Iron Cupcake London: Challenge V – Booze!

Are your cupcakes up to the challenge? Are you worthy of the Iron Cupcake Winner’s rosette and the acclaim that comes with it? There’s only one way to find out…..

***Amazing new venue – Iron Cupcake London has a new home***

Our new home is The Cuban at Citypoint (Moorgate). Brilliantly located only minutes away from Liverpool Street and Moorgate Stations we have the whole basement which has acres of room – you can find detailed directions below in blue. Did I mention it has seating and tables for well over 100 people (140 is the official capacity)? Not just any old seating – ooh, what should I tell you about first? Maybe the awesomely huge white sofa snaking along the whole of the wall of the basement? Perhaps I might also be able to interest you with a PRIVATE bar for the event which – apart from the tea and coffee included in your admission price – will be offering prolonged “happy hour” 2 for 1 deals on selected cocktails, as well as bargain prices on certain beers, wine and sangria! What could be better for our booze challenge?

Maybe you're more of a 'visuals' person...this is just a part of the room:

And did I mention the SEATING and TABLES for over 100 people????

ICL Challenge V: Booze

Requirements: Make a minimum of 12 cupcakes that interpret the theme of booze in any way you wish – if you wish to make more please do…the more you make, the more people can taste your delicious creation (and vote for you!)

Please feel free to enter as many types of cupcake as you wish, I only ask that you have at least 12 of each.

On the night everyone will have a say in declaring the winner, who walks away with the ICL Winner’s rosette plus a cupcake themed goody bag (presented in the much-coveted ICL bag!). As usual the winner and runner up with receive amazing prizes - the main prize for the winner is this cupcake decorated cake stand:

Event details:

Monday 5th October 2009

6.00pm – 8.30pm

Venue – The Cuban Bar, Citypoint, One Ropemaker Street, EC2Y 9AY

For a map click here

Although the address is Ropemaker Street it’s actually on the Citypoint plaza. Just behind the Moorgate tube station entrance that’s in the row of shops including HMV, Hotel Chocolat, Eat and Clinton Cards, you’ll see a very tall building. That’s the Citypoint Tower. Head towards it and you’ll see a paved plaza-type area. Near the base of the Tower you will see a small newsagent kiosk and a Costa, to the left of these (if facing the tower) are The Rack & Tenter, then Prets. Head towards Prets into a covered walkway at the base of City point. This is where the Cuban bar is. We’ll be in the basement.

Entry fee: £5 – even if you don’t wish to enter the competition why not come along to taste the cupcakes? (Entry fee includes tea or coffee)

Timetable of events:

6.00-6.45pm – Entries are labelled and plated up

6.45 onwards – Eating and voting commences

Please note that you are most welcome to arrive any time after 6.00pm and avail yourself of the tea and coffee. As usual, I’d be grateful if you could let me know if you’re coming along (and entering).

Incidentally, The Caked Crusader and, consequently, ICL are now on Facebook and Twitter.

Why not befriend Samantha Cake on Facebook – it’s me!!!! And then become a fan of the Caked Crusader page. We will be using this to post news of upcoming events, have discussions, in fact anything fun involving cake. To make it even easier here’s a link

On Twitter you can find me as CakedCrusader. So there’s no excuse not to stay in touch. Can’t wait to see you all at our new home – The Cuban. And if you’re wondering why you should come, this is a good reminder:

Ginger, pecan and rum chocolate brownies

I very much enjoyed Levi Roots’ recent TV series “Caribbean food made easy” and this brownie recipe was the stand out for me as it contains pretty much all my favourite things!

The only disappointment was the cooking time he gave in the recipe. The recipe says 20-25 minutes and mine hadn’t set at that point so I gave my brownies an extra 10 minutes whilst worrying they wouldn’t be squidgy anymore. You’ll see from the photos that I didn’t achieve set brownies but more a chocolate pudding which - don’t get me wrong – was absolutely divine! I’m just telling you this as next time I’d probably give them 40 minutes or so in the oven, but I know ovens vary so you will just have to judge it for your oven.

The flavour combination is perfect and all the flavours and textures are distinct at different times. It would be very difficult to go back to a plain chocolate brownie after these!

I served them freshly baked with clotted cream ice cream for dessert but they would be just as nice at room temperature with some cream or on their own.

