V8 Racing flag cupcakes

When you're asked to bake for a charity bake sale with only a few days notice and you already have a hectic working week, what do you do? These V8 racing car cupcakes were  another of my quick bake sale solutions. Once baked they were decorated in under ten minutes. The V8 lollies are available from kiwicakes (they only come two colours).

The buttercream swirl is pipped with a Wilton 1m tip. The checkered racing flag food-picks can be found here. I heard they were a real hit with children (and big kids obsessed with V8s too) They would be a fun addition to any racing car themed birthday party.

Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies - Kids in the kitchen

These chocolate chip cookies were made by my 10-year-old daughter Poppy. The recipe is pretty fail safe, in fact she's made these repeatedly over the last year and they've always turned out great. They keep well in an airtight container.

Ingredients

125g butter softened

1tsp vanilla extract

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 cup self raising flour

1 cup shredded or dessicated coconut

1/2 cups small chocolate buttons

Preheat oven to 180C. Line cookie trays with baking paper. In the bowl of your cake mixer beat butter, vanilla and sugar until creamy. Add egg and beat until well combined. Stir in by hand the flours, coconut and chocolate.

Place golf ball sized pieces of batter on your cookie tray, flatten slightly, leaving at least 2-3cm between each cookie, they spread as they bake. Bake 15-20mins until golden brown. Cool on tray, they will be soft when they first come out of the oven.

Cupcakes in Disguise

When you're asked to bake for a charity bake sale, with only a few days notice and you already have a hectic working week, what do you do? These crazy cupcakes were one of my solutions.

These were decorated in a matter of minutes (less than ten) using a buttercream swirl with 1M wilton tip as the base. The eyes are Wilton large candy eyeballs, which stay in place when pressed on to the buttercream. The mouths, teeth and moustaches are Natural Confectionery Co "Lolly Disguises".

I really can't decide whether I like "Hot-lips Cupcake" best

or "Professor Cupcake".

"Geeky cupcake" also has his own charm

As does "Mr Cupcake". One bag of lollies will make aprx 18-20 cupcakes. I did get a few malformed lollies in my bag, but the children didn't complain when they were given them to dispose of  eat.

My favourite new website - Eat your books

I was on a high the day I discovered Eat Your Books website. It’s always an incredible surprise when you come across something that prior to discovery you never knew you needed! Eat Your Books is a website which allows you to search the indexes of printed cookbooks you already own. With a database of over 125,000 cookbooks (which they're adding to all the time) you can create a virtual bookshelf by adding the titles of cookbooks you own. I’ve added my entire recipe book collection, and so far I’ve only come across two of my books that aren’t in their system (and they were very old books). It also indexes food magazines and popular online blogs.

Now, instead of searching for hours through my recipe books, I can with the press of a few keys search through all the recipe books I own.

I recently chatted with Fiona, who lives in Auckland and who together with her Sister Jane who lives in Boston created Eat Your Books. They work with a dedicated team of foodies to ensure every visit to the website is an enjoyable one. I believe it will only get better. I've signed up with a yearly recurring subscription.

The Eat Your Books website has a wealth of searching possibilities. Aside from searching your books recipe titles, you can search by:

* ingredients

* author

* ISBN

*season 

*occasion

*ethnicity

*meal type

Within your recipes you can add:

*personal notes

*tag recipes as favourites

*create menus and shopping lists

You can even add your own personal recipes, that once you may have typed out or handwritten in a journal.

If you subscribe to food magazines you can simply tick a box and have each new magazine automatically added to your online collection. 

You can also browse the huge collection of online recipes which have been indexed, and if you see one you fancy, with the simple click of a button it's added to your online recipe collection.

Each time I use Eat Your Books it seems I discover yet another great way to use it - I'm looking forward to easy recipe locating from now on. And now that I have an easy way to search within my cookbooks I'll happily continue to regularly add more books to my collection. Do take a look at the EYB website, I'd love to hear what you think.

Dog bone shaped dog biscuits - Kids in the kitchen

We have a crazy little Papillion dog, his name is Bilbo. Poppy (10 years) enjoys baking for him. Recently she made him these bone-shaped dog biscuits. They keep well in an airtight container for weeks.

