Best of 2012

Salted Caramel Macarons 

There is just less than 24 hours of 2012 left and many will soon be blurring out their words, and it might sound a bit like: “Aaaah, what a year it’s been”. As I listen to one of my doggy woggy’s semi silently bark whilst what I can only describe as a dream festered in a deep sleep it becomes apparent that 365 days is not adequate. I want more days and long nights in my years dammit, more time to convince myself to stop being lazy and do productive things and more time to conquer those productive things.

But then something happened - I came across the fabulous likes of Poires, Londonbakes & the Cake Hunter blogging about their best of 2012. The right thing to do was to obviously follow in their inspirational bloggy footsteps, so I gathered mine and then realised, well, that I am chatting absolute shit. This has been a long year and 365 are aplenty. 

To think that I was gently heating milk for the Miette cake THIS year is also mental.

Here are the blog’s top five recipes of 2012 from the most popular descending. If you followed, subscribed, commented or just read a measly snippet of my poorly written blog with the occasional improving piece of photography then thank you. Thank you thank you thank you! You are what keeps me baking, snapping and sharing. 

That’s pretty deserving of a very happy New Year to all of my cyber sisters and brothers. 

1. Hot Milk Cake

2. Turkish Sini Gatmer

3. Muhallebi

4. Miette Double Chocolate Cupcakes

5. Raspberry and Apple Crumble

Love Em xx

Spiced Chocolate Cupcakes with Gingerbread Buttercream

Who has started their Christmas baking test-runs yet? Does anybody even do tests for such things? If you’re an inexperienced cook and you’re having the ol’ lot over, I’m guessing you’ve currently got a test-run turkey in the oven. That’s perfect because it’s a Sunday as well, just replacin’ the chicken for a turk really.  Here are my Christmas test run cupcakes, in unnecessarily copious amounts of pictures that I wish to share with you. Yes. You obviously wanted to look at every single picture I took that day. Obviously.

I’d otherwise slate the test-runner…what’s the point? Do you not have anything better to do with your time? Just chance it! But alas, I have become one of those weird test-run people. And boy, AM I GLAD. This chocolate cupcake slightly resembled a brownie (now would be a good time to mention that it was still delicious)! It was by no stretch of the word a light and fluffy cupcake, but a  kind of dense and dry topped brownie! Crossing THAT one off my Christmas baking list… next time I’ll go for a bitta stout in my liner, maybe even a bitta treacle, plus A LOT more spice in the batter. Don’t be afraid to be generous with the festive spices in a chocolate cake, it has a tendency to be masked by the intense flavours of chocolate you see.

Some good news – the buttercream was lovely, spicy and not too sweet. Rich, coming from a crusting buttercream recipe aye. But with a distinct lack of vanilla extract, and TONS of cinnamon and ginger, there is just this amazing balance of sweetness. The spices really do cut through all of that icing sugar! Still, I’ve got my eye on a mascarpone frosting, who knows how many more test-run’s my kitchen will see before the big day! 

The Recipe:                                   Makes aproximately 16 cupcakes 

The Cakes

100g dark chocolate, minimum 50%

4 eggs

100g self raising flour

2 and a half tsp cocoa powder

pinch of salt

225g caster sugar

175g soft butter

1 tsp vanilla extract 

Quertar tsp cinnamon
Quarter tsp ginger (optional)

The Buttercream

300g icing sugar

150g unsalted butter, soft

1 and a half tsp ginger 

2 tsp ground cinnamon 

1 tsp milk

The Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a muffin tray.

Over a ban-marie, heat the butter and chocolate together till melted.

Take off the heat, add all of the sugar, mix together and then set aside to cool.

With a whisk, mix for 3 minutes until slightly fluffy, add the eggs in one at a time.

Fold all of the dry ingredients (including the spices if you wish) until just incorporated.

Lastly fold in the vanilla. Fill the cupcake liners two thirds full and bake for 25 minutes.

For the frosting, beat the butter in the bowl of a freestanding mixer for half a minute.

Add the icing sugar bit by bit, lastly the spices until well incorporated.

Pipe and frost. I used a small french tip for these cupcakes.  

Expect a *possible* birthday cake  on the blog this week, as I'll be turning the big 20 on Wednesday. But let's not mention that again, just comment below and make me feel sane by telling me you also had a Christmas baking test-run today, please! Love Em xx

Peggy Porschen Heavenly Double Chocolate Cupcakes

For months I’ve been meaning to try out the mother of all chocolate frostings. The one that combines an ultimate taste explosion with absolutely every single fatty component you can possibly imagine. We’re talking butter, DOUBLE cream AND cream cheese - all in one semi technical recipe that is well worth the washing.