Ingredients:
250g plain chocolate (70% cocoa), broken into pieces
250g unsalted butter
5 eggs
350g dark muscovado sugar
2 tablespoons rum (dark rum is best)
150g plain flour
125g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
4 balls stem ginger, finely chopped

To serve: ice cream or cream

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.

- Line a brownie pan (30cm x 20cm) with baking paper.

- In a bowl over a simmering pan of water, ensuring the bowl does not touch the water, melt the chocolate and butter. Stir occasionally.

- Remove from the heat and leave to cool a little.

- Beat together the eggs and sugar until well combined. As the sugar is heavy and granular the mixture won’t appear light and fluffy in the way that it would with caster sugar.

- Beat in the melted chocolate and butter and the rum.

- Fold in the flour.

- Fold in the pecan nuts and ginger.

- Pour (it will be very runny) into the prepared tin.

- Bake for a minimum of 25 minutes but it might take a lot longer. Ideally I think mine should have had 45-50 minutes but ovens vary so take care. When a skewer inserted into the middle only has a little residue on it, I’d say that’s done.

- Stand the brownie pan on a wire rack and leave to cool.

- Cut into squares.

- Either serve warm or at room temperature.

- Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

- Eat.

Iron Cupcake London: Challenge V – Booze!

Are your cupcakes up to the challenge? Are you worthy of the Iron Cupcake Winner’s rosette and the acclaim that comes with it? There’s only one way to find out…..

Please note: Due to feedback received from attendees we are working on finding a new venue. We are very close to finalising an extremely exciting new home for ICL and I will announce this shortly.

Incidentally, The Caked Crusader and, consequently, ICL are now on Facebook and Twitter.

Why not befriend Samantha Cake on Facebook – it’s me!!!! And then become a fan of the Caked Crusader page. We will be using this to post news of upcoming events, have discussions, in fact anything fun involving cake. To make it even easier click here for a link.

On Twitter you can find me as CakedCrusader. So there’s no excuse not to stay in touch.

ICL Challenge V: Booze

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum – any pirates entering the challenge may well choose this as their alcoholic ingredient. You, of course, are free to pick anything. If it counts as booze in any way at all you may use it however you wish.

I’m sure that – as usual – you will amaze and delight us!

Requirements: Make a minimum of 12 cupcakes – if you wish to make more please do…the more you make, the more people can taste your delicious creation (and vote for you!)

Please feel free to enter as many types of cupcake as you wish, I only ask that you have at least 12 of each.

On the night everyone will have a say in declaring the winner, who walks away with the ICL Winner’s rosette plus a cupcake themed goody bag (presented in the much-coveted ICL bag!).

Event details:

Monday 5th October 2009

6.00pm – 8.30pm

Venue to be confirmed shortly - but start getting excited now!!!

Entry fee: £5 – even if you don’t wish to enter the competition why not come along to taste the cupcakes? (Entry fee includes tea or coffee)

Timetable of events:

6.00-6.45pm – Entries are labelled and plated up

6.45 onwards – Eating and voting commences

Please note that you are most welcome to arrive any time after 6.00pm and avail yourself of the tea and coffee.

Damson Plum Pie – and a guest blogger!

Hello, CCM (Caked Crusader’s Ma) here. The Caked Crusader has bestowed me the honour of being her first guest blogger. Fruit pies were the first thing that I ever baked. I was taught how to make them when I was 11 years old by my cookery teacher at school.

Pastry decorations freehand....

...or using cutters:

The only change I’ve made to the original version I was taught is being much more generous with the fruit filling. One of my hates is meanness of fruit. I find that a lot of the time you have to play the game of "Find or guess the fruit in this". Hope you are getting the message - 3lbs of plums is not too many.

As reported by the CC our damson plum tree has excelled itself this year. To date we have picked over 60lbs and I think there is more than that amount still on the tree. I have lost count of how many plum pies I have made to eat and freeze over the past few weeks. Hope you will enjoy this recipe as much as we all do.

Footnote from the Caked Crusader: The recipe is given in imperial measurements as the CCM doesn’t do metric.

Serving suggestion:

Ingredients:
3lbs (damson) plums
2ozs caster sugar
1 egg + a little drop of milk to bind together
8ozs self raising flour
4ozs Cookeen (or Trex)
Pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons of water

To serve: ice cream or custard

Method for the plums:

-I like to poach the plums a few hours ahead of making the pastry so they are cold.

