ♥ For 12 cupcakes you'll need:
4 cups icing sugar
100g butter
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Using flash, so you can see that the buttercream is actually white!

 

I love buttercream, because it's so creamy and sweet so you just want to fall into a huge bowl of pastel blue buttercream! *____________* Well done, you've just created a completely yummy dozen of cupcakes. Enjoy your meal!

With best regards,

Francine