At the risk of sounding like someone retelling a story that they heard from someone they knew who knew someone else who knew something from someone else, I first came across these gorgeous cupcakes via Vogue member and fellow food blogger Iron Chef Shellie who in turn saw these on flickr member’s hello naomi’s pictures.
I loved the idea of these pastel topped cupcakes with messages such as “Eat Me” and “Drink Me”. Who really ever needs prompting to try cupcakes? It was all very Alice in Wonderland, a children’s story with a distinctly surreal and dark side. So assembling my very best Alice themed china, the varied Wedgwood Harlequin set, I set about having my very own tea party, Alice in Wonderland style.
The cupcakes I made were vanilla cupcakes filled with strawberry jam and cream, pastel fondant icing, royal icing writing and patterns and silver cachous. Despite my somewhat fearful beginnings, I’m starting to really like using Royal Icing as I love the finish and consistency of it. I know that vanilla cupcakes with jam and cream filling sounds rather boring but this was the cupcakes that my girlhood fantasies were made of. I loved this combination and my favourite ever cakes when I was small were this. Yes, sadly, I do remember vividly one cake from my childhood with absolute clarity and some days, I can still taste it if I close my eyes and wish.
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I was woken early by roadworks. And as I’m likely to do when I have some spare time on my hands, I baked. I have lost many hours of precious sleep to the roadworks happening outside my door and it makes me very cranky so something soothing like baking gives me the balance I need. I noticed that they parked this enormous contraption during the day (a road ripper outer-er?) alongside my building to use it at night when the road is less busy. If I lose precious more sleep, I may have to consider listing the enormous thing on ebay-”to be picked up between the hours of 9-4pm only”. That’ll teach them to wake me!
Anyway, on to more important matters: cupcakes. I first saw this fabulous cupcake bouquet in the Womens Weekly cupcakes book and thought that naturally Mother’s Day was the ideal day to give it. I have an issue with florists around Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, the flowers seem to die a lot quicker when you buy them on either of those days as I think they must buy them a day or two earlier than they normally would to ensure that they get enough stock for patrons. So I prefer to save my pennies and buy flowers before or after those days. It annoys me when they only last 3 days and you’ve paid a premium for them.
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I don’t know if it’s quite normal to base cooking around crockery but when I saw this Wedgwood Queen of Hearts cup and saucer set I knew a) I had to have it and b) I had to bake a cupcake for it. I have a penchant for things that have hearts and also for details and I can be a right pain when it comes to details but rest assured anyone that has created things with flourishes or details, I’ll be one to notice.
It was easy matching a cupcake to this heart cup and saucer, what better an idea than a playing card cupcake? I realise I would have done better to get an Alphabet cutter set than make my own feeble Q’s but I haven’t seen one for the life of me so I had to make do with what I had.
Queen of Hearts cupcakes
Makes 8
- 1/2 cup muscovado or brown sugar in a pinch
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
- 1 teaspoon each of ground ginger and ground cinnamon
- pinch of ground nutmeg
- 90g butter at room temperature
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup milk plus 1 squeeze of lemon juice into the milk to curdle it
- 30g glace ginger chopped into small pieces
- 2 tablespoons golden syrup
Decorations:
- icing sugar to dust
- 1 packet of white fondant (I use Orchid brand)
- a small amount red prepared fondant prepared from the packet of white fondant. Dyed using a Gel or powder (liquid will affect the texture too much by the time you get the correct red)
- Jam
- Rolling pin
- Round cutter about the size of your cupcake top
1. Preheat oven to 150c fan forced or 170c non fan forced.
2. Add all ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix on low speed until combined and then a higher speed until batter becomes pale. Spoon into patty tins.
3. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool in tin.
4. Sift a coating of icing sugar over a clean flat surface. I use those latex gloves just to avoid moisture on my hands transferring to the fondant. Grab a section of fondant and knead until it becomes pliable. Roll it out and dust a rolling pin with icing sugar and roll fondant out to about 1/2 cm thick. Use a round cutter to cut out round.
5. To adhere the fondant onto the cupcake top, brush with a little warmed jam and then place fondant rounds on top.
6. With the white fondant done, roll out red fondant to 1/2cm thickness. Cut out heart shapes for the centre and then roll pieces into thin ropes and shape letters carefully (you may have to have a few goes at this). You can attach these red pieces to the white fondant using a little water brushed on the back of the letters.
Wedgwood Harlequin Queen of Hearts up and saucer available at David Jones, Myer & selected boutiques, $99 for the boxed set.
I haven’t taken leave of my senses although the title might have made you do a double take. I was inspired by Chocolate Suze’s meat cupcakes here and decided to make a version of them. I used Nigella’s Mini Meatloaves recipe from Nigella Express with some additions, made some mash and fashioned some puff pastry decorations and there you have it, a savoury cupcake that is unashamedly so without any sweetness, masquerading in a sweet cupcake disguise.
Instead of buying a tube of sausage meat as it looked a bit dire, I bought some nice sausages and skinned them. Skinning sausages is rather therapeutic but then you’re left with a mass of skins looking like rather unsexy deflated condoms.
These can be eaten cold or hot, however you’d prefer but should be served with tomato sauce. You could also toy with browning the potato on top like a potato pie although I didn’t have the time or patience to do this.
Meatloaf and mash cupcakes
Makes 12-15 cupcakes
Meatloaf filling
- 500g minced beef
- 500g sausage meat
- 80g quick cook oats
- 70g A.1. Steak sauce
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon Maldon salt or 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 1 tablespoon sunflower seeds
- 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1. Preheat the oven to 200c/gas mark 6
2. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, mixing really well with your hands or a fork
3. Divide mixture into cupcake liners and then press firmly to reduce holes and spaces and give it an even top (these will not rise)
4. Cook in oven for 30 minutes
5. Top with mash potato piped using a star nozzle (I used the recipe for mash here omitting the cheese and garlic)
6. Top with puff pastry hearts
Recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson recipe for Mini Meatloaves from Nigella Express
Pastry hearts
- 1/2 sheet puff pastry
- egg white to brush
1. Cut out puff pastry hearts using heart butter. Preheat oven to 210c. Chill in fridge for 30 minutes and then brush with egg white. Bake for 10 minutes.
In a practical sense, I wanted to differentiate the vanilla custard filled vanilla & sesame cupcakes from those filled with green tea custard. So what better way aside from sticking your finger inside (so lacking decorum but fun) than to give the cupcake an entirely different look. So instead of Pandas to signify the Green tea custard, I used Bears to signify Vanilla. I do realise that a filling such as honey would have been more appropriate but I had to work with what I had. So using the same directions as on my Panda cupcakes with some rejigging of the decorations (described in the story), I present my family of Bears. A Sesame bean with vanilla bean custard filling, just in time for the April Master Baker challenge!
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