Winning at Cupcakes - Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Filling and Peanut Cream Cheese Icing

I don’t eat a great deal of cake. When I was a kid I baked a lot, and I love it…but there’s not a huge need for cake in my day-to-day life and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste, so I don’t bake terribly often. Which is why there isn’t a great deal of desserts on my blog, seeing as this is more a food diary more than anything else. This means, when I do have to bake cake for something, I tend to go ridiculous. These cupcakes are ridiculous.

I was designated cupcakes for a Cousins’ Catch-Up games night, and these are what I brought along. This chocolate cupcake recipe is my go-to chocolate cake/cupcake recipe. It is simple, it’s easy and the cakes are always great. It produces a nice, moist and fluffy cake. I then cut a little hollow to fill with salted caramel, because I’m obsessed with my caramel at the moment. You’ll remember it from my Salted Caramel ChocPavlova, and I used it for Chocolate Tacos, and for my bacon bark and Lance has taken to making salted caramel and melted chocolate dessert nachos with it. Oh. My. Goodness. That is delicious. You should do that. And then I added icing. I must admit, I’m not a big buttercream fan. To me, buttercream icing is just plain icing you used to make when you were a kid, but then it got a fancy name and now it’s the shizz. But really, it’s just butter and icing sugar. Nice and it definitely has it’s place, but nothing spectacular, and too much when piled high on a cupcake. I tend to scrape half of it off. Give me cream cheese icing with that delicious cheese-cakey tang and you have me won, though. This cream cheese icing is peanut butter flavoured. Because peanut butter and chocolate is a match made in heaven. You'll see I used Maple Peanut Butter - that's because it was the only smooth peanut butter I had. You can mimic that by adding 2 tsp maple syrup to normal peanut butter. To just make it the most ridiculous cupcake ever, I then topped it with peanut praline. Epic, yeah?

These are not for the faint hearted. They are *quite* sweet. I recommend keeping them refrigerated after icing them and taking them out around 30 minutes before serving. The warmer they are, the sweeter they are. You can tone them down a bit by having just the cupcake and icing, but at Cousin’s Catch-Up Games Night, I play to win!

Speaking of ‘when you were a kid’…we played Nightmare that night. Do you remember that ol’ VHS game? Yeah, it was awesome…my little maggots!

Chocolate Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups plain flour
5 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
85g butter
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing

1 cup icing sugar
250g Philadelphia Cream Cheese
4 tablespoons Peanut Butter

1/4 cup Caramel Sauce
Peanut Praline, chopped

Preheat oven to 170. Line a 12 cupcake tray with cases.

In the bowl of a standmixer, blend together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and butter on a slow speed until it combines to look like breadcrumbs.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, then the buttermilk and vanilla. Pour half of this into the flour mix, then beat on high to make sure there are no lumps. Turn the mixer down to low and slowly pour the rest of the milk mixture in a steady stream. Mix for another minute or so until completely smooth.

Spoon batter into paper cases until 2/3 full, then place in the oven for 20-15 minutes. A skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean. Let cool in their pans for 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Whilst cooling, make the icing. In a large bowl using a hand mixer, blend the peanut butter and cold cream cheese until combined. Add the icing sugar a little at the time and beat on medium high for 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Don't overmix as it can separate. Refrigerate until ready to use.

When cool, use a thin pointed knife to cut a cone shaped circle down into the centre of the cupcake. Slice the pointed bottom off (and eat!!) and reserve the circular 'plug'. Spoon 1/4 tsp or so of caramel sauce into the hole, then cover with the cake 'plug'.

Use a knife or piping bag to decorate the cupcakes with the peanut butter cream cheese icing

 

Christmas in July - Chocolate Salted Caramel Pavlova

This is Lance’s current favourite food. I first made it for Mothers' Day and now he requests I make it all the time. If it didn’t mean I ended up with 8 egg yolks to deal with, I probably would! It is a brilliant dinner party dessert because it can all be pre-made and assembled on the day. The caramel and peanut praline can be made a few days in advance, the meringue is best made the day before to allow it to cool fully. I have made the meringues 3 days in advance too, as long as you store them in airtight containers, it works fine. Just don't assemble until a maximum of a few hours before serving.

The pavlova is rich and sweet and creamy, with the best combination of crispy meringue, sticky caramel, silky cream and crunchy praline. You only need a small slice, but then you go back for more. It’s so addictive! It looks both impressive and rustic at the same time.

