Category: In the kitchen

These are my first offering for the RSPCA cupcake day. One of our team members can’t have gluten, soy or fructose so I wanted to make something that he could have but everyone would enjoy. The result was a combination of about 6 different recipes and a fair bit of research, including the discovery that a lot of cheesecake recipes call for flour.

Above is one of the extra mini ones as the real ones are all for monday.

Here is my recipe:
Base:
150g packet of gluten free biscuits (I used Orgran Gluten free biscotti classic choc)
100g butter (melted)
Cheesecake:
500g cream cheese (2 packets)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
Caramel:
190g caramel (1/2 tin)
1/4 cup cream
1tbs golden syrup
If you can’t find the tinned caramel, you can just used condensed milk and turn it into caramel.

The recipe makes 12 cupcakes with enough for 4 mini cupcakes if you really scrape the bowl.
Preparations
1. Preheat oven to 175 deg C
2. Line 12 cupcake tin with papers. I used alfoil ones with the paper inside after a couple of suggestions on other blogs for best results. My mini sized ones were just paper though and they came away fine.

Biscuit base
3. Process the biscuits in a food processor
4. Melt 75g of butter
5. Put biscuits into a bowl and add the melted butter. Stir through
6. line the bottom of each cupcake paper with the biscuit mixture. Press it down so it is nice and compact.

Cream cheese filling
7. Beat the cream cheese and sugar
Note: Sugar cuts through the cream cheese to create air in the cream cheese. Same concept as creaming butter.
8. Add eggs one at a time
9. Fill the cupcakes 2/3rds of the way. You want to leave room for the caramel.

10. Put them in the oven and bake for 20min
A lot of recipes called for 15 but mine didn’t seem ready at 15.
They do rise (I was worried when they came out, however they do fall back and still stay light)

Caramel topping
11. wisk caramel, cream and goldern syrup
12. Sprinkle gelatin into the hot water, mix (and heat if necessary) till gelatin is dissolved.
If you were making it vegetarian too you could probably leave the gelatin out. The caramel wouldn’t set as a jelly on top but the taste would be the same.
14. wisk gelatin into mixture
15. Pour caramel into each cupcake filling the cases all the way to the edges

16. Refrigerate.

Enjoy!

I will be topping the 1/2 of the large ones with chocolate swirls and 1/2 with whipped cream and drizzled caramel.

We had a lovely brunch today with Andrew’s cousins from Victoria and all family up here. So I figured I would make some mini carrot cupcakes and some mango chiffon cupcakes. Mini cupcakes are lovely for gatherings as they let you eat a small bite size taste amongst other foods.

I took the piping roses to another level, creating a flower bouquet. These are carrot cake with cream cheese icing dyed with cocheniel and sprayed with food colouring.

I did not have the time or patience to ice the remaining 150 odd cupcakes the same way so I just made pretty swirls

And these are the mango chiffon cakes topped with cream cheese icing and mango. YUM.

I just realised I forgot to post last weekend. After a wonderful morning at the park with liz and sammy, I spent the afternoon in the kitchen.
Andrew scored pie, cake and cookies!

Beef and vege pie:

My first chiffon cake. It worked, It worked!!!! Chiffon cake is really really light cake and you have to be really careful with the mixture to keep it light and fluffy.
I flavoured them with passionfruit in the batter and cream cheese icing drizzled with passionfruit pulp.

Then cookies… these are an old favourite.

And finally chocolate pudding… ummm cause the other stuff wasn’t enough to push us to the edge of a sugar high…

I saw some lovely cupcakes made at a cupcake decorating class that were roses. I just had to try!

Unfortunately and stupidly I split the buttercream icing by overmixing the butter (When butter becomes too hot it seperates). If you were just spreading over a cake it doesn’t matter, however it makes a huge difference when piping. I’m upset at myself because I know better and can’t believe I stuffed up buttercream icing!

Anyway… here are the results…

And something a little different since the roses weren’t holding properly…

I gave up with the rest of the cupcakes and just iced them with a knife.

Big thanks to Trystan and Lisa for this yummy recipe.

I made carrot cupcakes for Granny’s birthday dinner tonight. Unfortunately they were very rushed and I had to ice when not completely cold.
The cupcakes contain carrot, ginger, pinapple and macadamia nuts. Big thankyou goes to andrew who crushed up the nuts for me.

The big ones I topped with carrot and either ginger or a macadamia nut.

Then I made some mini ones – cause mini cupcakes are just cute!

Oh and in case you were getting hungry…. carrot cake mixture is not appealing….