I adore the television show RSPCA Animal Rescue, it’s amazing to me how well or well cruelly people treat animals. And it’s not just dogs that feature on this show, one of my favourite segments were about a bat caught on overhead wire, who survived up there for days when him family lovingly carried him food to eat. The work they do is one well worth supporting and even though I can’t take in a stray animal due to living in an apartment, it’s good that we can support them other ways.
I had had ample warning about the RSPCA cupcake day, two months in fact. Nevertheless it took me until a week before to finally decide what sort of cupcake to make. I could’ve made any sort of flavour lets be honest, it’s the decoration that counts here but I did want to make something that vaguely harked to the issue at hand. Is making a chocolate cupcake perverse given that dogs can’t eat chocolate? It came to me while I was supposed to be thinking of something else as it always does. What better than a Spotted Dog cupcake? I’d base it on the black bottom cupcakes but make it not just the bottom but all round dotty or spotty.
I admit I lucked out when I bought these decorations from London. I could have made fondant faces but I had too much on this week to even contemplate it. Since I’m working from home this week, my sister in law kindly took these into her work to flog!
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My husband is what I affectionately refer to as a “fruit bat”. He is simply mad for the stuff, in dried or fresh form, his request for Christmas every year is a fruit basket and a fruit cake. And forget eating a dainty slice with tea, the whole cake can and has been consumed in less than a day. We recently went to a lunch after friend’s baby’s baptism and they brought out a lovely home made fruit cake. I placed a firm hand on his arm and said “NO honey, leave some for everyone else” and like a puppy chastised he looked sheepish and sank back down in his chair. I’m sure he had dreams of taking that cake and running away with it.
I had originally bought him the jar of mincemeat for him to eat with a spoon and a grin on his face but I forgot about it in the cupboard. And lucky I did as I needed it to whip up a quick fruit cake. Nigella’s recipe is a ludicrously easy fruit cake at that that you could possibly whip up with what you have in the cupboard plus a jar of mincemeat (I’m not assuming everyone has mincemeat in their cupboard). I looked at another of Nigella’s recipes and it required 2 weeks of soaking that I didn’t have so this was an easy decision. The cake itself is not exactly like a fruit cake in look although a bite into it and it does taste very fruit cakey. I didn’t find that there wasn’t quite enough fruit so I’d suggest adding either more mincemeat or soaking some fruit briefly to plump it up and then adding it in. Still, for the amount of effort, it’s a pretty good cake. I loved the look of Nigella’s Jewelled cupcakes so I used her cues for decorating it.
It was also a good choice to take with us on the long 6 hour drive to the snow for his birthday as it transports easily and is a “hardy” choice (i.e. no delicate layers, no cream). Other fantastic goodies that were cooked up to stave off the Winter chills were Swedish Mulled Wine by my Sister in Law and Finnish Split pea soup by my Mother in Law. I couldn’t have asked for better or more delicious ways to warm up after a day in the snow.
I intersperse the recipes with some photos of the snowfall-apparently, this years snowfall was the best in five years!
Ribena Snow Cone using fresh powdery snow!
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I’ll caution you that I was going to do Olympic cupcakes. But that time it rolled around, the last thing I felt like doing was fashioning Olympic rings in the various colours out of chocolate. Let the athletes train for it, I’ll just stay on the lounge and watch. So these are my little shout out to the Olympics.
My mum rarely gives out recipes. For some mums, revealing their best recipe is akin to a magician revealing how they have done their tricks. They prefer to keep these close to the chest and leave a bit of mystery. It’s not restricted just to mums and I’ve seen it in people my age too. Not that I blame them, they’ve probably been asked to keep the valuable family recipes a secret, a physical or mental “vault” if you will.
