Taste: Cupcakes

Whatever suspicions and mistrust I have of cookbooks is amplified a hundred-fold by those which have an unknown author. When the book refuses to yield the name of an author at all, the book might as well be a stash of alcohol labelled "THIS IS NOT ALCOHOL" #nothinsus. So it, of course, makes perfect sense that I would fish out a book like this from the table of suspiciously discounted books at Dymocks and take it home with some sort of intention to actually use it. 
Of course, any such intention was swiftly thrust out the door


(Couldn't resist)
as I adamantly refused to part with the beloved tried and tested recipes that I usually use. 
Finding a recipe that I actually wanted to recreate was not easy, as I found most of the cupcakes in here uninspiring and lacking any sort of excitement. This, coupled with the fact I had no idea if any of these recipes were reliable, led to me settling on these simple chocolate chip cupcakes.

The cupcakes were okay and easy enough to make, but certainly not something I'm rushing to make again. The resulting cupcakes were still enjoyable but on the stodgy and dry side.  The quantities seemed odd from the start and the resulting batter was extremely thick, almost like a very wet dough. Also, I broke my beloved and seemingly invincible spatula whilst stirring the mixture. Not happy, Jan. 

So I've still included the recipe for the sake of the blog, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. Admittedly, the cupcakes weren't bad; it's just that there are far better cupcake recipes out there, so if you have a decent go-to recipe for vanilla cake (I'll share mine later) just use that and add in the chocolate chips. And yep, that's branded flour #highroller #gettingpaper (but seriously, I wept in the Woolworths aisle when they didn't have any Home Brand plain flour left that day. The struggle is real).


Chocolate Chip Cupcakes 
Adapted from 'Taste: Cupcakes'
Ingredients
110g soft unsalted butter
75g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
175g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
110mL milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g chocolate chips

Chocolate buttercream:
140g soft unsalted butter
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
1tbs milk
75g dark chocolate, melted

Method
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line a muffin pan with cupcake cases.

Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs in three batches, mixing well after each addition.

Sift the flour and baking powder over the mixture and add the milk, vanilla and chocolate chips. Stir to combine.

Fill the cupcake cases (depending on the size of your cupcake cases you may have enough mixture for more than twelve) and bake in the oven for 15 - 20 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of a cupcake comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and rest in the pan for five minutes, before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add the chocolate and beat until a pipeable consistency is reached. Decorate the cupcakes as desired. 





2011, Taste: Cupcakes, Hinkler Books Pty Ltd, Melbourne.

Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale

The first time I heard about Lorraine Pascale was a few years ago when she presented part of a weekly Masterclass on Masterchef Australia. She made her Mojito Genoise (also included in this book), and I remember a certain cheeky contestant remarking on how he couldn't concentrate on the recipe because he was distracted by the teacher. Turns out it was with good reason, as Lorraine is a model-turned-cook, who is now very well-known and successful in the UK.

I love Lorraine and I love this book. Instead of numbering her recipes into arbitrary steps, her recipes are organised into paragraphs, which creates a much more casual tone (it sounds strange, but it really does make it feel like a more personal experience! Kind of like writing in Tom Riddle's diary, and how he writes back... yeah, it's not really the same. I tried). 
There are plenty of great recipes in here, which perhaps raises the question of why I chose one of the most basic baked goods, a recipe for something which is present in most sweet-based cookbooks and is hardly anything revolutionary; the humble brownie.

Though what the brownie lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for in taste and simplicity of preparation. Essentially, it's melt-mix-stir and bake, producing comfort and deliciousness in one tiny little square.
Last week a certain friend of mine with the comical tendemcy to mis-pronounce the name of the university cafe (*cough* 'Maxine' *cough*) grew another year older, and I figured it'd be the perfect time to actually bake him something rather than leaving him to cry over foodpornographic Instagram photos. As much as I love baking and decorating cupcakes for someone's birthday, I was short on time and needed something transportable enough to survive a day out in the city.
This is not the recipe I usually use for brownies (that one, surprise surprise, was found online), so it was good to try a different one while ticking a book off the list.
This uses brown sugar and a LOT more butter than I'm used to (and hardly any flour!), and I swear that I put on a few kilos just by looking at this (for the dieters out there looking at this....... #soznotsoz).
However, they were delicious and Mr Maxine was very happy.
This was the second time I have used Oreos in a brownie batter, and I highly recommend it. The chewy and fudgy texture of the brownies, coupled with the crunchiness of the Oreos, is naice. Very naice.



