pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

{I said there was something I would tell you later in the week.}

xlovesx

Comment [73]

So yes, cupcakes that I worry could result in a ‘cease & desist’ email, but I’ve done a bit of searching and I don’t think Starbucks have actually registered a trademark for the Gingerbread Latte, so hopefully I shall be fine.

In all seriousness, this is the thought process behind this cupcake:
1. Gingerbread = yum.
2. Coffee = yum.
3. If it works in a drink, surely it can work in a cupcake.

And all I know is this: normally, our tray of cupcakes on Cupcake Thursdays lasts right to the end of the day. Not like lots left over, but sometimes just one or two. This Thursday I walked into the office at 11am and they were all gone.

That’s really all the justification you needed, right?

Without further adieu then:

Gingerbread Latte Cupcakes
with Ginger Spice Buttercream Icing

Cake ingredients:
350g unsalted butter
300g dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 double espresso (about 100mL)
200g plain flour
100g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3 tablespoons dark treacle // moleasses
100mL double cream
1 tablespoon gingerbread syrup (optional)
Ginger preserves (optional)

Heat oven to 180C and line cupcake tin with papers. This made 24 standard sized cupcakes.

Make a double espresso and sit aside to cool. If you can’t make espresso at home, use about a half cup of strong black coffee.

In a mixing bowl, beat room temperature butter until soft and fluffy, then add sugar and mix well. Add each egg, mixing in between.
Stir in espresso.
Add the flour and other dry ingredients and continue to mix. Fold in cream and treacle and mix until even, making sure the treacle isn’t just stuck to the bowl or the beaters.

If you are a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte addict, you can add their syrup to make it taste as close to the drink as possible. If you just like ginger and coffee, then this is totally optional.

Once this is mixed, it should have a mousse-like texture. Scoop into the cups, filling just over halfway. Bake for about 18 minutes, or until a chopstick comes out clean. Let cakes cool on a wire rack.

When totally cool, use a melon baller to scoop out the centre of a cupcake, then fill with a teaspoon of ginger preserves (found with the jams at the supermarket) and replace the top of the cake. It’s not too sweet and will keep the cakes moist longer…in theory. I didn’t get to test that, really.

Icing ingredients:
300g unsalted butter at room temperature
Icing sugar to taste—around 300-400g
1 teaspoon ginger extract/flavouring
1 teaspoon gingerbread syrup (optional)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon…plus extra for dusting
2 tablespoons marshmallow fluff
food colouring (optional)
crystallised ginger pieces for the top

In a mixing bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Mix in part of the icing sugar until consistency is even. Then add all the rest—same thing as above for the gingerbread syrup—and mix well. Continue to add more icing sugar until it reaches the sweetness and thickness you like.

As British butter is very yellow, I sometimes find it’s tough to get icing to a nice colour without food colouring. I actually just added a little brown to this one so it would tone it down from the happy yellow and look a bit more gingery. You could make it any colour you like, but just remember the flecks from the cinnamon will show, even if you decide to make it neon green.

Spread on cooled cupcakes with a knife or a piping bag, and dust with more cinnamon. Add crystallised ginger to the tops of some cupcakes and you’re done!

xlovesx

Comment [133]

It’s really no secret that I love mail. Mail that is not bills or pre-approved credit card offers, anyway.

Parcels are brilliant. I would say more along these lines but alas, my mind is frazzled from the concept known as the last seven days of school before Christmas. We’re getting there.

But oh my goodness, between school and something else I have lost all patience and I opened this prezzie from Anna-Marie. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

Seriously. You have to say that like you’re an orphan and Annie is doing something terribly risky, okay?

CUPCAKE STAMPS! This is seriously how to make a girl’s day! Thank you girlie.

And now, at this slightly ridiculous hour, Jeff Buckley is going to help me ice some cupcakes that could potentially get me sued. Neither of us are going to stress about it.

More on that tomorrow.

xlovesx

Comment [6]

Just back from a brilliant weekend break involving:

*Placebo @ Wembley

*Christmas shopping @ Covent Garden and such

*Huge Sunday lunch {but terrible creme brulee}

*Ice skating @ Somerset House

*Something else which I may possibly tell you about at the end of this week. We’ll see.

Clearly, it also involved a carousel ride. Christmas is the best.

Much fun. Thank you.

xlovesx

Comment [1]

Is it really Thursday? Where are the days going, exactly? I’d quite like to find the abyss where they seem to be landing lately. It’s okay though. Things are busy and crazy but happy and good.

I think these cupcakes are actually my most derivative recipe, but everyone has a few dishes that they wouldn’t have gotten just right without help from someone else right? Many a cupcake fan knows Chockylit’s recipes. I love her site for the methods she uses as well as the photos, which are always gorgeous. She uses ingredients one might never think about including in cupcakes and her explanations make big culinary words nice and simple.

Thing is, we’re on two different continents, so we have slightly different ingredients from time to time. This definitely looked like the best chocolate/mint recipe I’d found, but it’s nigh on impossible to get fresh mint this time of year in this part of the world. And I wanted it to complement an After 8 mint. And I cook with different chocolate…that sorta thing. So there’s just a bit of changing here and there…but it’s all good.

