I picked up a recipe card from Wheel and Barrow years ago drawn to the purple cupcake liners and the purple flowers atop. Having shunned purple for years as it was the unofficial colour of the alternative world of which I am not really part of (have you noticed all “new age” shops are purple and smell of incense?), I came around when I met my family in law, the ultimate alternative family and designers started using purple in dresses and my love of purple grew from there.

Earl Grey is my favourite tea, followed closely by Lady Grey. Not just because Nigella advertises both, my like for this tea leaf preceded her Twinings ads. My friend Nic, finds it “soapy” and whilst I do agree that it has a certain floral fragrance to it like lavender, I nevertheless find it relaxing. And give me a cup of tea over a coffee anyday.

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We don’t have Halloween to any organised extent in Australia. If you knock on someone’s door and demand candy, you’ll probably get a puzzled expression in return or in the case of someone on a sugar high who has actually consumed all of the household candy, you’ll get a door slammed in your face. But Friday the 13th is well known. I’m a medium on the superstitious scale but have found that actually nothing bad happens on this day. Every Friday the 13th for me is a day where nothing at all awful happens. And I know this because every year, I wait for something terrible to happen and it never does. So I know to expect a good day rather than a bad.

I got the idea for these from Claire Crespo’s “Hello Cupcake” book which I often turn to for decorating ideas. Sadly I didn’t have any random doll’s arms lying around so I had to make a special trip to buy them. When I got home I pulled the arm off but it was too long for the cupcake so, serial killer like, I hacked off more of the arm. And I’m sure the neighbours thought we were completely bonkers taking the photographs outside at night.

These cupcakes are like a Chocolate Crumb cake and I found the recipe for the cupcakes themselves on the Nigella website from a reader, Bevis. It’s a no bake, easy recipe for when you just cannot cope with the idea of switching an oven on and getting out the heavy equipment. It is rather rich though so I’d suggest making them in the miniature 3cms diameter smaller cases as the recipe only makes 4 regular sized cupcakes.

Chocolate Crumb Cupcakes

Makes 4 regular sized cupcakes

• 8oz/240g digestive biscuits (like McVities)
• 4oz/120g unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• Medium sized bar of very dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids at least)
• Chocolate powder to dust on top (I used Max Brenner Hot Chocolate powder)

1. Put the biscuits into a plastic bag or similar and whack repeatedly with a rolling pin. You want some very fine crumbs and some bite sized pieces. Some will also break up a bit more with the stirring so don’t bash them up too much.

2. Melt the butter and syrup together in a pan and break up the chocolate and put that straight into the butter/syrup. You don’t need to worry about heating it over water or anything as long as you don’t have the heat up too high because the butter and the syrup will prevent it burning.

3. Once it’s all melted together into a smooth, silky sauce add the crushed digestives and stir them in until it’s all well mixed. The little crumbs should soak up the chocolate sauce while the larger bits get coated with it. You may not need all the biscuits but you want it so that there is hardly any obvious chocolate sauce, but the biscuits are still glistening and coated with the sauce.

4. Finally pour the biscuit mixture into a cupcake pans. The aim isn’t to crush the biscuits but to pack it all together so that the chocolate sauce bonds the whole lot together. Then put it into the fridge to cool. Once it’s mostly cool, but not completely, insert cut off arm (yes doesn’t that sound gruesome). It needs to be just warm enough for the arm to go in but not so warm the arm falls over). Return it to the fridge until it’s completely cold. Once it is cold it will keep perfectly and refuse to fall to bits even with the most vigorous throwing around as it is carted to wherever you want it.

Recipe adapted from Nigella.com reader recipe by Bevis

I’m certainly not one of those Coca Cola connoisseurs who can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. In fact I rarely drink the stuff and I also loathe Diet Coke. Didn’t Paris Hilton once say “Diet Coke is for fat people”? Although I’d caution anyone following her lead on things. My dislike of Coke goes completely out of the window when it comes to baking with Coca Cola. I will happily eat a Ham baked in Coke and a Coca Cola cupcake or cake. I can’t account for my lapse in logic but it’s one that allows me to eat a gigantic 4 tier slice of Red Velvet cake but say no to a can of Coke. I suspect it’s also that flawed logic that lets me buy a pair of shoes thinking 1 wear per year is actually pretty good and I have achieved a good cost to value ratio.

Sequin shoes-worn once since purchase=an excellent cost to wear ratio

And before I go any further, let me link you to a site that has almost 1001 uses for Coca Cola: http://members.tripod.com/~Barefoot_Lass/cola.html where Coca Cola is like a version of Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Windex is the cure all for any ailment from cleaning burnt pans to relieving jellyfish stings. I don’t know if I’d turn to either but in a pinch…

Coca-Cola cupcakes

(makes 12-14 cupcakes)

• 200g plain flour
• 250g golden caster sugar (I used regular caster)
• 1/2 teaspoon bi carbonate of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg
• 125 ml buttermilk (or 30g yogurt mixed with 100ml semi skimmed milk)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 125g unsalted butter
• 175 ml Coca Cola
• 2 tablespoons cocoa

Cola icing:

• 225g icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons Coca Cola
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Optional decorating

• Fondant or marzipan
• Red colouring gel
• Wine gummy Cola lollies

1. Preheat the oven to180c/gas mark 4 and line cupcake tray with paper liners.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk and vanilla in a measuring jug. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and Coca Cola, heating it gently. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, then add the liquid ingredients from the measuring jug, beating until it is well blended.

3. Pour into a measuring jug and then pour into cupcake pans, about 3/4 full (they will rise a little but not a great deal) Leave to stand for 15 minutes in the pan before unmoulding.

4. You can use the Coca Cola icing that Nigella details below: Prepare the icing: Sift the icing sugar and set aside. In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the butter, cola and cocoa and stir over low heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat. Add the vanilla and spoon in the sifted icing sugar, beating as you do so, until you’ve got a spreadable but still runny icing. While the cake is still warm, pour the icing over it. Leave to cool before transferring to a serving plate.

From How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

OR

5. You can use the Fondant/marzipan icing idea I used. Do white fondant parts first: make tiny white balls to represent bubbles. Do the open bubbles last, after the red fondant. Roll white fondant out and cut into strips. Set aside but be prepared to use it within the next 30 minutes before it goes hard. Colour fondant with red colouring and cut out circle. Place on cupcake, then add white ribbon swirl, then add solid balls. To do the open bubbles, roll a tiny ball, then dip the pointy end of japanese chopsticks with a thin end into icing sugar (not takeaway ones that have a thick end) and poke a hole into the centre of the ball and slide straight from chopstick onto cupcake. These are delicate so I found it easiest to slide them straight on in the end. Add coca cola sweet standing up.

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 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.