Chocolate Sundae Cupcakes

The chocolate sundae cupcake is meant to remind you of ice cream and chocolate sauce - a bit like Pizza Express's Chocolate Glory ice cream pudding. The cupcake works quite well with a real vanilla pod making the cake smell more vanillery than just essence would and the black specks feel a bit decadent. Vanilla things that look like they have grit in them are always good value.

The frosting was a chocolate fudge frosting and I think all foodstuffs should come covered in it. it is amazing, but does involve a lot of whipping and heating and whipping and cooling - in fact the hand mixer started to smell a bit burny. But that's probably my mixer rather than the amount of time you have to attend to it for. Saying that, it is worth it and is very amazing.

However it is difficult to decorate before it sets. I had wanted to put chopped nuts on top, but the frosting set too fast and they just scattered off so I just had to settle for a marshmallow plonked on top.

But I think that's a good look.

Hot Chocolate and Marshmallow Cupcakes

These ones are a lovely type of chocolate cupcake - I think the only reason they're given a hot chocolate tag is because there is a marshmallow on top. I was slightly disappointed because the marshmallows fell off really easily, and I had thought there would be a beautiful melding of cake and mallow, but no. *Le sigh*

I found the chocolate cake itself a little dry, but that could be a slight overlongcoooking by me (but I doubt it hugely). I made them in fairy cake size which might the reason they were a little on the dry side. Hmmmmmm ...

However these are good if you need to make something a bit fancy quickly and in a hurry. They look pretty good, especially if you wrap the tin in a towel between them coming out the cooker and going to someone's house, then they stay warm and lovely.

An OK cupcake.

Birthday Beauties

I made these little gems of cake for my friend Lorna's birthday in Cambridge and I think it would correct to say they went down well.

A birthday beauty is a vanilla sponge with strawberry chopped and added to the batter. They are pretty damn tasty. You can apparently make lemon and chocolate versions also.

However the real beauty in the birthday beauty is in the icing! I went to town and made some pretty vibrant fondant icings and put jelly sweets on top (conveniently forgetting that my oldest friend doesn't eat gelatine ... oops). So light sponge and a whole heap of sugar - too much possibly for a Thursday night!

One friend of Lorna's ate his third cake, got up for a fag, announcing he had to have one after "great sex and great food" - check that out Wagman!!!