Ingredients:

2 Cups wholemeal flour

1Tbsp baking powder

1 Cup unsalted natural peanut butter

1 Cup milk

Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Line cookie sheets with baking paper or silicone mat.

Mix together flour and baking powder. In a separate bowl mix together milk & peanut butter, then stir in flour mixture until well combined.

Turn dough out on to floured surface and knead until smooth.

Roll out to desired thickness and cut in to dog bone shapes, using a dog bone cookie cutter.

Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown. Whilst hot, add a few dog "chocolate drops" (you find them in the pet food section at the supermarket). The heat of the cookie will melt the chocolate, which can be spread with a knife if required to better coat each end.

Our little dog just loves these cookies. He's quite small, so he's limited to one per day.

Mini treacle loaves a scrumptious childhood memory

Treacle is a much loved flavour from my childhood, it was a favourite both with my father and my grandmother. These scrumptious little loaves were baked in pretty mini loaf cases. I recently made these for a gathering I attended, and they were very well received. 

Ingredients

The recipe is reprinted with permission from our friends at Chelsea.

½ cup (125g) butter

½ cup (100g) Chelsea soft brown sugar, firmly packed

½ cup (185g) Chelsea treacle

1¼ cups (190g) plain flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

1 egg, lightly beaten

2/3 cup (160ml) milk 

Lemon Icing:

1 Tbsp (20g) butter
2 Tbsps lemon juice
2 Tsps boiling water
2 cups Chelsea icing sugar sifted

Method
Preheat oven to 170ºC conventional (150ºC fan forced). Grease and line bases of 10 x ½ cup (125ml) mini loaf pans or friand pans. 

Place butter soft brown sugar and treacle in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 mins. Remove from heat and cool.

Sift flour, ginger and baking soda into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients and stir egg, milk and cooled treacle mixture until well combined.

Spoon batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 20-25 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow the loaves to stand for 10 mins before turning out onto a wire rack. Drizzle with Lemon Icing and decorate with Candied Lemon Rind. 

Lemon Icing: 

Combine butter lemon juice and water in a small saucepan and heat until butter is melted or simply microwave in heatproof bowl. Add to sifted icing sugar and mix until well combined.

When I made my treacle cakes, lemon icing didn't appeal on the day, so I used Chelsea's recipe for caramel icing from their Halloween Treacle coffin cakes.

Caramel icing:

60g butter
1/2 cup firmly packed Chelsea soft brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 cup Chelsea icing sugar sifted

Stir butter and soft brown sugar in small saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves; bring to the boil then simmer, stirring, 2 mins. Remove from heat and add milk and icing sugar mix until well combined. Drizzle warm icing over cakes. Use licorice to create coffin shape and pipe dates with writing icing.

Treacle makes this an enchanting rich, moist cake with a subtle liquorice flavour. Decorate for the kids or simply serve warm with vanilla ice-cream for a special ‘treat’.

Spiced Plum and Honey Cakes - Kids in the kitchen

I arrived home a few days ago to my daughter Poppy (10 years old) having made this plum cake. My hubby has been trying to educate our family to work more with seasonal ingredients and it's something the children are taking part in with great enthusiasm. Grandma Kiwicakes plum tree was raided for this cake.

The smell upon entering our home was incredible. Poppy tells me this was the most complicated recipe she's ever tackled. She said nothing was hard, but for her there were a lot of steps.

Poppy decided to make a cinnamon honey whipped cream to go with it. She tells me she "just added cinnamon and honey to whipped cream, until it tasted right". By the time I arrived home the cake had already been sampled, however Poppy had taken photos for me.

The recipe is from my recently purchased book Love, Bake, Nourish by Amber Rose. It's been a great find. Amber Rose offers great tips on the health benefits of many of the ingredients listed. A lot of the recipes exclude sugar and refined flours and there are great gluten free options too.

Recipe reproduced with permission from Love Bake Nourish by Amber Rose, with photography by Ali Allen. Published by Kyle Books and distributed in New Zealand by New Holland, RRP $45.00

Spiced plum & honey cake

This cake works particularly well made with smallish dark red plums that are really sweet. The plum season comes just as the evenings start to get shorter and you can feel a chill in the air. I really enjoy this time of year, when the leaves turn a golden amber and dew-laden spiders’ webs line the woodland pathways. It’s the onset of the season for comfort food and best-loved jumpers.

serves 8–10

180g white spelt flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking powder

130g ground almonds

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cardamon

½ teaspoon ground star anise

5 large free-range eggs, separated

240g unsalted butter, softened

210g honey

400g plums, halved and stoned

Unrefined icing sugar, for dusting (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and flour a 22cm loose-bottomed cake tin.

