The lovely T gave me this cupcake recipe book for my birthday earlier this year. I made the Cloud Cupcakes for a lunch in late February or early March, but must confess that since then I hadn't revisited the book - mainly out of trepidatious feelings of inadequacy regarding my baking abilities.
[Tangent: I was also put off by the fact that many of the recipes require "500g prepared fondant" as an ingredient to make fondant icing. "What the hell IS fondant, exactly?" my housemate had heard me mutter grumpily. Is this something I needed to pre-purchase, or to make separately? I'd examined the book carefully to see if there was a separate fondant recipe, but there wasn't. Is fondant available only at specialist cake shops, or is it at supermarkets? I've never noticed it on the shelves. The Women's Weekly recipe books have a special place in my heart, but this book's glossary seemed to be mocking my fondant ignorance - why would they include an entry for "rind" ("also known as zest" - !!!), but not one defining what they meant by "fondant"?! Whatevs, man.]
Then on Saturday I was gripped by a sudden desire to bake, so decided to give cupcakes another go. I was going to a 30th that night - I figured I'd drop the cupcakes in to the birthday boy the following day to help with the hangover... :)
To makes the cupcakes for JP, I used the cream cheese lemon cake recipe from page 16 and the cream cheese frosting recipe from page 8 (no fondant required!) - and I decided to top them off with wisps of the pistachio flavoured Persian Fairy Floss I bought in a recent bout of fiscal madness at Leo's.
JP CUPCAKES (a combo of recipes from "The Australian Women's Weekly Cupcakes")
Cream cheese lemon cake
90g butter, softened
90g cream cheese, softened
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup (50g) self-raising flour
1/2 cup (75g) plain flour
Cream cheese frosting
30g butter, softened
80g cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups (240g) icing sugar
Beat butter, cream cheese, rind, sugar and eggs in a bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add sifted flours to mixture, beat on low speed until combined. Divide mixture among paper cases in cupcake tray.
Bake 20 mins for a 12-hole standard muffin pan (or 30 mins if you're using a 6-hole texas pan). Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool.
To make frosting, beat butter and cream cheese in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy, then gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.
Oh, and a tip for young players: only add the Persian fairy floss, if you choose to do so, at the very last minute - or it tends to melt a bit... :)
5 comments:
What fun! Save me one:) I love the final photo. I've come back to it a few times and each time I think it looks like a gang of snow-yetis!
friendly yummy snow-yetis though duncan!
claire, i have that book too! but i've been too busy obsessing abt banana bread to make any kinda cupcake of late =)
to answer your fondant woes - you can definitely make fondant. we made some to make sugar flowers. you have to use it straight away because we found that it hardens/dries out quite easily. from what i remember, it's just icing sugar and glucose syrup. i've not made it again though (it is actually very easy, i'm just too lazy!)
i don't have the book in front of me...but i'm sure we found the recipe in there somewhere claire! unless it was in the crabapple cupcake book. mmm.
anyway, there are worse things to be ignorant of than fondant!
Snow-yetis: love it! Now when I look at that photo I imagine the cupcakes are marching, singing "YO HEE HO, HO-OH" like the Wicked Witch of the West's guards in the Wizard of Oz...
So how's the banana bread obsessing going, jfox? Have you tried any of those other 79 recipes I told you about?
Thanks for your words of comfort re my fondant ignorance! :)
love your cupcakes with the fairy floss! but that is disappointing about the AWW cookbook - I am a great fan of them because they tend to have recipes which aren't full of scary ingredients.
I don't know what fondant is but I had thought it is the royal icing that you ice the christmas cake with (and buy in the pink - or purple - packets - can't remember which is royal and which is marzipan) but I could be mistaken! If it is the same one, I avoid novely cake recipes with this sort of icing because it looks perfect but tastes plastic
Glad you like my cupcakes Johanna!
I still dunno about the fondant - just today I noticed that Sydney food blogger Not Quite Nigella was listing fondant as an ingredient in her cupcakes. I'll have to investigate... maybe even email her a question to put me out of my misery :)
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