Cookies and Cream Fudge Brownies 
Adapted From 'Baking Made Easy' by By Lorraine Pascale
Ingredients
165g butter
200g dark chocolate, grated or broken into pieces
3 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
165g soft light brown sugar
2 tbs plain flour
1 tbs cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
1 pkt Oreos 

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 20cm x 20cm square baking tin.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the chocolate and stir until completely melted and combined.

Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together in a large bowl until they become light and fluffy. Add half the sugar and whisk to combine, and then add in the other half. Ensure that the sugar is added from the side of the bowl (as opposed to being dumped in the middle) to retain the airiness of the mixture. Whisk until the mixture thickens and lightens in colour.

Add in the chocolate mixture, again taking care to add it from the side of the bowl. Then add the salt, flour and cocoa powder, stirring until just combined.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 25 - 30 minutes. (I found this batter to take a longer time to cook than my usual one, so ensure that it is almost completely baked before taking it out of the oven or you might find yourself shoving the entire unsliced brownie back into the pan to keep cooking! Not that I did that............). Ensure it does not overbake, as the brownies will continue to cook from the residual heat in the baking pan once removed from the oven. It should be set but still a little wobbly in the centre.

Allow the brownies to cool in the pan and then slice into squares.


Close enough? Close enough.

Pascale, L 2011, Baking Made Easy, HarperCollins Publishers, London.

What is the #Shelfie Project?

Shelfie /Shɛlfɪe/ noun A picture or portrait of your bookshelf. Showcasing literature IN ALL IT'S GLORY! (This term was originally defined by author Rick Riordan). Not to be confused with selfie. (Source: Urban Dictionary).

This is my shelfie (well, the cookbook half of it). As my interest in cooking and baking has grown in recent years, so too has my collection of cookbooks. Okay, so it's hardly the NSW State Library, but as someone with the unfortunate tendency to impulsively buy things that I hardly need or have space for, it is getting to be quite a lot. 

Yet I think I like the idea of cookbooks more than I like actually using them. Mostly it's because I'm not sure exactly how reliable the recipe is, nor how it actually tastes. Why bother using a recipe from a book when you there are numerous websites that act as not only a consolidated database of every kind of recipe imaginable, but have user comments from people who have actually tried the recipe? 

Thus, the cookbooks sit proudly on my shelf, read but hardly used. 

While adding two new (signed :D) cookbooks to the collection yesterday (shelf adjustment was required for Mr Zumbo), I felt a sudden burst of motivation and decided that  it was about time I actually started using them. Besides from actually using stuff I've spent any money (the books were kind of like that pretty dress you buy knowing full well you have nowhere in mind to wear it to, but you just have to have it), I'm hoping this 'project' will help me develop my cooking further and allow me to discover new heights of deliciousness :D. And also give me something to do in the holidays besides sleeping 'til midday and consuming five times the recommended daily intake of sugar and saturated fats in front of the TV/interwebz.

By the end of the year, I hope to have cooked at least one recipe from each book (it doesn't sound that exciting but considering I am yet to try anything from several of the books, it'll definitely be an achievement for me!!).  

6 months,

18 books,

1 kitchen.

Wow that sounds like the start of a melodramatic cooking show advert.

Aaanyways.. Hopefully I am motivated enough to actually blog each recipe (that's seriously the hardest part of this. Cooking is fine, it's just the writing-uppy bit that I lack motivation for) so all my fans (fan) can follow my adventures. 

The books are (from L - R in the photo above):

1 Zumbarons - Adriano Zumbo

2 Lantern Cookery Classics - George Calombaris 

3 The Starter Kitchen - Callum Hann 

4 Balti: Step-by-Step Indian Recipes - Padmini Mehta 

5 Cakes - Marina Neri 

6 Simple Essentials: Chicken - Donna Hay 

7 All New Meals in Minutes - Ainsley Harriott 

8 How to be a Domestic Goddess - Nigella Lawson 

9 Nigellissima - Nigella Lawson 

10 Planet Cake - Paris Cutler

11 Nigella Express - Nigella Lawson 

12 Taste: Cupcakes - Hinkler Publishing

13 Baking Made Easy - Lorraine Pascale

14 Marion - Marion Grasby 

15 Cupcakes and Bakes - Recipes selected by Jonnie Leger (actually not in the photo but this is where it usually sits on the shelf ;))

16 My Favourite Food for all Seasons - Janelle Bloom 

17 Family Food and Weekend Feasts - Janelle Bloom 

18 Zumbo - Adriano Zumbo (click the photo to enlarge, I promise it really is there!)