It seems that everyone is dumpling mad lately and sometimes you just want to whip up a batch of soup with some greens and dumplings without having to leave the house. And at night temperatures in Sydney reaching -1 degrees (aren’t we supposed to be the sunburnt country?) the thought of going out some nights just pushes me towards the heater and the snug quilt. So for these nights, my mum has open up her recipe treasure trove and revealed her famous Wonton recipe (ok famous among her friends and family) which can also be adapted to make Siu Mai. These are excellent to freeze (use greaseproof paper between single layers) and popped into boiling water to cook.
The easiest part of this of course is making the filling. I buy the prawns shelled but whole so I blitz the prawns, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and spring onions in the food processor to make a fine mince. After making the filling, that’s where the fun begins. You may want to enlist others into this part as it can take up to an hour to make the wontons or siu mai. The biggest mistake in the past I’ve found was overfilling the dumplings. Please resist all urge to overfill them, especially when you’re halfway through and realise that you’ve still got loads to make (making a giant one when you’re well and truly over it isn’t a great idea).
How many this makes exactly depends on the kind of dumplings you make. The plain soup dumpligns require less filling but the Siu Mai and Gow Gees require more. Also make sure the ingredients are minced well, the finer the mincing, the less likely that the skins will burst from “sharp” or large bits. And either cook them once they’re made or freeze them, if you pop these in the fridge as is, they skin will become moist and stick to the bottom and split when you try and prise them off. The only thing I can think to counter this is to flour the bottom of the tray that they sit on although I haven’t tried this.
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Like an abused pet that is shown signs of kindness, I approached macaron making again with a little nervousness and trepidation. I’d had a semi successful attempt with a Nigella recipe after a few terrible attempts with a Martha one so I was given a little encouragement. Not enough to make me cocky, far from it in fact. But enough to make me give the recipes a shy, sidelong look every now and again and even think to myself “that would be wonderful in a macaron” (although I’d never say that out loud, that would err on the cocky side, or at least confident side, which I am not on).
I even stocked up on supplies to make them, purchasing a 1kg bag of almond meal. This meant that I was either thinking of making multiple batches of macarons or making friands. As I don’t have a friand tin, all evidence points to the former. So urban-cavewoman style, I brought home my big bag of almond meal like a fresh kill and set it down on the counter proudly, like I had picked the almonds and ground them myself.
This is a fiddly cupcake, I’ll make no bones about it. You need to make the macaron to top it and then make the cupcake base and the rose cream and slice up berries and lychees to fill it and top with a rose petal. But the overall effect is quite spectacular. I made the macaron top first as I knew that if I wasn’t successful at that, then I wouldn’t bother making the rest. You see, I’m still slightly scarred by my failed attempts. I also chose this cupcake recipe as it sometimes gives a macaron crust on the top of the cupcake, I say sometimes, when I make this as sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Cakelaw found that she got the macaron crust on top here but I didn’t get it for this particular lot of cupcakes. Must be something to do with science…
I suspect that Pierre Herme, the creator of the Ispahan would be quite horrified at the idea of his lauded creation being turned into something as cute and kitsch as a cupcake, indeed I saw not a single cupcake in all of my travels in Paris. However it’s not exactly like an Ispahan in that the base is a strawberry rose cupcake and the filling is buttercream and not a buttercream and custard creme anglaise combination (I only have so much patience). Also being Mid Winter in Sydney meant that only strawberries and some blueberries make an appearance so I had to improvise and use strawberries rather than raspberries.
I hope you will find these a fitting homage to the Ispahan, the taste of these are ambrosial and well worth the effort.
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Is it possible to have lust at first sight? Of couse, and as a married woman, it seems to only happen nowadays with Chanel bags, sweet and cakes. I first saw these on the Womans Day US site and knew I had to make something similar. There’s something just so retro and sunny about these that I was drawn to.
I know, I know, the petals aren’t that daisy shaped but think of this cupcake as an homage to the daisy or a similarly shaped flower. The coconut makes the cake so moist and do I need to go on about my love for lemon curd and lemon rind? I think not, for fear of being muzzled…
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