Chocolate Peanutbutter Caramel Cupcakes

I like classics, I don’t need fancy, for me the real beauty lies in doing the simple things right. But sometimes it needs the total extravaganza and this weekend called for it… For a birthday party on the weekend I combined the most delicious treats to this sugar rush: Chocolate Peanutbutter Caramel Cupcakes!

I don’t want to babble (I’ll do that in a separate post soon or later) so straigtht up to the recipe this time…

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Cai-beer-inha – When Craftbeer kisses summer feelings

Caibeerinha Cupcake | schabakery.comWe’re on the verge of St. Patrick’s Day and as my heart beats for the Irish, I couldn’t possibly let this day arrive without providing you with a goodie. #GoGreen4PatricksDay!

While on my last trip to Dublin in December a new cool bar opened where I live: The Maltbar offers a large variety of Single Malts as well as Craft Beers, alongside with some fancy cocktails including those (and other) ingredients. The one cocktail that caught my attention was the Caibeerinha and I had to try it, because it sounds like a really weird combination. It’s actually a nice combination of a rather hoppy IPA with a fresh  and tangy finish. After sitting in the bar and brainstorming on new recipes for the blog, this idea of a craft beer flavoured cupcake got stuck in my head. So if you’re tired of making the same old Guinness Chocolate Cake over and over again, why not try these little bad ass craft beer cocktail cupcakes for a change? I used Braukunstkeller’s Amarsi IPA, as it is used at Maltbar and with it’s strong hoppy flavour & the bitter citrus aroma it perfectly goes together with lime and brown sugar. If you can’t get hands on this one, go for an IPA that also uses Amarillo and Simcoe hop for the strong flavours. I remember the 8 Degrees Brewing’s Howling Gale Ale to be quite similar but less bitter, so if you want to mild the hoppy bitterness I would give this one a shot.

#kissthecake competition caibeerinha-cupcakes | schabakery.comAnd as summer kisses craftbeer in this recipe, this cute little bowl 58products, inventors of the famous TASSEN, provided kisses the cake. And the luck of the Irish seemed to be with me as they announced -drummroll please- that I am among the winners of their #kissthecake competition. I am flattered and super happy. I had so much fun playing around with the kissing bowl, the cupcakes and the light. And I must admit this bowl is just cuteness overflow and I am happy that it’ll get some company real soon!

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Salted Caramel Brownies

Salted Caramel BrowniesI love chocolate AND salted caramel. I love the combination of salty and sweet, as I’ve written about this in my Beer Batter Maple Bacon Cupcake Post before, I won’t go into more detail here. Chocolate and salted caramel is a fancy and also very popular combination yet hard to top. I remembered the delicious cookies with salt and caramel and thought to myself, that the same flavour could fit into one tray of brownies. My first impulse was to just make brownies and top it with salted caramel sauce. But that sounded too lame, so I searched for some directions online and that gave me another idea of how to realise it. These brownies are very chocolatey, not too sweet and the salted caramel completes this treat. Sorry for the basic photo, I had to take the phone to capture this beauty before the office mates ate them all up. Continue reading »

Yummy Cookies and sideeffects

My health really gave me a hard time in this past year 2013. Also I’ve done my best to ignore it, my body refuses and partly gives up on me from time to time. This week it was my stomach who refused to let me eat painfree. Luckily there is a pill for everything but sometimes they come with unwanted side effects. Yesterday was Nap-day, I think I had as many naps as a bunny has per day, 17 to be exact. Last nigth and today was rather problematic cause as a side effect of my meds all my muscles decided to hurt like crazy today. I felt like after a constant 2 day workout with a burn in my muscles that just won’t stop. I needed distraction and found it in a note that today was national cookie day in whatever country (I guess it’s America). Salted Caramel Nutella Double Chocolate CookiesAs I did not manage to bake something from the To Bake List in November I found it appropriate, to at least make some new cookies on the cookie day. I decided to give the Salted Caramel + Nutella Stuffed Double Chocolate Chip Cookies I have recently found on topwithcinnamon blog a shot. Izzy is a teenage girl living in London and blogging her fantastic recipes for a few years now. I’ve been following her on Twitter for a while and saw her video together with the guys from SORTED food and fell in <3 with the recipe. I have to admit I am a huge fan of stopmotion, that was one of the first things I had to do as a semester project for design class back in university and I loved it. Actually my stopmotion semester project also involved cake. We had to make a countdown for movies with stop motion and we decided to let a set of false teeth eat up our cake numbers would make a fantastic countdown. But back to Izzy and her fantastic recipes… She is very inspiring, so young and yet so talented, creative and professional. She has an eye for photos and does explain complicated recipes in an easy understandable way. And she’s always wearing funny socks in her pictures and has a great sense of style. And with all due respect I HAD to take a picture with my feet in it, just as she does a lot. (Just a quick shot with the phone as the camera is already boxed…)

I wanted to try out some of her recipes but hadn’t had the time yet. Now that I tasted thos really gorgeous cookies, I WANT MORE. The recipe is very easy and fast to do, you don’t even need a electric mixer (which my sister will appreciate). I used some Cadbury caramel chocolate that I brought from my last trip to Ireland for the center of the cookies and that worked very well. I made 15 cookies out of the recipe, not all containing caramel chocolates. if you place the salt just on the center of the cookies, above the Nutella, it makes a fantastic taste experience.

Millionaire Shortbread

I truly love caramel. And I am into British and Irish treats. So this recipe is the perfect combination and to die for!

Shortbread:

  • 115 g butter
  • 175 g flour
  • 55 g brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F and  line a 23cm/9inch square cake tin with parchment paper. Process butter, flour and sugar to a dough. Press the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the hot oven for 20 until golden.

Meanwhile make the filling:

  • 175 g butter
  • 115 g brown sugar
  • 3 tbsp golden syrup (I use agave syrup)
  • 400 g canned condensed milk

Heat butter, sugar, golden sugar and canned condensed milk gently in a sauce pan. Stirr well while making  the mixture boil and simmer for some minutes until it is very thick. Then pour over the baked shortbread base and let it cool in the fridge.

Topping

  • 200 g dark chocolate, melted

Spread the melted chocolate over the caramel mixture and let cool completely. Cut into small stripes and share!