I’ve always felt positive about the fact that I am missing half of my brain, which making this recipe pretty much confirmed for me. The original ingredient list called for glucose and for some reason (the inadequate contents of my skull) I bought glycerin, after noticing the very moment the G was going into the saucepan that I bought the wrong stuff, I took a risk and just put it in and guess what? The results were still fabulous!

The Recipe:

Adapted from Peggy Porschen's Heavenly Chocolate Cupcakes

For the sponge (makes 20 cupcakes):

8g good quality cocoa

125g dark chocolate

160ml milk

100g unsalted butter

2 large, free range eggs

Half tsp baking powder

Half tsp bicarb of soda

285g light brown sugar

180g plain flour

For the topping:

450g icing sugar

200g cream cheese

200g unsalted butter

1 tbsp glycerin/glucose 

140ml double cream

160g dark chocolate

The Method:

Start with the frosting. Heat the cream until simmering in a small saucepan. Add the chocolate and glycerin/glucose into a bowl and pour the cream over the top, stir well until nice and smooth. Let cool. 

Put the cream cheese in another bowl and beat for half a second, until just smooth. 

Cream the icing sugar and softened butter in the bowl of a freestanding mixer until pale. 

Slowly pour all of the cooled ganache into the buttercream and mix until combined. 

Take a third of the chocolate buttercream and gently stir into the beaten cream cheese. 

Now add the chocolate cream cheese into the chocolate buttercream and gently stir till combined. Wrap in clingfilm and let set in the fridge. 

Preheat the oven to 160 C. 

For the cupcakes, using a saucepan (perhaps the same one as earlier?!) heat the milk, half the sugar and chocolate and bring to a gentle boil. Keep the chocolate on the lowest heat whilst get onto the next bit, occasionally taking it off heat so it doesn't burn. 

In the bowl of a freestanding mixer beat the sugar and butter till very pale. Add one egg at a time and mix till frothy. 

Put all of the dry ingredients into another bowl and stir together. Mix into the egg mixture till just combined. 

Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture, scraping the bowl, making sure to incorporate every little bit. 

Pour all of the mixture into a measuring jug and line 2 cupcake trays with muffin cases. 

Gently fill the cucpake liners two thirds full with batter.

Bake for 14 minutes, until they spring back to the touch. 

Let cool on a wire rack and ice with the cooled and scrummy frosting!

Love Em xx

Christmas cupcake, Rose Cake and DR Oetker

I haven't had the time to do much baking this week, instead I present you with a few of my fave pics I've taken this week. I lie. They're not my fave, they're actually the only pictures I've taken - but I did take about a hundred of each variation! They do, however, reflect what I've been doing this week and that is...going to uni and working, quite mundane yes. The Christmas cupcake will be being taught at Faircake in 2 weeks time, and the Dr Oetker stuff...well...I just thought they looked pretty all jumbled together like that as opposed to on a cupcake or in a cake. Look out for Peggy's chocolate heaven cupcake somewhere on the blog this week, I'm due on girls so they will DEFINITELY be here!

Love Emxx

Sky Poker Chips and Cupcakes

It is so easy to turn a simple cupcake into something with much more depth and meaning behind it than it had say...10 minutes ago, when it was just a little light sponge with a rich and heavy buttercream and a 1m-attack perched & splurged right on top of it.

Sky Poker Dice 

So when I made cupcakes for Russell to take to work with him at Sky Sports (obviously, I wanted to make him look like an even bigger goodie too shoes), I was delighted to have been approached by the guys over at Sky Poker, asking if I’d be willing to do the same thing for them, but with a poker theme. At no point was I going to deny such a project, so I put my baking cap on and started drawing poker chips that I could eventually translate into cookies, and some cupcakes like the ones I mentioned above, only with rice paper carefully inserted into its soft and simple swirl.

Sky Poker Cupcakes and Dice

My first instinct for these bakes was to go for the initial Sky reds and blues as found in these cupcakes. But then I started to really think about it, and realised that I weren't just baking cakes for the broad spectrum that is Sky Sports, but instead was presenting bakes for Sky Poker, a less broad and more subject related area of Sky. So as long as I had some pungently coloured red and blue poker chips in there, I was happy (and hopefully so was Sky Poker!)!

Sky Poker Chips

Flavours are consistently vanilla based throughout both of these bakes; I went for the classic cupcake which can be found here. Then moving onto the cookies, I used Peggy Porschen’s Sugar Cookie (couldn’t leave my shiny new bespoke book hanging!) recipe, but, to be completely fair, much preferred Primrose’ version, it was much more crisp, without those milky notes that Peggy’s version boasts. 

Sky Poker Cupcake

Sky Poker Chips 

What did you think of my poker themed cupcakes and cookies? Do they live up to the standards of Sky?! I'd love to know! Lastly, watch this space for (hopefully) some Macarons in the next few days!

