Coffee Walnut cupcakes

Well, I think these are definitely the best I've made yet. I took them into work and they got rave reviews, with one colleague saying they were possibly the best coffee walnut cake she had eaten! Can't ask for better than that really. It's just a shame that I'll never taste them I suppose!!! (Nut allergy and not liking coffee very much.) I try not to work with nuts too often, but I had a packet of walnuts in the cupboard destined for a rich fruit cake that I'd changed my mind about making, so it was a good use to put them to. J has often found when making cakes for Church coffee mornings that the coffee walnut is one of the first to sell out, it just seems to be very popular. It could also be that she bakes a fantastic coffee walnut cake, all of the regular coffee morning attendees know this and it gets snapped up in the blink of an eye. Personally I think it must partly be a nostalgia thing, nothing says hazy summer childhood days better than coffee walnut cake.

I've made this before as a traybake type cake (as J does) and sliced it up before serving, but individual cakes are easier for work and lend themselves to piped buttercream better than a large cake does. However, I noticed that the texture of this cake is extremely light and fluffy, more so than you would expect for a normal sponge cake mixture. I don't really understand why this is, as it's made in the same way so I'm guessing it's something chemical to do with the coffee in the cake mix. Interesting....

So, onto the recipe. Quantities are a little flexible - it depends how much you like coffee and walnuts! I used 50g of chopped walnuts in the mixture, but you could easily increase that, perhaps even double it if you want to. I used a heaped tsp of instant coffee dissolved in about a tbsp of boiling water for the mixture, but again, if you're a coffee fiend and like your coffee mega powerful, you could try a tbsp of coffee in the least amount of water it takes to dissolve it. The buttercream is also a moveable feast - I was making buttercream for two different sets of cakes at the same time, so at a guess I used 100g of butter to 225g icing sugar and a heaped tsp of instant coffee in a tbsp boiling water. If you love buttercream and want all your cakes to look like the ones on the right hand side of the picture above (no cake visible, buttercream right to the edges of the case) I'd say to use 120g butter to 260g icing sugar, plus coffee. Otherwise 100g butter is probably fine. So, the recipe....

Coffee Walnut Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

120g butter, softened

60g caster sugar

60g light muscovado (light brown soft) sugar

2 large eggs

120g sifted self raising flour

1tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water (or more, see above) - allow to cool

50g chopped walnuts

For the icing

100-120g softened butter

225-260g icing sugar, sifted if very lumpy

1 heaped tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1tbsp boiling water (or more, see above), allowed to cool

12 walnut halves

Method

-Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

-Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.

-Add eggs one at a time with a little flour to stop the mixture curdling if you want.

-Add the cooled coffee mixture. It does seem a pain to wait until it cools, but if you don't it's likely to curdle your mixture (as I found to my cost - I actually added mine after the flour, having forgotten to add it before, and it split the mixture a little, but luckily the final cakes were ok!)

-Fold in the flour and chopped walnuts. Divide the mixture between the paper cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until springy when pressed and a cake tester/cocktail stick comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool. (Drool as the smell of coffee and nuts fills your house....)

-For the buttercream, combine the softened butter and icing sugar with a fork, then switch to an electric mixer and carry on beating until the buttercream is very light and fluffy and has turned pale in colour. Add the (cooled) coffee mixture (to taste - see above) and beat to combine.

-Place the nozzle of your choice into a piping bag, fill with the buttercream and pipe away to your hearts content. Swirly buttercream - yum.

-Place a walnut half (try and find 12 nice halves in the packet of walnuts - this is one case where you do need to buy the more expensive halves rather than chopped/broken walnuts) on the top of each little tower of buttercream. You could add some more chopped walnuts on the side of the buttercream, but I prefer the simplicity of just the one half on top.

-Enjoy your creation. (Or in my case, give your creations to someone else and watch them enjoy!!!)

Chopped walnuts ready to be added to the mixture - you can just see the halves I've reserved for topping the cupcakes to the left of the picture.

Strong, strong coffee. Even J doesn't drink it like this! Notice the resemblance to tar!!! You want the instant coffee to only just dissolve in the boiling water.

Naked cupcakes ready to be iced.

An utterly droolworthy iced cupcake - how can you resist?!

Vanilla fudge cupcakes

Glossy shiny icing for simple cupcakes. I decided that I wanted something slightly more interesting than just plain vanilla buttercream for these vanilla cupcakes and found the perfect icing on the Caked Crusader's blog - there should be more people fighting for the cause of cake in this world, and the Caked Crusader is doing a fabulous job - I always want to make the cakes she talks about, and this was no exception. Since I appear to be in cupcake mode at the moment (easier for people to pick up rather than a slice of a larger cake) I decided to go for plain vanilla cupcakes. Plain perhaps, but delicious nevertheless (put that down to the use of real butter in the cake mixture, plus decent vanilla extract). Since the star of the show here is the icing, I'm not going to give a recipe for the cake - it's just normal sponge cake mixture, but if you want a recipe, follow this one for coffee walnut cupcakes, but omit the coffee and walnuts, replacing with 1tsp vanilla extract.

