Caramel Cupcakes of Goodness

Its that time of the month again! Challenge time!!!!

Firstly I must apologise for being late. I had them baked, iced and even eaten by the due date but, with all the hectic rushing around I completely forgot to post! So here I am 4 days late. But hey, better late then never right?

This months challenge was Caramel Cake with Caramelised Butter icing from Shauna Fish Lyndon of Eggbeater. It was chosen by our lovely hosts Dolores, Alex and Jenny.

I decided to make mine gluten free and in cupcake form as they are easier to eat and hold their shape better sans gluten. If you wish to make these using wheat flour, just substitute the gf flour for g flour. These ones came out quite dense which everyone loved. Once of our coeliacs took one home to her sister, who then proceeded to lick the icing off in front of their mum, who was quite jealous.

Many other Daring Bakers said that the icing was way too sweet for them. As I'm really not a big fan of super sweet icings I started with the lower amount of caramel and added more cream for consistency. So I probably ended up with 30ml of Caramel and closer to 90ml of cream. Mine were possibly quite dense because I did everything except the icing by hand. Using electric beaters for the cake would have resulted in a lighter texture.

Still tasted pretty damn good though!

What to do with all that left over syrup.......


CARAMEL CAKE WITH CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING

142g unsalted butter at room temperature
280g granulated sugar
½ tsp/2.5 ml kosher salt
80ml Caramel Syrup (see recipe below)
2 each eggs, at room temperature
splash vanilla extract
286g gluten free all-purpose flour (my preferred mix is store bought)
1/2 teaspoon/2.5ml baking powder
240ml milk, at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350F/176c/gas mark 4

Butter one tall (5-6/2 – 2.5 inch deep) 23cm/9-inch cake pan.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and salt & cream until light and fluffy.

Slowly pour room temperature caramel syrup into bowl. Scrape down bowl and increase speed. Add eggs/vanilla extract a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again, beat mixture until light and uniform.

Sift flour and baking powder.

Turn mixer to lowest speed, and add one third of the dry ingredients. When incorporated, add half of the milk, a little at a time. Add another third of the dry ingredients, then the other half of the milk and finish with the dry ingredients. {This is called the dry, wet, dry, wet, dry method in cake making. It is often employed when there is a high proportion of liquid in the batter.}

Take off mixer and by hand, use a spatula to do a few last folds, making sure batter is uniform. Turn batter into prepared cake pan.

Place cake pan on cookie sheet or 1/2 sheet pan. Set first timer for 30 minutes, rotate pan and set timer for another 15-20 minutes. Your own oven will set the pace. Bake until sides pull away from the pan and skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing it.

Cake will keep for three days outside of the refrigerator.

CARAMEL SYRUP

450g cups sugar
120ml cup water
240ml cup water (for "stopping")
In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush. Turn on heat to highest flame. Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.

When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and be prepared to step back.

Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

Note: For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.

CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING

12 tablespoons unsalted butter
454g confectioner’s sugar/icing sugar, sifted
60-90 ml heavy/double cream
10ml vanilla extract
30-60 ml caramel syrup
Kosher or sea salt to taste

Cook butter until brown. Pour through a fine meshed sieve into a heatproof bowl, set aside to cool.

Pour cooled brown butter into mixer bowl.

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, add confectioner's sugar a little at a time. When mixture looks too chunky to take any more, add a bit of cream and or caramel syrup. Repeat until mixture looks smooth and all confectioner's sugar has been incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Note: Caramelized butter frosting will keep in fridge for up to a month.
To smooth out from cold, microwave a bit, then mix with paddle attachment until smooth and light

The great chicken soup debacle

I went back to work last Wednesday with a sore throat and no voice. Thursday was spent at work putting the finishing touches on my presentation, giving the presentation, then lying on my office floor waiting for the headache to subside.

That's right, I had the flu/massive cold.

Now, I am the first person to admit that I don't do sick very well. If I really don't feel well and I'm left to my own devices, I tend to mope and sook. Distraction is the key to surviving.

Well that, Coldral and Chicken Soup.

The quest started on Thursday morning when I woke up, after dozing for 8 hours in 2 hour blocks, and left for work early with the intention of stopping at the supermarket and picking up some Coldral and Chicken Soup for lunch. I get there and there is NO Coldral to be found anywhere. Turns out its now pharmacy only. This left me with Ease a Cold. Turns out this stuff is all herbal. I had a presentation to give and needed the drugs!! As it was pretty much the only thing on offer, I took it and moved onto the soup.

