Frankfurter Kranz Cupcakes

Frankfurt Crown CupcakesI live in the state of Hesse and the Frankfurt Crown Cake is besides Applewine (some sort of Cider) one of the things that the region is famous for. There are many different recipes for the cake but something they all have in common is the shape and the cover with butter cream, golden brittle and cherries to make it look like a crown. I like the version of the cake that comes with a base of sponge cake, cherry jam and a light butter cream. As I promised to bring a cake to work the other day I was looking for the appropriate tin to make the cake at home. But I couldn’t find it and decided that I could also go for cupcakes. Continue reading »

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Irish Car Bomb CupcakesI found this wonderful recipe on one of my favourite blogs last year just before St Patricks Day: The Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes! And I made them for my friends housewarming party that was around Paddys day and everyone loved them. I wasn’t completely confident with the recipe because the cupcakes were too sweet, too chocolatey and could have tasted more like Guinness in my opinion. So I decided to give them another try this year and give them a schabakery twist if you know what I mean 🙂

I have adjusted the borwneyed bakers recipe a little to my gusto. And it is a mix of metric US measures so keep your scale and your cup measurements at hand. Continue reading »

Black Forest Cupcakes

This is one of the cake recipes I have from my Grandma that I adapted for Cupcakes. Makes 6 delicous Cupcakes:

For the Cupcakes:

  • 2 Egg Whites
  • 1 package of Vanilla Sugar (or 10g of homemade vanilla sugar)
  • 2 Egg Yolks
  • 2 Tbsp Hot Water
  • 50 g Sugar
  • 25 g Flour
  • 25 g Corn or Potato Starch
  • 10 g Dark Cocoa Powder

Beat egg whites and vanilla sugar until stiff. It must be so stiff that you can flip the bowl over your head without the egg white rain onto your head 😉 In another bowl beat egg yolks, hot water and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift in the flour, starch and cocoa onto the egg yolks and mix thoroughly. If it is too dry to mix add a little of the egg white. Then fold in the egg white. Transfer the mixture to a muffin tin. I have one mold that makes the cupcakes look like a birds nest or a upside down muffin with a scooped out center. It is important not to line the pan with paper cups, so grease the pan if needed. Spread the batter evenly and bake for 20 Minutes at 175°C until a inserted scewer comes out clean. Let the cakes rest in the hot pan for 5 minutes before removing from the pan and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

If you are using a normal Muffin tin, place the muffin upside down and core the cupcake to make room for the cherry filling. Use a cupcake corer or a teaspoon.

For the filling:

  • ca. 100 g Canned Cherries (not too sweet ones!)
  • 1 Tbsp Starch
  • 2 Tbsp Kirschwasser (a spirit made from cherries)

Mix Starch and Kirschwasser thoroughly so there are no chunks. Place the cherries in a pot and add the starch-kirschwasser-mixture. Cook with medium heat until the liquid starts to stiffen. Let it cool a little and fill it into the cupcakes that you cored. You can also substitute the filling with Cherry Jam with Cherry pieces and add some Kirschwasser.

For the topping:

  • 200 g Cream (chilled)
  • 1 pack cream stiffener
  • 2 Tbsp Kirschwasser
  • Shaved dark Chocolate for decoration
  • 6 glaced Cherries for decoration

Beat the cream with the stiffener until stiff (not too long, we don’t want butter and yes that happened to me more than once…). Then add the Kirschwasser and stir it in. You will see that the alcohol affects the consistency of the cream, so make sure it the cream is really stiff before adding the alcohol. If you add too much of the alcohol the topping will run off later. If you want to add more booze to the cupcakes soak the baked dough or add more to the filling AFTER cooling 😉

Spread the topping around the cupcake sleek and pipe with a star nozzle onto the top. Then scatter shaved chocolate over the cupckae (don’t forget the sides) and place the glaced cherry on top. They taste best when they had some time to infuse.

Cute OreOwls

One member of my team at work left us last week and as her farewell-gift was not here in time, I decided to bake her something cute to lessen the pain.

I stumbled over this OreOwls recipe last week and thought this would be a cute idea. So Thursday night me and my Oreo-cutting helper started to prep some owls. I was a little weirded out by the lack of egg in the recipe but this is what gives the cupcakes a yummy muddy texture that goes well with the chocolate ganache.

 

I spread all 12 sad’n’cute looking owls over her table before she came and they were a total hit!
But eating them is definately not for softies. Tearing those cuties apart hurts!

The Cupcake Massacre

I wanted to make some sweet treats for my friends birthday party in September. As she is a huge peanut butter fan, I was looking for an adequate recipe to fulfill her wish. As I scored with my version of the Irish car bomb cupcakes at her last party I searched for a peanut buttery alternative on the same blog (which is one of my favourites anyway). And there they were, Dark chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, I fell for them at first glance.

I took a day off from work to enjoy a whole day of baking fun. I went shopping for ingredients, got out my measures, arranged everything on my kitchen counter and started my baking day. I started to follow the recipes instructions, but using my simmering pan with thermometer and not letting the temperature of the chocolate mixture rise to more than 50°C (which is a good tip that I learned at a praline course I took because like that the chocolate won’t get burned). I prepared the dough, transferred it into my muffin pan and into the hot oven.

I don’t know what exactly happened to the cupcakes in the oven but instead of rising at least a little in height, they only rose in width.
I cooled them for some time before trying to remove them from the muffin pan but the tops broke and most of the cupcakes came out in crumbles. I could save at least 4 cupcakes from breaking but when I got them out of the pan, the paper cups remained in the pan. It was a complete massacre of chocolatety cupcake crumbles and paper cups…
I first blamed the recipe and tried to figure out what to do instead. I suspect my oven to be the point of failure because afterwards, baking another cake at the same temperature, it took twice the baking time for the cake to finish plus the spare cupcakes with a proved and tested recipe were pretty much the same…

I wanted to make some additional Cake Pops anyway so the crumbles were a good thing to start with. So I made the peanutbutter frosting from the recipe and mixed my cupcake crumbles with half of the frosting to get a moist Cake Pop basis. They were amazing!

Cakepops are a fantastic possibility to cover up baking fails. They are ridicoulously easy to make, any flavour can be added and they can be styled from thrifty to fancy. All you need is some time, especially for cooling and different icings or decorations. But they look very good on a buffet and have a perfekt bite size.