 

 

Chocolate Salted Caramel Pavlova

(serve 8-10)
8 egg whites

400g caster sugar

4 tbsp cocoa powder (unsweetened)

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

60g dark chocolate (I use Chilli Lindt, which happens to be equal to 6 squares), finely chopped)

600mL heavy cream (alternatively, 500mL whipping cream, whipped to firm peaks)

1 batch salted caramel (recipe below)

1 batch peanut praline (recipe below)

Position your oven racks in the middle two rows. Preheat oven to 180C

Line 3 baking trays with baking paper. On the back of them, trace a circle around a dinner plate around 24cm in diameter with a thick dark pen. Lightly spray the inked side with cooking spray and place ink side down on the trays. This helps stop them moving when you are adding the meringue.

Put the eggwhites in the bowl of your standmixer with the whisk attachment and whisk until soft peaks form. With the mixer still running, add a tablespoon of sugar at a time and continue beating until it goes stiff and glossy. It’s ready when you can lift the head of the mixer and the eggwhite mixture doesn’t drop off the whisk.

Take the bowl out of the machine and sift the cocoa powder, vinegar and chocolate. Gently fold this through the eggwhite mixture until it is an even pale brown colour.

Divide the mixture evenly between the 3 circles and then smooth with a spatula or back of a spoon to create flat, even layers.

Pop the trays in the oven and reduce the temperature straight away down to 140C. Cook for an hour. Don’t open the door at all during this time. When it’s ready, it will be crunchy on the outside and a little golden on the edges. Turn the oven off and leave the door of the oven ajar (use a wooden spoon to prop it open if necessary) and leave to cool completely inside. This will take a few hours.

To assemble, place one meringue on your serving plate and spread ½ of the caramel sauce over it. You’ll need to be very gentle so you don’t crush the meringue. Spoon 1/3 of the whipped cream on top of the caramel and spread. Top with a second meringue, then caramel, then cream. Finally add the third meringue, spread the remaining cream and sprinkle the chopped peanut praline over the top.

Salted Caramel Sauce

1 cup sugar
4 tbsp water
55 g butter
100mL cream

½ tsp fine sea salt

Add sugar and water in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir until sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat to high, every so often, swirl the pot to keep mixture moving, but do not stir. The mixture will then start turning a nice caramel colour, when this happens, remove from the heat and add the butter, salt and cream. Whisk to combine, set aside to cool.

Peanut Praline

¾ cup raw peanuts

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp brown sugar

¼ tsp salt

Melt butter and sugar in a frypan and stir until the sugar dissolves into the butter. Add the salt and stir through, too. Add the peanuts and stir to cover in the sugar mixture. Leave to toast for 2 minutes or so, then toss to toast the other side of the nuts. When the mixture smells toasty and nutty, spread out onto a lined baking tray and leave to cool and harden.
Break up/cut into smaller pieces to put on top.

 
 
 

Cake Club Baking - Lime and Black Pepper Chip Shortbread Cookies

At my brother’s work, they have a monthly ‘Cake Club’. A monthly morning tea where they take turn to bring in a few baked goods for everyone to share. Mike has been known to bring in some ‘weird’ treats – things that are delicious but have a bit of an unusual ingredient in them. He’s taken in the Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles, Peanut Butter and Bacon Choc Chip Cookies – things like that. Since that’s what he’s known for, now he goes out of his way to provide the weird treats. With this in mind, I tried to come up with something both delicious and weird. Something that they’d probably never had before – and the combination of which would blow their minds.

And so I present Lime and Black Pepper Chip Shortbread Cookies. A tangy, salty, sweet, crunchy cookie that’s so confused, but so delicious. With citrusy chocolate drizzled on for good measure It’s like a chocolate margarita biscuit. Now, this cookie is not everyone’s cup o’ tea. But it’s definitely mine.

I spent the weekend baking with him and today his work will get some Snickerdoodles, some of my pumpkin muffins with candied bacon and this Lime and Black Pepper Shortbread. These really are best the day you make them, because you want them crisp and crunchy, but you can store them in an airtight container for up to a week.

For the biscuits:

(makes approx 30 mini muffin tray sized) 1 large bag Red Rock Deli Lime and Black Pepper Chips
5 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup finely shredded coconut
1/3 cup sugar
Zest of one lime
A few grinds of black pepper

For the chocolate ganache drizzle:
50g dark chocolate, chopped
1 tsp tequila

2 tsp coconut cream
Zest 1 lime

Preheat oven to 170 degrees.

Pulse the chips in a food processor until it forms a fine crumb. Mix the chip crumbs with the flour, sugar, zest, pepper and coconut in a bowl, then mix in the melted butter. Press tablespoonsful into the base of a mini muffin tray. Compact with your fingers, or the back of a spoon.

Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown. Leave to cool completely in the pans, then use a knife to run around the outside of each biscuit and carefully remove from the tray.

To make the drizzle, melt the chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave in 30 second bursts until melted. Stir through the coconut cream, tequila and lime zest. Pour into a ziplock bag, cut the tip off and drizzle the chocolate ganache over the top of the cookies.