Firstly, I HATE tinned soup. There's always this slightly metallic taste and its always way to salty for my liking. Luckily I knew I could get better in the pre-prepared section of the fridge. WRONG!! There was no soup to be found. In the end it was salad for lunch as the smell of anything else made me quite queasy.

Now I know what you're all about to say. Why didn't I just go to the pharmacy and make my own soup?? The answer is, it was 6:30am!!!

So after battling through a day at work, I went home at 7pm via a pharmacy, band (to drop of much needed paperwork) and another supermarket. I arrived home with Coldral and still no soup. Skipped tea that night and went to bed around 930pm.

Friday was a sick day.
I still really wanted chicken soup and a pot or tea. Preferably premade or someone else made, as I really wasn't up to doing anything other then lying on the couch and waiting for a kettle to boil and microwave to go ding. Somehow I ended up at the shopping centre, which has 3 supermarkets and numerous other food places, searching for chicken soup. I ended up with homemade stock from the poultry place, thigh fillets, corn on the cob, broccolli and noodles in order to make my own. There was also a visit to T2 for a teapot and green tea when I realised that I didnt actually own a teapot.

Not being able to find plain chicken, chicken and corn or chicken and noodle soup was very upsetting. I didn't realise how upsetting until I almost burst into tears in the tea shop.

Why is it that in a world where everything edible comes frozen, tinned, dried or pre-packaged into single/family sized portions where you just add water or reheat, you can no longer find a staple such a chicken soup!!!!!

My homemade soup was very tasty and there was enough for dinner tonight too!!

* 500mL liquid chicken stock
* 2 cloves garlic
* 2 chicken thigh fillets, diced
* peppercorns
* 1 corn on the cob
* half a head of broccoli
* udon noodles

Brown chicken and garlic. Add stock, a little more water, peppercorns and anyother seasonings you wish.. Bring this to a very slow simmer and leave until the chicken is cooked. In the meantime, dekernel the corn and chop the broccoli.
About 3 minutes before serving, add the corn, broccoli and noodles to the pot and slowly simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Serve

Cup day Cupcakes

Cup Eve, Monday, was meant to be spent at the gym before attending the Russian Film Festival with D. Instead I got a phone call from D to say that his work was having a cup day cupcake competition and he needed help with the baking part of it. So because I am the awesome friend I am, I supervised his baking in my kitchen before the movie. He baked cupcakes whilst I cooked tea.

It was a very scrummy tea, easily made gluten free. Essentially a chicken, pasta and pesto salad. There are no photos but from memory it involved the following

grated carrot
avocado
capsicum
semi sundried tomatoes
olives
cucumber
pesto
lemon juice
wholemeal pasta
chicken

Cook pasta and chicken. I pan fry my chicken.
Every thing gets chopped and mixed together. Serve hot-warm.

The cupcake recipe is below. To make both these gluten free just use the gluten free versions of pasta and flour where needed!!


2 3/4 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
200g softened butter
1 3/4 cup caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 170C. Line two 12 hole muffin trays with cupcake papers

Sift together the flour and baking powder. In a separate bowl, cream the butter for 1-2 minutes. Add the caster sugar a third at a time, beating for 2 minutes after each addition. After the last addition, beat until the mixture is light and fluffy and the sugar had almost dissolved. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition or until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

Add a third of the flour to the creamed mixture and beat on low speed until combined. Add half the milk and beat until combined. Repeat this process. Add the remaining third of the flour and beat until thoroughly combined. Do not overbeat as this will toughen the mixture.

Spoon the mixture into cupcake papers, filling each about three-quarters full. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from the trays immediately and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before frosting.

Unfortunately we didn't win on looks but they tasted fantastic!!!

Daring Bakers October Challenge and cake

Last Friday we celebrated a friends birthday by having a gluten free pizza night followed by a trip to the Spiegeltent. The pizza recipe used was this months Daring Bakers Challenge. The recipe can be found here. Seeing as it was a birthday party there had to be cake. The birthday girl's favourite cake is apparently a lemon cake with a lemon curd filling and whilst I have a recipe for a similar cake, coconut cake with lemon curd filling, she can't have coconut. So I did some googling and adapted the following from one found on insert random website here.

2 cups Gluten Free flour – make sure it isn't too heavy, otherwise it won't rise as well
1 ½ cups sugar
1 Tb baking powder
1 tsp salt
½ vegetable oil
7 eggs, separated
¾ cups lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon rind
½ tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 170ºC.

