Witches Hat Cake Pops

Happy Halloween! 

I know my usual blog-post-date is Friday, but as I couldn't let Halloween pass by without sharing my recipe for these cute little cake pops! Besides... a little bird could be heard to say that there will be a new regular(ish) Wednesday blog post coming your way in addition to the weekly Friday posts :-)

It may seem like I've been bitten with the Cake Pop bug (and there's probably some truth in that!), but I absolutely LOVE these Halloween Cake Pops. They are a simple vanilla cake with vanilla icing style cake pop, dipped in dark chocolate. The trickiest part of this recipe was getting the colour of the cakes to match the colour of the fondant icing! The witches hats can also be made a few days in advance, if that helps!


Ingredients:
For the witches hats:
30g orange coloured fondant
30g purple coloured fondant
30g green coloured fondant
A little edible glue

For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
Orange, purple and green food colouring

For the icing:
75g butter
150g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g dark chocolate (you may end up with a little left over)
1tsp vegetable oil

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making your little witches hats, as you'll need to give these a little bit of time to dry. Starting with the orange icing, roll out to around 3mm thick and cut out five small circles (I used the wrong side on and icing nozzle for this). Gather the icing back together into a ball, and then tear chunks off to mould five small cones with your hands. Use a little of the edible glue to stick the cone to the circular base, and put to one side to dry. Repeat this step with the purple and green icing. Put the hats to one side to dry.
2. Meanwhile, move on to the cake. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Split the batter evenly between 3 bowls, and use the food colouring to create an orange, purple and green batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown on top and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
6. Using one colour sponge at a time, take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in a tbsp of the butter cream. Add more butter cream a little at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy. 
7. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Repeat steps 7 and 8 with the other two colour sponges. 
8. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. You'll probably find that you have a small chunk of each different colour left over. You could mash this together to make a multicoloured cake pop, however, it's always best to just eat any leftover mixture :-)
9. Melt your chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! 
10. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
11. Dip a lollipop stick around 1cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a lollipop stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
12. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant hats in the corresponding colour onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. 

Cake pop tips:
Use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!

When dipping, it's best to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt your cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work.

Line a baking tray with clingfilm, then pour any leftover chocolate onto it and put it in the fridge. Once set, you can break the chocolate into chunks and store in a food bag until next time. Note - this doesn't work so well if you drop cake in the chocolate or keep dipping your fingers/a spoon in!

Finally: Practise makes perfect!

Funny story - I put the 3 less fortunate looking pops (one in each colour) to one side to use as the ones I would slice into to show you the cross section. It didn't cross my mind at the time that the purple one with chocolate down the stick would still have chocolate down the stick after I'd chopped into it! So this, ladies and gents, is why it's important to tap off the excess chocolate! :-)

Happy Thoughts
x

Raspberry Milkshake Layer Cake

I'm taking a little break from posting the Halloween Style bakes as today is Wear it Pink day!

Wear it Pink day is Breast Cancer Campaign's biggest annual fundraising event, and the idea is simple – everyone makes a donation to the charity and wears something pink to show their support. If you're feeling particularly charitable today and would like to make a donation, or to find out more, just visit www.wearitpink.co.uk

Anyway, to mark the occasion, I wanted to share this recipe for my raspberry milkshake layer cake. The reason I call it raspberry milkshake cake is because it gets it's flavour from some raspberry Crusha – the milkshake flavouring syrup.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

200g margarine

200g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

1tbsp milk

1tbsp raspberry Crusha

Pink food colouring

200g self raising flour

For the icing:

150g vegetable shortening (Trex)

400g icing sugar

2tsp vanilla extract

A little milk, if necessary

Pink food colouring

Prep time: 15 – 20 minutes

Cook time: 20 - 25 minutes

Makes 8 – 10 slices

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and grease and line three 6 inch cake tins.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until smooth and creamy. In a separate bowl or jug, beat the eggs, milk, raspberry milkshake syrup and pink food colouring until smooth and slightly frothy.
3. Mix a little of the wet mixture into the creamed butter and sugar, followed by a little of the flour. Repeat this process until all of the ingredients have been incorporated into a smooth batter.
4. Put even amounts of the batter into the cake tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until the cake layers are golden brown on top and springy to touch. (Please note: if you're cooking all three layers at the same time, you may find that they take different times to cook depending on which shelf they're on in the oven – just keep an eye on them and give them longer if need be!)
5. Remove the cakes from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Once the cakes have cooled completely, make the icing. Beat the Trex, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until you have a smooth icing, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency. Use the icing to layer the three cakes, then spread icing evenly over the top and sides of the cake. Colour any remaining icing pink, then pipe this on top of the white icing to decorate.