Ok, so you have your naked cupcakes ready to be iced - see picture above - it's nice to leave a bit of depth for the icing to pool in - because it's not stiff it won't gain great height, so to have a good depth you need to allow a little room! I guess it's time for the icing recipe.

Caramel fudge icing
-60g unsalted butter
-110g brown sugar
-2 tablespoons milk or cream, more may be required
-80g icing sugar

Method

-Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the brown sugar and milk/cream.

-Bring to the boil then reduce the heat at once. Simmer for 2 minutes then remove from the hob.

-Allow to cool slightly before sifting in the icing sugar. Sifting the icing sugar is vital – if you don’t the icing sugar will form lumps in the icing which no beating will remove (as I learnt to my cost and had to remake it!)

-If the icing becomes too thick simply beat in an additional tablespoon of milk.

I have copied the Caked Crusader's instructions word for word, but because I'm lazy I didn't bother sifting the icing sugar. The CC is right, it does form lumps, but my icing sugar was fairly non-lumpy and I was able to beat really, really hard and the lumps did go (eventually). I think sifting the icing sugar would be quite a labour saving step overall. Go with what the CC did!

The butter, sugar and cream melting together in the pan - you can just see the bubbles if you look closely. When you add the icing sugar it makes the whole thing much paler.

Although they look fairly plain these were well received and attracted plenty of compliments about the butterscotchy, fudgy icing. Well worth a try!

Chocolate fudge cupcakes

Yummy chocolate cupcakes as far as the eye can see. This is another simple recipe, but they do look quite attractive when they're all iced and ready to go. It's a basic victoria sponge type cake mix but with a couple of modifications. One is obviously the addition of cocoa powder to make them into chocolate cupcakes, and the other is that instead of using caster sugar I used a combination of dark and light muscovado sugar to give them a nice depth of flavour. So without further ado, here's the recipe.

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate glace icing
Ingredients
4oz/120g very soft butter
2oz/60g dark muscovado sugar
2oz/60g light muscovado sugar
3.5oz/100g self raising flour
0.5oz/20g cocoa powder
2 large eggs

For the icing
3oz/75g dark chocolate (I used 72% Green and Blacks - yum!)
3/4oz/22g butter
3tbsp warm water (from the kettle)
6oz/175g icing sugar

Method

-Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a muffin tin with muffin cases.

-Cream the two sugars with the butter until light and fluffy. The mixture will not become as light in colour as normal due to the dark sugars, but will lighten noticeably as you mix it.

-Add the eggs, one at a time beating after each addition, with a spoonful of flour to stop the mixture curdling if you want.

-Fold in the rest of the flour and spoon into the muffin cases.

-Place in the oven and bake for around 25 minutes, but start to check after 20.

-Remove when ready (cake tester/cocktail stick comes out clean and they feel firm and springy to the touch) to a wire rack to cool.

-Make the icing by melting the chocolate, butter and warm water together in a bowl placed over a pan of hot water, stirring once or twice to mix well.

-Add the icing sugar, and beat well to get all the lumps out. You could sift the icing sugar (and I would recommend this if your icing sugar is lumpy at all to start with) but I'm lazy and my icing sugar seemed fairly non-lumpy to start with. I do find that sometimes I sift the icing sugar and it clumps up anyway, and I hate sifting icing sugar, it's such a faff that I often don't bother.

-Ice the cooled cupcakes. Decorate any way you fancy, I kept it simple with some bought sugar flowers, but you could let your imagination run wild with piped designs etc etc. It's entirely up to you!

Butter and the two different sugars before mixing.
And after creaming the butter and sugar together. The mixture has lightened.

Naked cupcakes waiting for their load of icing. They do seem a little on the mean side, but because this icing is a poured rather than piped one, you want a little space in the cases to allow the icing to pool into a nice deep layer, as shown below:

Mmmm, yummy icing and delicate chocolate cake. These were really scrummy and disappeared quickly with lots of appreciative comments. I did manage to snaffle one for myself though before they all went! The icing was good, being both quicker and easier to make than buttercream, and less sweet and rich (which is good in my book as I find buttercream too sickly) but was very slightly grainy. The icing really did run down the side of the cupcakes as you can see on the right hand side in the above photo.