Start by mixing all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks, butter and honey with an electric hand mixer until thick and smooth. Gently fold in the dry ingredients.

In a separate, very clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold them, a third at a time, into the cake mix, ensuring that they are thoroughly incorporated.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with the back of a spoon or a palette knife. Place the plums cut-side down on top of the cake mix. Transfer to the oven and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before carefully turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Dust with icing sugar, if you like.

As a tea cake this doesn’t seem to need anything else, but if you are eating it as a pudding, it’s very good with a little cream or Greek yogurt sweetened with honey.

Caramel Crusted Rhubarb Pudding

Wondering what to do with all the rhubarb, this is a wonderful crunchy dessert option. So good with custard or cream or dusted with icing sugar.

As a child I detested rhubarb yet I’m not really sure if I ever tried it. I think it's likely to my mothers horror, I declared I didn’t like it, without even tasting it. As an adult I discovered it tasted like berries, apple and lemon all rolled in to one and now I love it, in fact I may spend my adult life trying to catch up with all I never ate as a child. This dessert is equally lovely in summer & winter. My rhubarb variety (above) is more green than the the red you might be used to seeing, however the taste is the same.

Recipe is reprinted with permission from our friends at Chelsea Sugar. (Photo above from Chelsea)

Ingredients

3/4 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup Chelsea white sugar

100g butter melted

4 cups diced rhubarb stalks

3/4 cup Chelsea soft brown sugar

1 Tbsp cornflour

1/4 cup boiling water

Method
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add rolled oats and White sugar, then mix in melted butter to make crust mixture. Put diced rhubarb into a greased ovenproof dish, such as a small lasagne dish or deep pie plate. Sprinkle crust mixture evenly over rhubarb. In the discarded bowl, combine Brown sugar and cornflour. Spoon over the crust mixture. Carefully pour the boiling water over the top. Do not stir. 

Bake for 30 minutes at 180°C.

Pina Colada Mousse cake for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday

Last week was Grandma Kiwicakes' birthday. She asked for a birthday cake with tapa and pineapple. However at the time she didn't know I'd planned to make her a pina colada mousse cake using a recipe I purchased online in support of the Helping Sweet Kate charity drive. The recipe is from the lovely Jo at Ciccio cakes. A mousse cake doesn't really lend it self to decorating in the usual manner. I didn't let that stop me and set out to give Grandma Kiwicakes what she asked for. This cake was a whopping 12'' in diameter.

Layered with 2 layers of pina colada mousse and another thin layer on top. The pineapple decorations were marzipan and the tapa design was pastel yellow Satin Ice fondant

To make the pineapples I coloured some marzipan yellow and green using progel

Using a pineapple plunger cutter, I cut out lots of little pineapples, the design was a bit one dimensional, so I added green tufts to the top of each one.

Using a fondant cutting wheel, I sliced randomly from the outside edge, as I wanted the ragged edges left on my tufts.

The marzipan sticks to itself when pressed, so no edible glue is needed. These are so quick and easy to make. In less than 20 minutes, I had enough for the whole cake.

The tapa design was made using this mould. I made two strips to go around the circumference of the cake. It is over dusted with lustre in a coppery tone. The pineappples rest on the ledge of the tapa surround. The Kiwicakes girls declared the cake delicious and this huge cake was spread around many people, each with a piece to take home. It was fun to do something a little different for a change.

Note: Mousse cakes needs to be refrigerated, so ideally this should be decorated shortly before serving.

My family recipe journey - Our Family Christmas Trifle

It seems Christmas 2013 I became the official trifle maker for my family. Grandma Kiwicakes rues the day she ever discovered this trifle in a magazine back in about 1980, it's now the only trifle my brother and I ever want. We deem it "Our family trifle". Poor Grandma Kiwicakes cannot make any other, unless she makes this one too (she hankers after her own mothers trifle which had cherry jelly in it). I've actually tried a few different trifles in my time. My mother in laws trifle is in fact very nice, but as she opts for pineapple, I think of it as pineapple pudding not trifle.