Happy Thoughts
x

Vampire Bitten Cupcakes

Oh no! It looks like there's a vampire on the loose - and they have an incredibly sweet tooth!!

These vampire bitten cupcakes were another treat I created for Hoxton Street Monster Supplies' Monster Speed Dating event for Valentines this year, but, similar to the eyeball pops, they work just as well as a Halloween treat for humans! The gorgeous vanilla cupcakes are topped with a tasty, tangy cream cheese frosting, and filled with lots of yummy blood!

Just kidding - they're filled with strawberry jam. Honest.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp milk
100g self raising flour

For the frosting:
75g vegetable shortening (Trex)
100g cream cheese
350g icing sugar
A few drops of lemon juice or lemon flavouring

For the "blood":
60g strawberry jam
a few drops of red food colouring

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 15 - 20 minutes
Makes 12 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases.
2. Beat together the margarine and caster sugar until smooth and creamy, then beat in the egg, vanilla extract and milk. Fold in the flour, the spoon the batter into the cupcake cases, filling each around 3/4 full.
3. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown on top and springy to touch, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Meanwhile, prepare the cream cheese frosting. Beat the vegetable shortening until smooth and creamy, then fold in the remaining ingredients until just combined (cream cheese frosting has a habit of going really runny if you over beat it!) Pu this in the fridge until you are ready to use it.
5. Cut a "core" out of each cupcake. Slice off (and eat, if you like!) most of the core you've cut out, but keep the top for later. Stir the red food colouring into the jam, and then fill each cupcake with a teaspoon on the very red jam. Replace the "lid" of the cupcake, then spread cream cheese frosting over the top.
6. To decorate, dip a cocktail stick in to the very red jam and make two "blood" trails along the top of each cupcake. Poke the cocktail stick all the way into each cupcake at the top of the blood trails, to make puncture marks.

Happy Thoughts
x

Eyeball Cakepops

I LOVE Halloween, it's one of my favourite times of year! My mum usually has a big Halloween party where we put up a gazebo in her back garden, spend a whole day turning it into a haunted house, spend another whole day making "scary" food, and then gather our weird and wonderful family and friends round in the costumes to enjoy it! Anyway, it's now mid-October, so I wanted the rest of the recipes I post in October to be Halloween themed - hopefully lots of treats and very few tricks!

The first of my Halloween inspired recipes is these eyeball cake pops, which weren't originally Halloween themed at all, in fact, they were made for Valentines Day. You see, one of my friends was doing an internship at the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies - London's only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind. Part of Helen's responsibilities at HSMS was to look after the volunteers, and so she often put on social events for them to help them get to know one another better, but also to improve the human volunteers understanding of monsters, and vice verse. So, for Valentine's Day this year, Helen, another of the interns, Dee, and their monster colleague the Yeti decided to host a Monster Speed Dating event, and I was called in to do the catering. Below is the recipe for my "Eyes for You" cake pops, suitable for humans at Halloween, or for monsters at Valentines!

Ingredients:
For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour

For the icing:
50g butter
100g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g white chocolate
1tsp vegetable oil
50g coloured fondant (in the colour of your choice - I used half green and half blue, but it might look fun with more spooky colours!)
Black food colouring or a black edible ink pen