A lovely glossy icing for a sweet and simple cupcake.

Raspberry swirl cupcakes

My buttercream piping skills are getting better! A batch of simple vanilla cupcakes with a little twist - marbled with a little swirl of raspberry jam. I have a slight confession to make - I forgot to add any vanilla extract to the actual cupcake mixture, but as I used butter and organic eggs in the mix, they tasted good anyway! I decided to colour my buttercream pink just for the sake of it really, to complement the cupcakes and continue the pink/red theme. It also covered up the very very slight brownish hue of the buttercream due to the added vanilla extract in it. Although I'm sure no-one would have noticed anyway. I found some pretty cupcake cases in Julian Graves and I also have to admit to buying disposable plastic piping bags from Lakeland limited. So so much easier than washing, drying and reusing the cloth type one that came with my piping nozzles, or attempting to use plastic food bags, as I did for the chocolate suprise cupcakes. (This is a big mistake - plastic food bags, even one inside each other, are not strong enough to hold the nozzle in place and I ended up with buttercream oozing all over the place as the plastic stretched and allowed the buttercream to escape.....) The disposable piping bags are great - you just chop the end off to allow the nozzle to poke out, fill the bag and away you go, piping with no fear that the buttercream will develop an adventurous mind of its own. So onto the recipe:

Raspberry swirl cupcakes

Ingredients

120g butter, softened

120g caster sugar

120g self raising flour

2 large eggs

4tsp raspberry jam (you can use seedless if you want, but I didn't)

For the buttercream icing

100g butter (very soft indeed)

225g icing sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

approximately 1/2 tsp red food colouring (optional, and to the colour you require - if you use paste colours you'll need a lot less!!!)

Method

-Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a muffin tin with 12 papers

-Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

-Add eggs one at a time, beating well and adding a little flour if necessary to stop the mixture curdling. Add the vanilla extract.

-Add the remaining flour, fold in and spoon into the muffin cases.

-Blob a little jam onto the top of each cake mixture and swirl with a cocktail stick.

-Bake for 20-25 minutes until light golden brown and a cocktail stick inserted comes out clean.

-Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.

-For the buttercream, start by mixing the (very very soft) butter with the icing sugar using a fork (if you use the electric mixer at this stage you will end up inhaling icing sugar - nice!!!) then once it starts to come together, switch to an electric mixer to avoid arm-ache. Beat very well until light and fluffy, adding the vanilla extract and red food colouring if desired.

-Spoon into a piping bag and swirl away. Generosity with the buttercream icing is always a good thing.

-Enjoy!!!

My cupcakes in the cases with jam blobbed on the top.
After swirling the jam. Mmmmm, swirly.
You'll have to use your imagination here regarding colours - what can I say, it got dark! You can probably just make out the raspberry swirl remaining after baking - if you look closely enough!
Yum yum, swirly buttercream on the cupcake. I was really proud of the way these turned out and they were extremely well received - gone in a matter of minutes (well, almost) and plenty of compliments!

Chocolate suprise cupcakes

I can't take any credit for the idea here, I saw these a while ago on Hannah's Country Kitchen and fancied giving them a go. I'm still trying to get my buttercream icing to look good and these provided an ideal opportunity to have another go at both buttercream and piping. There seemed to be a dearth of Rolos in my local supermarkets though, so I resorted to using chunks of Cadbury's Caramel instead. They were quite a bit bigger than Rolos though, although it's always nice to have a large chunk of caramel inside your cupcake. You can see from the picture that these didn't rise as much as I was hoping, and the cases seem a little empty, but at least there's plenty of buttercream to disguise this!

Unfortunately my mixture curdled while I was making them, I can only guess that it was due to having different ingredients at different temperatures and them not mixing properly. It came back when I added the flour though. I suppose this might have been why they didn't rise as much as Hannah's lovely cakes. (You can find the recipe on Hannah's blog). And although I'm quite proud of my buttercream, it isn't a patch on hers yet! More work yet to do there and more tasting, it's a hard life....

Cupcake half full of mixture with a big chunk of Cadbury's caramel sitting on top. When I was adding the remaining mixture to the cupcake cases I had to be quite careful to try and get the caramel covered - there didn't seem to be a lot of mixture, so perhaps I'd used too much on the base.

My best attempt yet at piping with buttercream. I've found that to get good buttercream it needs to be beaten for a very long time, therefore an electric whisk is preferable to doing it by hand. The icing just seemed to get paler and paler and fluffier as I beat it and I'm sure I would have given up much too early if I'd been doing it by hand.

These were very well received indeed - very sweet, but my colleagues didn't seem to mind that. There were a number of guesses as to the surprise inside ranging from toffee to mars bar and correctly caramel!