I'm not sure why my brother and I are so opinionated about our trifle being changed, we don't have problems trying different versions of other foods. Maybe it's because we only ever had it once a year on Christmas day. And of course Boxing Day trifle tastes even better. The recipe is in fact so simple, many would struggle to see what we find so attractive about it.

Here's my trifle from Christmas Day 2013. Mum always put a crushed Cadbury Flake bar on top. I see now, looking at her little old recipe book the original had apricot halves on top. It's been made in this same etched crystal bowl every year for the last 30+ years.

Ingredients

1 Swiss jam roll

1 can apricots halves in juice

2 Tbsp Sherry or Brandy

4 Tbsp custard powder

1 pint milk (600ml)

2 dessert spoons of Caster Sugar (I prefer Chelsea)

To decorate

Whipped cream

1 Cadbury Flake bar

Slice swiss roll & arrange in dish. Sprinkle with sherry and some of the juice from apricots. Arrange the apricots over the top of the swiss roll. Make custard according to directions from brand. Cool slightly, then pour over fruit & swiss roll. When cool cover with whipped cream and crumble a flake bar over the top.

Pupcakes - food for dogs - Kids in the kitchen

My daughter Poppy (10 years old) loves baking for our crazy little papillion dog, Bilbo. She made him these "pupcakes". The recipe is reprinted with permission from SPCA Cupcake Day website. It makes quite a lot, so she visited some of the neighbourhood dogs and gave some away. She even used SPCA cupcake papers which you can buy from the SPCA store here.

Ingredients:
·  4 cups wholemeal flour

·  ¼ cup oats

·  1 teaspoon baking powder

·  1 cup dried apple pieces(you can also use fresh fruit)

·  2¾ cups water

·  ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

·  ¼ teaspoonvanilla

·  1 cage free egg,beaten slightly

Icing
 a few dog biscuits for decoration on top
1 potato cooked and mashed
low fat cream cheese

1. Preheat oven to 175°c degrees. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.

2. Mix all wet ingredients thoroughly. Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl.

3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients slowly, scraping well to make sure no dry mixture is left.

4. Pour into muffin tins.

5. Bake for 1 ¼ hours. Insert a toothpick into the centre of a pupcake and if it comes out dry, they are ready to come out of the oven.
6. frost with low fat cream cheese mixed with mashed potato

Wait until cooled before serving one to your pup. Store leftovers in a sealed container. Makes around 12-14 pupcakes.

Makes 12 cupcakes or 24 mini-cupcakes.

Chocolate Moulds Make Decorating Easy - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Working this past year at Kiwicakes I've been amazed at the selection of literally hundreds of chocolate moulds available in NZ. They really are such a simple way to mass-produce technically perfect mini decorations. Some moulds even create stunning 3D objects. 

Some of my earlier blogs using chocolate moulds include snowflakes, surprise boxes, hairdressing set, lollipops and chocolate bars. Read up for tips on melting and setting.

These racing cars were made from black and blue candy melts. Imagine the delight on the faces of little people given one of these to eat!

These cowboy boots look quite different depending on whether you make them light with white candy melts or in a darker shade. They would make neat themed party cupcake toppers or on a farming or western style cake.

I painted accents on the moulded chocolate shapes using various shades of Metallic Food Paint. There are over 20 colours available in bright hues, such as spring green and royal blue.

Next time consider using moulded chocolate in your cake decorating project!

Mini Pavlovas for Grandma Kiwicakes

I have a shocking secret to reveal, I had never made pavlova before this week, it's one of those things Grandma Kiwicakes is famous for, so I've never felt the need. My recipe is Grandma Kiwicakes own recipe scaled up to make 8 mini pavlovas (and altered just a wee bit). When served they fit perfectly on a bread and butter plate

Ingredients

6 egg whites

2 cups caster sugar (I like Chelsea)

1 heaped tablespoon of cornflour

1 Tbsp of vinegar, I use white, but malt works well too.

Vanilla essence (or other flavour you may refer)

4 Tablespoons cold water

Preheat oven to 180C degrees. Place all ingredients in your stand cake mixer, turn on medium speed and leave to mix for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, the mixture should have lovely stiff peaks, if your turn the mixer whisk upside down, the peaks should hold in place.

