// White Chocolate Cupcakes//

My team at work has introduced a new Friday routine, whereby we take turns to cook for one another. The two colleagues before me in the rota both brought in shop-bought cakes, but I actually find that works out more expensive than doing it myself. Money I’d rather spend on other things than work!

The only common crowd pleaser seems to be chocolate, but we live on a diet of Pret brownies as it is so it needed to be white chocolate to really stand out.  These white chocolate cupcakes are cheap and easy to make, went down well with everyone and looked good with next to no effort, thanks to Sainsbury’s awesome new writing icing.

Ingredients

3 medium eggs

(Weigh these and use that weight for the other ingredients. Mine weighed 210g)

210g plain flour

210g light muscovado sugar

200g butter (just slightly less than the egg weight, because of the creamy chocolate)

150g white cooking chocolate, diced into small chunks

5ml baking powder

5ml vanilla extract

For the icing

400g icing sugar

150g softened butter

5ml vanilla extract

splash of water

Icing pens to decorate, or grated white chocolate

Method

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees. In a large mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then crack in the eggs and beat again.
• Stir in the vanilla extract and baking powder, then sift in the flour and mix until well combined.
• Finally, stir in the chocolate chunks.
• Line a muffin pan with 12 large cases and fill each case to about 2/3 deep with the batter.
• Bake in the middle shelf of the oven until risen and golden - about 20 minutes or so. Some of the chocolate may bubble out of the top, but this will harden as it cools.
• Leave the cakes to cool in the tin for ten minutes, then turn onto a wire cooling rack for about an hour, until completely cold.
• While they cool, clean the mixing bowl and mixer to make the icing.
• Sieve the icing sugar into the bowl then add the softened butter in small chunks. Blend with an electric beater until well combined - the mixture will be stiff.
• Add the vanilla extract, then just the tiniest dash of water to loosen the mix. At first it will remain stiff, but it will go smooth very quickly so resist the urge to add more water too soon.
• If the cakes have risen in the middle, slice off the bulge by gently cutting across with a serrated knife.
• Using a palette knife or butter knife, spread the icing evenly over the top of each cake. Keep up cup of hot water handy for dunking the knife, so that the icing doesn’t stick to it.
• Decorate with icing pens, or a sprinkle of grated white chocolate in the middle of each cake.

// Mocha Cupcakes with Coffee Cream Cheese Frosting//

Ingredients

3 medium eggs

The same weight of plain flour (weigh the eggs in their shells first)

2tsp - heaped - of baking powder

3tbsp softened butter

100g dark chocolate, 70% minimum

1-2tbsp Camp coffee (or 2tbsp very strong chilled coffee)

Finally, and I apologise for the vagueness, but I really don’t know what else to suggest…

2 handfuls of caster sugar

For the frosting

450g icing sugar

100g cream cheese

80g softened butter

1-2dsp Camp coffee

1tsp vanilla extract

Coffee beans to decorate.

Method

• Pre-heat oven to 180 and line a deep cupcake tin with cases. 
• Cream together the softened butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl, then beat in the eggs and Camp coffee until well combined.
• Sieve in the flour and baking powder and stir into the mix.
• Break the dark chocolate into chunks and melt. In a cup in the microwave is easiest, but use a low setting and keep stopping to stir the chocolate so that it doesn’t burn.
• Pour the chocolate into the mix and stir until well combined.
• Half fill the cupcake cases with the mix. This should make 12 large cupcakes or a whole bunch of little ones. Bake in the middle shelf of the oven for 15-20 minutes, til a knife comes out clean.
• Let the cupcakes cool in the tray for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
• Cream together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and coffee in your now-clean large bowl and sieve in the icing sugar.
• Beat until blended and a firm, pipe-able consistency. Add more icing sugar if necessary.
• Stand a piping bag nozzle-down in a pint glass and fold the excess fabric down over the sides of the glass. Spoon all the icing into the bag then lift the sides and twist to seal. Gently squeeze the icing down until there’s no air left in the bag.
• Pipe a swirl onto each cake, from the outside in, leaving a little peak in the centre. Top this off with a whole coffee bean.

// Sourdough//

I’ve just woken my sourdough starter back up after a long nap in the fridge, which reminded me to mention this - my first go.

It took me about a week to get up the courage to begin the starter. The more you read about sourdough, the more intimidatingly impossible it seems.  I won’t pretend the reality was a total walk in the park - I’d thought I wanted a dog, until I had to commit to twice-daily feeds of this creature - but I definitely don’t think it’s worth the hype.

I started off trying to follow this technique from the Guardian, courtesy of those slightly creepy, lispy Baker Brothers, but all the jar weighing and naming the monster seemed a bit full on.  I then shifted to the River Cottage approach, which was refreshingly relaxed about the starter, but became off-putting at the proving and baking stage (spray bottles of water and a baker’s proving basket, really?!).