Love Em xx

Peggy Porschen Banoffee Cupcakes

This will be a quick post where I choose to quickly show you some cupcakes that I subtly ordered my sister to bake whilst I was learning away at Uni. It's also the very first post in which I begin a challenge, do you wanna know what the challenge is? Go on, keep reading and you'll find out. Right now and yes, today. It's really cool and interesting, are you ready?

I hereby challenge myself not to use the word 'delicious' in any of my future posts from here on out. I, Emine Hassan, grant anyone who reads the evil, malicious and overused word in any of my posts to personally troll/cyber bully me as punishment. Kapeesh?

Brill.

Now please, drool over these peggy poo cakes and appreciate that the original and delightful (put down those virtual crow bars, its not quite the word!) version that churns out of the parlour like hot cakes - is 1837932873289 times better and 398342938 times likely to be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT RECIPE. But alas, this was close enough, and my sister did a fantastic job. Actually considering eating five for dinner.

Adapted from Peggy Porschen's Banoffee Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes (and no less or more!)
The Recipe:
200g unsalted butter at room temp
200g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs at room temp
200g SR flour
Half a mashed banana
100g plain chocolate,chopped
sugar syrup (serebet)
150g caster sugar
150ml water
the filling
1 tin of dulce de leche (carnations)
half a mashed banana
the frosting
500g icing sugar
200g cream cheese, at room temp
200g unsalted butter, softened
1 vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla extract

Banoffee cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting

The Method:

• Preheat the oven to 170C, or you could do this in ten or so minutes, as the recipe is quite methodical. 
• Cream the butter and 1 vanilla pod (if you're using extract please dont add this until after you have added the flour, this will stop the alcohol cooking the eggs) until paler in colour, 2/3 minutes.
• Add the eggs one at a time into the butter, beating as you go along and the mixture is well combined. 
• Add the flour until just incorporated and then fold in the chopped choco. 
• Fill each cupcake liner, distributing the batter evenly (this wont be difficult as you'll find yourself short for batter). To get a flat top, only fill the batter two thirds full.
• Bake for 14 minutes - make sure not to open the open door and have a peek - especially during the first 5 minutes!
• Whilst the cupcakes are baking, prepare the sugar syrup. Pour the water, scraped vanilla pod, and the sugar into a medium-small saucepan and let simmer on a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside.
• Take the cakes out of the oven and place on a wire rack, brush each cake with the syrup and then refrigerate the cakes for an hour. Make sure to cover the cakes, you don't want them to taste like fridge! 
• Prepare the frosting. Cream the butter and then gradually add all of the icing sugar, add the vanilla. Plop in the cheese bit by bit till smooth. Refrigerate the frosting as well, whilst the cupcakes are in there.
• For the filling, mash the banana in a small bowl and then add in the caramel, mix together till smooth.
• Take the cakes out of the fridge and using a knife/tiny spoon, cut a small well in the middle of the cake. 
• Put the caramel in a piping bag and then pipe it into the middle of the cake until it's filled. 
• Frost the cakes with the cream cheese as you desire !

Love Em xx

Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2012 & A feast for your eyes

Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet / sweet and simple grapes from the Turkish Food Centre / homemade Eggs Benedict with fried egg, not poached - for the inept egg-makers

I've noticed a slight pattern when it comes to my ‘months in food’ – all of it is almost always bought or ready-made!  How blasphemous of a food blogger, to show her small circle of readers what she eats on a day to day basis and for it not to be homemade?! Appalling. But let’s be honest, who has the time to eat well and wholesome every day? I certainly don’t, nor does my budget.  September was a lovely and autumnal month and the start of October has shown that all of these browns, oranges and deep yellows that have appeared out of nowhere (such as the leafy table-pieces on the TV) fit RIGHT into place. I thought it only a coincidence that this month’s Instagram photos were mostly taken under tungsten – esque light.

A feast for two - need I say more? / vanilla cheesecake at the Wolsely / Sainsbury's all butter shortbread 

So anyway, on Thursday I stomped along in my high heels, which only ever come out on very special occasions, to the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards! Needless to say I didn't win my category, the blogger who did however, knows her way around the camera like it was made of pastry – which I’m sure she knows plenty about! Poires Au Chocolat – well done, your blog is an inspiration! For those of you unaware of her talent don’t be afraid to click over and drool.

Aside the awards ceremony, I met some fabulous people there that I simply cannot shy away from mentioning! Meg, the lovely lady behind MegsBudgetBoutique, Beth from BeautyThrill and lastly Jenny from 10BlankCanvases.  Fashion, beauty and nails – something I know very little about but these three girls pull it off so well that it would be a crime if they weren't nominated by Cosmo. I'm still to find the whereabouts of more pictures of the night, but they will be posted straight away when I do!