-Pour the water into base of a large saucepan.

-Cut each plum in half and remove stone (very quick and easy).

-Layer into saucepan with the sugar.

-Simmer on a small heat until just beginning to soften (they should still look like plums - not mushy).

-Turn into a dish to cool for a few hours.

Method for the pastry:

-Grease an 8" pie dish.

-Put all the flour + pinch of salt into a bowl.

-Rub in the Cookeen until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

-Add egg and enough milk to bind mixture together into a soft dough.

-Cut dough into two equal pieces.

-Roll out one piece on a floured board to fit your dish.

-Drain all the juice from the plums (do not throw this juice away it's lovely to drink).

-Spoon plums into pastry base.

-Roll remaining dough to fit on top of plums and to overlap base.

-Trim pastry edge with knife.

-Seal the top and bottom edges on dish with a fork dipped into water.

-Cut a few slits in top of pastry.

-Roll out trimmings to make decorations for top of pie (these can be cut out freehand or with a small pastry cutter).

-Cover pie and dish with Clingfilm and refrigerate for an hour or two or overnight if you prefer.

-Remove dish from fridge and brush top of pie with beaten egg or milk.

-Bake in centre of oven at 180 C for 40 minutes giving pie a turnaround halfway through cooking.

-When a golden colour remove from oven and sprinkle top with caster sugar.

-Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

-Eat

-(I might have borrowed the last two lines from someone else but originality is so tiring!)

Football birthday cupcakes

It’s the Boy Wonder’s (aka my nephew) birthday and as he is rather partial to a cupcake –attendees at Iron Cupcake London will vouch for this! – I decided to make him a cupcake tower themed by his favourite football team: Arsenal.

Look – I even acquired the squad:

For those of you not au fait with Arsenal, their colours are red and white. Therefore, my Swiss meringue buttercream tinted with some Wilton Red Candy colouring seemed the perfect approach to get a red buttercream.

This is what I learned from the exercise.....

Things that Wilton Red Candy food colouring will turn ‘candy red’:

-My spatula
-My washing up brush
-Kitchen roll
-My “stainless” steel sink
-My kitchen sponge
-Tea towels
-My Kitchenaid “stainless” steel mixing bowl
-My skin (I now bear what looks like stigmata)
-My clothes

Things that Wilton Red Candy food colouring will not turn ‘candy red':

-Swiss meringue buttercream

Hence the appealing, but not really perfect for a boy’s birthday cupcakes, salmon pink Swiss meringue buttercream. (In truth, the photos have been kind and it looks more red that it really was).

That aside, the cupcakes were ace. The sponge was light and fluffy and the chocolate chips added some lovely bite to the sponge.

Now here’s an interesting photo. I thought I was taking a picture of the cupcakes cut in half and only noticed later that the footballer chappy seems to be mooning at me:

Ingredients
For the plain cupcake sponge:
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
125g self raising flour
2 tablespoons milk

For the chocolate cupcake sponge:
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
2 tablespoons milk
100g milk chocolate chips

For the vanilla swiss meringue buttercream (this quantity decorates 12 cupcakes):
4 egg whites
250g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
food colouring if required

Method

- The method for both types of cupcakes are the same, so please follow this method for both. Each recipe makes 12 standard cupcakes:

- Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.

- Line a cupcake pan with paper cases (each recipe makes 12 cupcakes).

- Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Beat in the eggs, flour and milk - if you are making the chocolate cupcakes also add the cocoa and chocolate chips at this point.

- When the mixture is smooth and well combined, spoon into the paper cases.

- Bake for 12-15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean. Mine took 13 minutes.

- Leave to cool on a wire rack and remove from the tin when cool enough to handle.

- When the cupcakes are cool, you can make the Swiss meringue buttercream. Place the egg whites and sugar in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir pretty much constantly to prevent the egg from cooking.

- After 5-10 minutes, when the sugar has dissolved (when you cannot see any crystals on the back of the spoon), remove the bowl from the pan of simmering water and whisk until the meringue has puffed up and the mix is cool.

- Add the butter and vanilla extract (and food colouring, if using) to the meringue and whisk until the butter has been completely incorporated into the meringue. At first it will look a disaster – it will collapse and look curdled but don’t worry! Stop when the mixture is smooth, light and fluffy.