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 12-15 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making the cake. I usually bake cupcakes if I'm baking specifically for cake pops, as they tend to cook and cool faster than a large cake would. However, cake pops are also a great way to use any leftover cake or cake scraps, so just use whichever cake tin is your favourite - your cake will end up in crumbs anyway!
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
4. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
5. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. One the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a large mixing bowl, then mix in half of the butter cream. Add more butter cream one tablespoon at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy - you might not need to use all of the butter cream for this!
6. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. Eat any leftover mixture (a 15g cake ball is no good to anybody!)
7. Meanwhile, prepare the decorations for the cake pops. Roll out the coloured fondant and cut out circles - I used the "wrong" side of a Wilton icing nozzle which seemed to be around the perfect size. Use the black food colouring / food colouring pen to draw on the pupil of the eye in the centre of your coloured fondant then put these to one side to dry.
8. Melt your white chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! My tip here is to use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!
9. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
10. Dip a cocktail stick around 1.5cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a cocktail stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
11. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant irises onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. My tip for dipping is to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt you r cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work. And don't forget: Practise makes perfect!

Happy Thoughts
x

Ready Salted Caramel Cupcakes

My friend Dale is an incredibly talented artist, and he very kindly designed the images of “The Princess and the Cake” for me. You can check out his work on his Facebook page, Whaley'sWorld! As means of thanks, I wanted to make Dale some cupcakes. Dale's a big fan of caramel and white chocolate, but the main thing I wanted to include was ready salted crisps.

This might seem a bit weird, but there is a good reason for it. I grew up in a house of a lot of kids. I have a brother and two sisters so that's already four of us, but then we always seemed to have friends over too, so it all added up. My mum used to buy the big multi-packs of crisps, which never lasted long being as they were so many of us, but there were always ready salted crisps left over. Non of us wanted to eat the ready salted crisps, but my mum wouldn't buy a new multi-pack until all of the crisps were gone. Now, Dale LOVED ready salted crisps, so whenever he came over he would pack them away like a trooper to get rid of them all for us. It was a labour of love. Anyway, that's what I wanted to play with when making cupcakes for Dale, which is how I came up with the idea to make salted caramel filled cupcakes, (and my idea for the unconventional decoration!)

Dale's cupcakes, all packed up ready to go!

I used my basic vanilla sponge recipe, but substituted the caster sugar for brown sugar to give it a more caramel-y flavour. I used Nigella's recipe for Salted Caramel Sauce for the filling, and then topped the cakes with a white chocolate butter cream.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

100g margarine

100g light brown sugar

1 medium egg

A few drops of vanilla extract

100g self-raising flour

For the salted caramel filling:

75g unsalted butter

50g soft light brown sugar

50g caster sugar

50g golden syrup

125ml double cream

½ teaspoon of salt

For the white chocolate buttercream:

100g white chocolate

150g butter

300g icing sugar

1tbsp milk

A few ready-salted crisps to decorate (optional!)

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 12 – 15 minutes

Makes 12 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases
2. Start by making the cupcakes. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract until combined. Sift the flour into the mixture then fold in until you have a smooth batter.
3. Fill each cupcake case around ¾ full (roughly 2 tsp in each) and bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown and springy to touch. Place on a wire rack to cool.
4. Whilst the cakes are in the oven, make your salted caramel sauce. In a small, heavy-based pan, melt the butter, both sugars and golden syrup on a low heat then allow to simmer for 3 minutes, swirling the pan occasionally.
5. Add the cream and the salt to the pan and stir in with a wooden spoon. Allow the caramel to cook for another minute before transferring into a jug or bowl. Set the caramel to one side to cool.
6. Whilst the cakes and caramel are cooling, make your buttercream. Melt the white chocolate either in the microwave in short bursts, or in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, (careful not to get any water in the chocolate – chocolate and water severely dislike one another!) Put the chocolate to one side to cool slightly.
7. Meanwhile, beat the butter, icing sugar and milk together until smooth and creamy. Once the chocolate as cooled enough not to melt the butter, gently fold this into the buttercream. Place the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and place to one side until ready to use.
8. Scoop a little cake out of each cupcake to make a well in the centre - keep the scooped out bits, as these will become the “lids”. Fill each cupcake with a little salted caramel sauce, then place the scooped out cake lids back on top of the cakes.
9. Pipe a big swirl of buttercream onto each cupcake, then drizzle a little more salted caramel sauce over the top of this. Finally, add a ready salted crisp to each cupcake to decorate!

Of course, these cupcakes are equally as tasty without the ready-salted crisps on top!

Happy Thoughts
x