It would be rude not to thank Cosmo & Next for everything, especially for the cocktails and never ending goody bag. You can get a full list of the winners here! It would also be rude not to thank who ever nominated me to get that far in the first place, I owe each and every one of you your favourite baked goods.

Beth, Meg & Me!

Love Em xx

Sky Sports Cupcakes

Americolor Electric Green rose swirls 

I’ve spent the last few months telling my boyfriend, with a promising look on my face, that I would bake some cupcakes for his work. After listening to myself consistently repeat the same sentence “I’ll make them tomorrow!” I knew it was time to stop procrastinating and start being a girlfriend that sticks to her word, it’s difficult, I must say. Luckily the time came around (with great luck) that I had a few spares baked up at work for the pirates and mermaids class, and since the class finished on time I had just enough time to get creative and still manage to leave the workshop at 6!

The most annoying thing about these cupcakes was deciding on decoration. Russell works for Sky Sports, so this meant something green and sporty, along with the clashing combination of red and blue? Yum. My fondant modelling skills are painfully dire, and I ended up moulding what I thought were rugby balls, but it turns out, they’re actually American footballs. This is the perfect misunderstanding of sports, considering Sky Sports doesn’t cover American football, so my modelling work was pretty much pointless.  Oh well, the cupcakes were still well received which in vanilla essence, is all that matters.

The recipe used for these cupcakes can be found in the Vanilla Cupcakes post, or if you cant be bothered to go all the way over there - just think to yourself, 3 eggs, 1 cup flour, half cup sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla and BP and voila. 

Sky Sports Cupcakes - Americolor Red Red & Navy Blue 

For the buttercream, I used Americolor Electric Green for the sporty cupcakes. For the more flowery counterpart; I used an Americolor Red Red for the flat tops, teamed with an Americolor Navy Blue.
Love Em xx

Miette Double Chocolate Cupcakes

What's a chocolate sponge without real chocolate? That devil’s food cake boil-the-water stuff just isn't enough for me! I need (let’s be honest - (but only in cowardly brackets) want) the real deal, organic/fairtrade/100% cacoa that derives from cocoa beans sourced from bohemian, tropical dessert islands… who am I kidding? A whole cup of the cocoa I used for these cupcakes came from Hershey’s cocoa that was on special offer at ASDA. But in this cakey instance, it mattered not because the great thing about this recipe is that it uses a near similar amount of flour and cocoa, so it was always going to taste of something that could be likened to chocolate. Also, have you ever noticed that most chocolate cake recipes only call for about half a cup of cocoa? Miette chucks in plenty of the chocolate stuff, which raised the recipe potential quite significantly and TRUST me, Miette really takes chocolate cake to another level with this recipe. It was so dense and there was no spongy after taste, just sweet and strong scents of sexy chocolate coming through from each and every bite. What more could you want?

Miette Double Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 18 double chocolate cupcakes (buttercream in the recipe)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 and a quarter cups caster sugar
56g 70% chocolate
1 cup boiling water
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup vegetable oil

 Miette Double Chocolate Cupcakes

• Line two cupcake trays and  preheat the oven to 180C.
• Put the chocolate in a heatproof measuring jug and pour the boiling water over it. Whisk until the chocolate is melted. Let the mixture cool for 15 minutes.
• Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
• In a separate jug, whisk together the buttermilk and vanilla. Set aside.
• Whisk the eggs on high speed until foamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and slowly pour in the oil, whisking until combined. Raise the speed to medium and whisk until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds longer.
• Reduce the speed and slowly pour the cooled chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Slowly pour in the buttermilk and vanilla mixture. 
• Add the sugar and whisk until the batter is smooth and liquid, about 2 minutes.
• Stop the mixer. Remove the bowl and add the sifted dry ingredients and fold it in by hand until just incorporated. Now whiz the mix with the whisk attachment for ten seconds. 
• Pour the batter through a sieve into a bowl to remove any lumps. Press against the solids in the sieve with a spatula to push through as much batter as possible.
• With an ice cream scoop, plop the batter exactly two thirds into the liners - no more than that ( i made this mistake). 
• Bake until the tops spring back, 23 minutes.
• Transfer to wire racks and let cool in the pans. 
• Meanwhile, make the frosting by whipping the butter (100g) and cream cheese(200g) together till combined. 
• Slowly add the icing sugar (500g), then the lemon juice(1tsp). Beat for 2 minutes till pale in colour.
• Pipe with your favourite nozzle!

Last but not least, if you're not able to attend the Cake & Bake Show this weekend at Earls Court, be sure to watch this space next week to see exactly what went down at the event, I'm so excited!

Love Em xx