In the end I just learnt as I went and made a few useful discoveries in the process.   The starter took a while to take off, which I found strange given that I was using real holier-than-thou, wholegrain, organic spelt flour.  It turned out this was exactly the problem - the yeast that was growing never got the chance to thrive, because it was facing too much competition from new arrivals every time I fed it.  Once I’d shifted to a basic strong white bread flour, everything started happening very fast. I was pretty gung-ho with feeding and it didn’t seem to have any negative impact, but the started definitely thrived better when I fed the same weight of flour and water.

I followed Hugh’s guidelines pretty closely when it came to baking, but instead of spraying the loaf with water I put a full roasting tin at the bottom of the oven. The crust was great, so it’s an approach I think I’ll stick with.  

The flavour was exactly what I’d hoped for - really nice and sour.  I had a couple of slices with avocado and cherry tomatoes which was an amazing combination.  I think next time around I’ll add a bit of sugar, though, to give the yeast a little boost.

Sourdough’s more of a pet than a bread, with its morning and evening feeds and hours and hours of proving. But it’s definitely not the sensitive, tricky little thing it’s made out to be and the flavour more than compensates for the effort. Go try.

// Muffin Tops//

I’ve always hated muffins.  It took a long time for me to realise that this is because I’ve been able to taste grease in every shop-bought one I’ve tried.  Even home baking recipes usually require vegetable oil and it just seems a little bit gross.

Then I discovered muffin recipes that use melted butter instead of oil, which is much more cakey and doesn’t produce the usual oily feeling. I now have a great non-greasy and really simple recipe that gets trotted out all the time, most recently when I had friends over for a long night of drinking and a stomach friendly carb fix was in order.  That particular batch featured white chocolate and blueberries, which burst beautifully to create big, juicy berry puddles in the muffins.  They were delicious, but also very scruffy.  A lesson in why not to drink and bake. 

My favourite filling is actually white chocolate and lime, which is an amazing summery combination.  Making these involves substituting the berries and 25-35ml of milk from the recipe below with the zest and juice of two small limes (only juice one if the limes are larger).  This particular flavour combination doesn’t always please the crowds, though, so I default to something a bit more popular.

White Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins

Ingredients

300g plain flour

200ml semi-skimmed milk

150g raspberries

100g caster sugar

100g unsalted butter

100g white chocolate

2 large eggs

1tbsp baking powder

Method

• Mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs and milk then add to the dry ingredients.
• Melt the butter (a quick blast in the microwave is fine) and add to the mix.
• Fold in the raspberries.
• Add most of the chocolate and mix.
• Divide into 12 muffin cases and dot with the remaining chocolate.
• Bake at 200 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

// A Cake With Heart//

I had a brush with gluten intolerance for a while after moving to London, which wasn’t much fun for a baker.  But the process of engaging with alternative baking techniques threw up a whole raft of new ideas, like substituting traditional fats with wholesome alternatives such as pulped vegetables.  That’s how I came to love this version of red velvet cake.

Red velvet cake is such an indulgent sounding name, but the end result is usually too packed with artificial colouring to be anything really special.  The beetroot in this version negates the need for anything fake, which means that the cake is genuinely indulgent and guilt-free to eat or, even better, give away.  That’s why I scaled it down into little tea-time Valentine’s Day cupcakes for the office this year…

Full-size it’s great for tea, being quite a dense version of the original but also very healthy in cake terms (celebrations are for proper dirty indulgence, so healthy cake is better suited to nondescript afternoons).

Red Velvet Cake

Ingredients

Cake

300g raw beetroot (250g pack of ready-cooked beetroot works just as well)

100g plain flour/white rice four

100g caster sugar

75ml sunflower oil

15ml vanilla extract

10ml cocoa powder

5ml baking powder

5ml white vinegar

2 eggs

5ml xanthan gum (if using gluten-free flour)

Frosting

200g icing sugar

100g cream cheese

100g softened unsalted butter

5-10ml vanilla extract (to taste)

Method

• If you’re using raw beetroot, cook in 300ml water for 1 hour. Once cooked (or unwrapped, if you’re using ready-cooked), puree in a blender. If using a hand blender, grate the beetroot first to minimise mess.
• Beat the sunflower oil and vanilla extract into the pulp.
• In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until the mix is light and fluffy.
• Add this to the beetroot mix and beat together.
• Sift your flour into the mix, along with the cocoa powder, baking powder and xanthan gum (if you’re using it).
• Beat again, then add vinegar.
• Divide the mix between 2 small, well greased  sandwich tins and bake at around 200 degrees for 20 minutes.
• To make icing, beat the cream cheese and butter together before adding icing sugar and vanilla extract.
• Ensure cake is completely cool before icing to prevent running - refridgerate for 15-20 minutes if necessary.
• Turn one half of the cake upside down so that you have the flat edge to ice, then place the other half on top, flat side down. Ice the top and decorate. Berries go with the cake colour really nicely.

Note: Because of the beetroot, a knife inserted into the cake may come out wet even once the cake is cooked through so this isn’t a good indicator of readiness. Instead, press the cake lightly in the centre and check for it springing back.