Mint Chocolate Christmas Cupcakes
{adapted from Chockylit’s Rich Chocolate and Mint Recipe}

Cake Ingredients:
200g dark chocolate (72% min)
400g unsalted butter
500g sugar
8 large eggs
200g flour
50g cocoa powder
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1.5 teaspoons peppermint flavouring
pinch of salt

Okay…it feels wrong to even type these instructions out in my own words because these I made just like hers and she explains it very well. I did add the peppermint just after the eggs…wow for a big change there.

Filling Ingredients:
100g dark chocolate (72%)
100ml double cream
30g unsalted butter
6 marshmallows
4 peppermint tea bags
75g sugar

Heat the cream on low in a saucepan with the peppermint tea bags, stirring frequently. Don’t let the cream boil, just thicken. On my cooker this took about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the tea bags.
Melt the chocolate, marshmallows and butter in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Once this is about half melted, add the cream and sugar and stir to combine. Heat until all melted, then remove from heat and allow to cool for about 15 minutes. Stir again to make sure the sugar melted in rather than sinking to the bottom, then sit it in the fridge to set until you need it.

Icing Ingredients:
350g unsalted butter*
1 teaspoon peppermint flavouring (I couldn’t get extract…but I’ll be on the lookout!)
3 tablespoons double cream
Icing sugar to taste (at least 300g)

In a mixing bowl, beat room temperature butter until fluffy, then add the other ingredients and mix well. Add icing sugar gradually and stir in with a spatula before turning on the mixer. Remember the sweetness of buttercream fades in a few hours, so make it a bit sweeter than you want or it will taste like butter tomorrow morning. I did use a bit of food colouring to make these a minty green…that is optional of course.

Putting it all together…

This week I invested in a melon baller. For ages I’ve been cutting divets in my cupcakes with a knife and, well, I’m not so great with a knife. I had actually thought about asking for a melon baller for Christmas, but when I saw one yesterday for an entire £1.99, I decided to just go for it. Turns out this is perfect and I am entirely childish for not trying it before. There ya go.

Use the melon baller on the top of each cupcake…spoon in a bit of filling and replace the cake. Ice with a knife or a piping bag. Chop After 8 mints in half and add to the top, then add a few chocolate sprinkles.

*I’ve been searching high and low for how to get the consistency I want in a buttercream, but I kept getting something that was too soft and a bit too oily. I kept trying different English butters and such…and I’ve finally found it. It’s Countrylife. It’s not organic…but if I’ve already gotten into a food colouring, marshmallow and flavouring binge, I think I can let go of organic butter for just a little bit. I suppose. Seeing as it is apparently the best selling butter in the country, let’s not discuss how I missed its wonders all this time.

I blame the layout of the shelves at my local Sainsbury’s, clearly.

xlovesx

Comment [6]

Last month I got a few emails asking if I would be posting any Christmas Cupcake recipes in December. I would not be lying if I told you I am worried that I will not have enough cupcake baking opportunities in December to cover all the Christmas cupcake recipes I want to try. So I started this week. Forgive me.

These are probably the most autumny of the bunch anyway—halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas, if there could be such a thing here in England.

Pumpkin Christmas Cupcakes

Ingredients:
250g unsalted butter
100g sugar
250g dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
300g fresh pumpkin, cooked and cooled.
250g self-raising flour
3 tablespoons dark treacle/moleasses
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Heat oven to 180c and line cupcake tin with papers. Makes 18-24 standard sized cupcakes.

Beat softened butter until fluffy, then add sugars and beat until the consistency is even. Add the eggs and continue to mix, then mix in the pumpkin until no large pieces remain. Pour treacle into the mix – not onto the beaters – and mix through.
Add dry ingredients gradually and mix until well incorporated.

Fill cupcake papers just over halfway and bake for 18 minutes, or until a chopstick comes out clean. Leave in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack and cool completely before icing. They are fine just kept in the fridge overnight and iced the next morning.

Brandy Butter & Cream Cheese Frosting

250g unsalted butter
200g brandy butter (storebought or make your own)
100g cream cheese
icing sugar to taste
2 teaspoons cinnamon, plus more to dust

Let the butter and cheese come to room temperature, then cream together with the mixer. Mix in icing sugar until it is as sweet as you want it, then add the cinnamon.
Spread or pipe over cooled cupcakes, then sprinkle with cinnamon just before serving.

xlovesx

Comment [21]

Click over to writtendown...
...because Christmas has totally started there.

giddy

xlovesx

Comment [3]

Manifesto: Noun. A declaration of one’s intentions.

Starting December first, I will keep a Christmas journal. In it, I will write something every day to reflect on the holidays of my past, enjoy the holidays of the present and dream about the holidays of my future. To some, this will be a stack of papers and trivial scribbles, but not to me. I am taking back my Christmas, I am letting it be something I relish and, most importantly, I am giving at least fifteen minutes every day to myself no matter how crazy this season becomes. I hope you will share, encourage and understand as I make something with my own hands, my own words and my own memories.

I may post some of my entries here. Other artists are doing this with me, and you can see their work here. Or you may join us.

Above all: enjoy the season. I will.

xlovesx

Comment [6]