In a mixer, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center and add the oil, unbeaten egg yolks, lemon juice and zest. Beat on low speed until blended then turn the mixer to high and beat for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites and the cream of tartar until stiff.

Gently fold the batter into the egg whites until just blended

Pour into a large ungreased ring tin. If yours doesn't have feet then make sure you have a bottle around when it comes out of the oven. Ideally the tin would also have a removable base.

Bake for at least 65 minutes. Do NOT open the oven door until 55 minutes has past otherwise it will deflate. Mine too an hour and a half, turned after an hour and 10 minutes. My oven is old and fanless :-(

Remove from oven and immediately invert onto the feet. If using the bottle method, put the bottle through the hole. This is so the cake doesn't deflate whilst cooling. Let it cool until completely cold then run a knife around the edges to loosen it.

Dust with copious amounts of icing sugar and serve!!

Apparently, this gluten free cake tastes like real cake.

The pizza tasted fantastic!!! There were concerns about ending up with hockey pucks so some bases were obtained for a pizza shop as well as the phone number of the local gf pizza place. I left the dough in the fridge for two and a half days and was concerned that it wasn't rising like everyone elses was. This is possible due to there being no gluten in the bases.
Tossing was not an option. Instead they got pushed and prodded into a rough circle before being topped with everything from the traditional to the dessert. The dessert pizza was served before cake and was a base of nutella with sliced bananas and slivered almonds. After a trip to the oven they were topped with freshly sliced strawberries. Om nom nom nom.

Brownies

I have this habit. Some consider it a good habit, my waistline considers it a bad habit. Whenever I do a show, I bake. This time I managed to contain myself to only one lot of baked goods. Brownies. This has become my fall back, use over anything else, recipe. It transforms easily into gluten free, dairy free and nut free. If you're not a fan of banana, replace the banana with an equal amount of butter, and melt it in with the chocolate.

250g mashed banana
180g dark chocolate, melted
1 ¾ cups (385g) castor sugar
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 cup (150g) flour
100g roasted walnuts
100g dark chocolate buttons or chunks

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Butter a 23 cm square cake tin and line it tightly with foil, making sure to push it right down into the corners. Butter the foil lightly, then line the base with baking paper. Set aside.

Add the sugar, vanilla and banana to the chocolate and use a balloon whisk to mix them well for 20 seconds or so. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one so it is completely incorporated before you add the next. Tip in the flour and stir until its well combined. Don't overdo the mixing once the flour is in otherwise the brownies will toughen up as it cooks. Gently fold in the walnuts and chocolate buttons. Scrape batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top by shaking gently.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a wooden skewer or toothpick comes out very moist. Not wet, but with moist crumbs clinging to it. When I last tried this recipe I was still getting used to my oven so mine too just over an hour and had to be rotated part way through.

Cool the brownies completely in the tin on a wire rack. If the middle sinks then press down lightly on the sides as it cools to even the top up.

Apparently this is easier to slice if you stick it in the fridge for 20 minutes before slicing and use a hot dry knife.

Sticky Date Cupcakes - finally!!

Last I checked this one hadn't been posted yet so here it is.

These were made for my bands agm. The leftovers ended up being fed to mums coworkers and my friends. Very dense and have I mentioned yummy??


Sticky Date Cupcakes

450g dates, pitted and diced
2 ¼ cups water
1 Tbsp fresh grated ginger
2 tsp bicarb soda
2 ½ cups gluten free flour
¼ tsp ground cloves
¾ tsp mixed spice
120g softened butter
1 1/3 cups castor sugar
4 eggs

Put the dates and water into a heavy-based saucepan and bring to a boil over a medium to high heat, stirring continuously. Remove from heat and add ginger and bicarb of soda. Sir until well combined. Cover saucepan with plastic film and let mixture cool to room temperature. This is best left over night to allow the dates to absorb more of the water.

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Line three 12-hole muffin trays with 26 cupcake cases.

Sift together self-raising flour, ground cloves and mixed spice.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter for 1-2 minutes. Add half the castor sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Add the remaining sugar and beat for another 2 minutes or until the mixture is light and fluffy and the sugar had almost dissolved.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition or until mixture is light and fluffy. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the four mixture until well combined. Fold in the cooled date mixture until thoroughly combined.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake papers, filling each about ¾ s full. Bake for 20 minutes or until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from trays immediately and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes before frosting.