- Spoon into a piping bag and pipe over cupcakes.

- Decorate as required.

- Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have made.

- Eat.

The Cakes of Salzburg – part 2

And to think there were those of you who doubted me and feared I hadn’t sampled Sacher torte! When we visited Hotel Sacher’s cafe I felt that I was making a pilgrimage rather than simply going for cake. The cafe was everything I hoped it would be – an elegant tea room harking back to the past, with the menu set on turned wooden rods so that it was easier to hold and read.

We settled into our booth and ordered the world famous Sacher torte. This was what arrived:

Wow! Just look at the crispness and evenness of the layers:

The extremely moist sponge might almost fool you into thinking that it had alcohol soaked into it (it hasn’t) and the thin, barely visible, layer of apricot jam added fruitiness. The thick chocolate topping was firm but not hard and tasted like heaven! The dark chocolate was intense without being bitter and the cocoa flavour built in your mouth with every forkful. I found it divine and was relieved as I would’ve been crushed if it wasn’t tip top quality. The CCBF (Caked Crusader’s Boyfriend), in contrast, was a little disappointed as he had hoped that the chocolate would be more bitter and rich. Having said that, here’s his plate about 4 minutes after we were served:

It’s also worth showing the coffee – although it looks more like a dessert! The liqueur glass contains a chocolate liqueur. I had a sip and can vouch that it had a kick to it!

The CCBF is well used to my obsession by now and anticipated that I would head off to the cake counted to photograph everything. Thus, on my return as I enthused about all the delights on offer he suggested that we have another cake. This is why I love him! When you peruse the photos set out below of the cake counter you’ll appreciate why selecting just one cake was tricky, but I settled on the strawberry torte:

This was truly patisserie at its finest. The base was a mix of plain and chocolate sponge, topped with the most refined strawberry mousse I’ve ever tasted – you know how when you make strawberry mousse you sieve it to get all the seeds out...but some always sneak through? This was perfectly smooth – not a seed in sight. The mousse was a loose set and so well judged; firm enough to hold its shape but soft enough to melt in the mouth. The vivid strawberry coulis on top was an amazing colour and tasted as intense as it looked.

As promised here are the photos I took of the Cafe Sacher cake counter. There are quite a few:

We visited the Mirabell Gardens early one morning and I fell in love with the dwarf garden; an area containing what I suppose you’d call Baroque gnomes. Mirabell will be known to you if you’ve seen The Sound of Music as the “Doe a deer” bit was filmed there. Behind the Gardens a food market was in full swing. This wasn’t a tourist market but where the locals were buying fruit, veg, meat and bread. We ventured in and were rewarded with spectacular sights, smells and sounds – it was also packed! Keen to blend in with the locals (who seem to drink beer and spirits at all times of the day) we purchased some goodies and retreated to the dwarf garden to enjoy them. The CCBF went a little more native than me settling on the local beer (a good effort for 10.30am!) and a pretzel:

I selected a chocolate covered bun:

At less than €2 this was a bargain. The bun was huge and, for a yeast-based bun, surprisingly light. The milk chocolate covering was a halfway point between a ganache and a glace icing. Just to prove I can be arty even when filling my face with baked goods, here’s the bun with the beautiful Mirabell Gardens in the background:

We took a boat up the Salzach river to Hellbrunn a palace famed for its trick fountains that squirt the unsuspecting bystander... but this is not a blog about fountains. The restaurant served a most pleasing chocolate nut cake:

Both the chocolate and the nut were clearly defined flavours and the sponge was extremely light. The sponge was flecked with minute chocolate chips and the top was given crunch with chopped nuts.

Luckily, Salzburg is aware of its culinary delights and there are many cookbooks for sale in English with the recipes for all the yummy things you’ll eat whilst staying there. One or two (OK, eight) of these books came home with me – as did my new friend Herr Stiegl. Here he is marvelling at the Salzburg architecture....

We both agreed (that’s the CCBF and me, Herr Stiegl kept his opinion to himself) that Salzburg was a wonderful holiday location and I would recommend it to anyone who likes fresh air and good food. The city is compact and virtually everything is within easy walking distance. For September we were blessed with marvellous sunny weather and I shall always think of the place fondly.