To make pavlovas of a similar size, I draw 8x 10cm circles on the back side of baking paper (you don't want pen transferring on to your pavlovas). Using a large piping bag without a nozzle fitted pipe your meringue mixture so that your circles are as tall as they are wide (they will flatten and widen as they bake). Don't put them too close together, or they will spread and join together when baking.

When you place your pavlovas in the oven, be careful not to slam the door, immediately drop your temperature down to 120C degrees. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes. Once time is up, turn the oven off, but leave pavlovas in the oven until cool. (If you want to bake as one large pavlova, bake for 3 hours, then leave in oven switched off until cool)

These can be baked ahead of time, as once stored in an airtight container they will keep for at least 3 days.

I served with whipped cream and an edible pineapple flower. See how to make edible pineapple flowers here

Dried pineapple flowers

I first saw these dried pineapple flowers in an issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine more than 13 years ago. I've always wanted to try them. I decided as it was Grandma Kiwicakes birthday this week to give them a go on top my mini pavlovas I was making for her birthday dinner (recipe for pavlovas to come tomorrow). These elegant flowers are very easy to make.

Preheat your oven to 120C degrees. Take one whole pineapple and cut the outer rind off.

Remove the eyes with a sharp kitchen knife (this also creates variation in the edges of the flowers)

Cut thin slices and arrange on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Bake 30 minutes one side. Remove from oven, flip over and bake 25-30 minutes on the second side.

Be careful to make your slices all the same thickness. As you can see from my photo above, I burnt one, before the others were quite done, as it was thinner than the rest.

I placed them in tin foil circles I had squished in to shape using my hands, this allows them to dry with a nice fluid shape, rather than dead flat. You can make these up to three days ahead of when you need them. Refrigerate until required. I kept mine in the fridge in a container resting in their tin foil forms.

Amaretto liqueur with Amaretti cookie ice cream

This ice cream, which is more like a gelato, was made for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday. I adore Amaretti cookies, you can find them at most good delis. However, here in Whangarei we can usually only get them at Christmas time when our supermarket gets them in. I always grab some.

This year I decided I wanted to make something with them. I received an ice cream maker for Christmas so this seemed an obvious choice. I started researching Amaretti ice cream recipes, I didn't find anything that suited my needs, so I decided to create my own.

The recipe looks a little tricky, though no part on its own is hard, you just need the luxury of a little time. For me it was the perfect Sunday afternoon activity.

Ingredients:

4 cups of milk

1tsp vanilla bean paste

1/4c sugar

6 egg yolks

pinch of slat

2 Tbsp Amaretto liqueur

12 Amaretti cookies (this fills 1/2 cup when crushed)

Make sure your ice cream bowl has been in the freezer for at least 24 hours. Then you need to cook your custard base. In a saucepan add your milk and vanilla bean paste, heat on medium-to-low for a few minutes. It should be hot, but not simmering.

In the mean time you can whisk together your sugar and egg yolk. The yolks should become paler in colour. It usually takes about 2 minutes.

Remove your milk mixture from the heat. Take 1/2 cup of milk mixture and add this hot milk to your egg mixture, whisking quickly the whole time until all the hot milk has been added to your eggs.

Return everything to the saucepan and heat again on medium to low until it thickens in to a nice custard. Stir every now and then to ensure it's not catching or burning. Aprx 15 mins.

Once your custard has thickened, remove it from the heat and strain through a sieve. Allow to cool before adding a pinch of salt and Amaretto liqueur. Refrigerate to chill for a couple of hours. (You cannot put hot mixture in your ice cream maker, it will not work).

Add your chilled custard to your icecream maker and follow the instructions according your manufacturer. My ice cream maker is a Cuisinart brand, my ice cream took 20 mins to churn.

When there is 5 minutes left to go on your timer, add the crushed Amaretti cookies.

When it's finished churning, place in a container and freeze overnight. Serve with crushed Amaretti cookies. You need to remove this from the freezer 5-10 minutes before you want to scoop it, it sets rock hard, so cannot be scooped straight from the freezer.