Caramel Sauce Icing

100g butter
2/3 cup soft brown sugar
¼ cup golden syrup
½ cream
8 cups icing sugar

Makes 4 cups icing – enough for 24 cupcakes

Combine the butter, sugar, golden syrup and cream in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat up to high and boil for at least 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Add half the sifted icing sugar and beat on medium speed for 3 min until light and fluffy. Add the remaining icing sugar and beat for a further 3 min until light, fluffy and a spreadable consistency. If too dry then add a little extra cream or extra icing sugar is too wet.

Apron of goodness

Apron was acquired!!
I am now the proud owner of a cloth apron, neutral beige background with cupcakes all over it!!!

Photos will be posted tomorrow hopefully as well as the recipe for my new favourite brownie. It is dairy free, gluten free and can even be nut free!!!

Not giving away anything except everyone loved them!!!

Can you say allergy friendly???

I discovered when I baked birthday cupcakes to take to band on monday night, that if I want to make them edible for everyone then things have to be gluten free, lactose free and vegan. Occasionally fructose free as well. The last batch I took were chocolate brownies. They didn't turn out exactly how I'd planned but they still tasted fantastic 4 days after baking.

Gluten Free, Vegan, Chocolate Brownies.

125ml olive oil
200g dark eating chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
3 Tb no egg replacer
6 Tb water
1 ¼ cup (185g) plain flour
200g chocolate, chopped coarsely

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease deep 19cm square cake pan, line with baking paper, extending paper 2cm over side.
2. Stir butter and dark chocolate in a medium saucepan over low heat until smooth. Cool 10min.
3. Stir sugar into chocolate mixture, then flour, no egg replacer, water and chopped chocolate. Spread mixture into pan.
4. Bake brownies about 35 min. Cool in pan before cutting

Things to do

So the 7 days of work comes to an end in an hour and I'm reminded of all the things I need to do in my coming week off work.

The big one is to eat my way through the freezer. I have a couple of weeks to do this in, but it needs to be done. The need has come about because as much as I love cooking, I love my sleep even more and when I'm working graveyard shifts, depriving myself of sleep because I need to cook a meal is not an option. So the freezer gets eaten so I can make room for one person portions of pasta sauce, curry, risottos, etc. I may find quiche in there too at some point!

So my list of things to do this week are the following

- do a grocery shop! Whilst we are stocked up on dry staples (rice, pasta, etc) I'm missing some things in the fresh food department such as potatoes, yoghurt, beans, tomoatos, avocado etc
- hit the gym
- email people the recipes they have been asking for, then post them here for everyone else to read. Or I can just post them and send them the link.
- do some baking. I have a hankering for macaroons, the american version with coconut rather then almonds in them.
- finish unpacking. There is a pile of clothing on my floor that is screaming to be put away. Funny how the clean clothes end up on teh floor and the dirty ones end up in that basket. Speaking of which..
- do some laundry!!
- write my post about the amazing experience that is Maha

So the grocery list at the moment looks like this:
potatoes
bananas
tomatoes
avocado
pomegranate
grapefruit
corn pasta
yoghurt
salad greens
juice
dried legumes
butter
olives
Chocolate
roo fillet
cream
kiwi fruit

My plan for eating out of the freezer is to have roast turkey tonight. I have a maryland cut that should be nice with some roast vegies. My favourite combo is parboiled potato, carrot, mushroom, pumkins, onion and garlic. I might put hte garlic and onion in with the turkey leg to help with flavours, along with a good squeeze of lemon over the meat.
The other plan is to polish of the baby spinach in either a spinach pesto pasta or in my yummy frittata. If I haven't posted it earlier then I will later. I should test it in quiche form too.

There's also so baking to be done for a going away party on Saturday out bush. Whilst technically they are at the end of the metropolitan train line so could be classified as outer suburb, there are cows at the end of their street. Enough said. i think the plan is for nibble type things as the main focus will be nice drinks rather then an amazing meal. Whats the point of an amazing meal if we're all too drunk to enjoy it.

The housewarming decision has been made as well. it's going to be an evening thing. People have been invited round for a sticky beak with cocktail "hour" to follow. So the menu needs to be finger food with options for gluten and fructose free, vegetarian, meatetarian, sweet and savoury. Also need to devise a cocktail of some sort. I'm thinking of trying out the one that was served at Wicked the Musical on saturday. Melon, Kiwi and Pear, called an Ozmapolitan. It involved vodka and came in slushy form. This one will require a few taste tests. I think a base of vodka and midori with pureed kiwi and pear should work. I also need to play around with the fig, vanilla and cinnamon mojito I had at Maha a few months ago.