Oreo Vanilla Cupcakes

I have spent most of my life not knowing what an Oreo tasted like.  For some reason they never really appealed to me.  I just thought that they looked like a dry chocolate biscuit with hard cream in the middle.

I always remember this TV advertisement years and years ago where this little boy is sitting on his doorstep when his mum brings him some milk and Oreos.  He then separates an Oreo on his doorstep and his dog comes up and licks half of it, which doesn’t bother the little boy as he eats both halves!  Obviously those Oreos are good enough to eat dog spit and all!

Anyway, I recently decided to try those Oreos and was pleasantly surprised!  Now I just can’t get enough.  I love the little packets of mini-Oreos, I like the packets of big Oreos, and I love Oreos in cupcakes. 

Oreos in cupcakes has to be one of the coolest ideas.  I think I came across it somewhere on the web or on Pinterest. 

Little bit of sunshine

Where did January go?  It happens every year.  All of a sudden, it’s February!  The days are getting longer and summer is on its way.  Well, perhaps, that’s a little bit optimistic but we’re definitely getting more daylight hours!

I was feeling a little summery and hence wanted a taste of the tropics!  Coconut and mango!  England is a long way from the tropics, hence it was canned and dried coconut, and frozen mango!

I adapted my favourite vanilla cupcake recipe from Sweetapolita and added a little extra coconut filling to the batter.  Topped them with mango buttercream and voila, good to go!  A little burst of sunshine in my mouth!

Ferrero Rocher Topped Nutella Cupcakes

After weeks of indulging over the Christmas festivities, the 12 days were up and I decided to wipe out all traces of the jolly season by eating all the biscuits and chocolates that we had been given. (Well, you can’t start a new year with new resolutions while all these temptations are lying around) 

Trust me, this was no easy task but I managed it by nibbling slowly through the shortbread and the giant box of Celebrations…and then discovered that we had 2 left-over boxes of Ferrero Rochers. Shock horror! 

Instead of inhaling these mini golden balls at one go, I decided that the chocolate might go better with even more chocolate and sugar to top it off! 

Thanks to Pinterest, voila Ferrero Rocher cupcakes….well, more like Ferrero Rochers on cupcakes. 

Busy

It's been a while, but I've been busy.

Really really busy.

Hope you're all well!

Don't buy these

One of my least favourite things in my kitchen at the moment are these white cupcake cases that I picked up at the local supermarket.  

They’re horrible. 

First of all they’re tiny.  I don’t know how they can call themselves ‘cupcake cases’ – they’re more like ‘thimbles’.  Look how tiny they are in my cupcake tray!  Tiny.  I put just over 1 tablespoonful of batter in each liner and that practically filled them up. 

 They also seem to separate from the actual cupcake after baking.  Not pretty.  I'm pretty sure it’s not my cupcake as I've made them in other cases with no problems.  So my conclusion is that these liners just seem to separate.  Perhaps they’re too waxy?  Who knows.

I know, the world’s not going to stop turning because I bought some dud cupcake cases, but I have 100 of them!  What am I supposed to do with them?

Well, I could just make lots of chocolate cupcakes (not a bad thing), but then I would have to eat them all myself.  Not good for my ‘diet’. 

Or I could just let my daughter make her ‘cupcakes’!

On another note, Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone.  Enjoy the mooncakes!

Delightful vanilla-raspberry cupcakes

Sometimes I just want sugar.  Any form.  Any colour.  When there’s nothing in the cupboards, I absolutely just have to bake something.  Anything.  Anytime.  I’ve been known to make cakes at midnight…and eat them an hour later.  Sad I know.

One of my favourite vanilla cupcake recipes based on the vanilla fairy cake recipe from the Peyton and Bryne British Baking book.  It’s an easy and quick recipe which produces a light and relatively moist crumb.

I also threw in the squishy raspberries  from the back of the fridge that no one wanted to eat.

This is what I used:

100g softened unsalted butter
175g home-made vanilla sugar
2 medium eggs
150 self-raising flour
2 tsps vanilla extract (I like a strong vanilla hit)
60ml natural yogurt
Roughly 150g of squishy raspberries
12-hole cupcake tray lined with 12 cupcake cases

What I did:

1. Line cupcake tray with cupcake cases

2. Preheat the oven to 170C

3. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, light and fluffy using an electric appliance if you still want to have some feeling left in your arm after this

4. Add the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar and mix well

5. Add the vanilla extract and yogurt to the batter and mix well (lots of mixing going on…)

6. Fold the flour into the batter

7. Drop 1 to 2 raspberries into each hole in the cupcake tray.

8. Fill each cupcake case two-thirds full

9. Bake for about 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out relatively clean.  A few crumbs might cling to it but it should be fine.

10. Dust with icing sugar or decorate as you please

The cupcakes smelt beautiful while cooking and came out a little sunken due to the moisture in the raspberries – so I hid them under a mountain of …raspberries!

Heaven. 

Anyone else with a sugar addiction?