Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

Anything with chocolate in the name is sure to please in this house! This week's recipe was chosen by Clara of I Heart Food4Thought.

It seems lots of people had problems with the cupcakes being dry so I decided to use greek yoghurt instead of buttermilk and used a very rounded 1/2 cup of it for extra moisture. I also kept a really close eye on them while baking. They ended up need only 18.5 minutes instead of the 22 to 25 Dorie suggests.

While I toyed with the idea of Halloween style decorations I decided against it for a few reasons. Firstly that Halloween isn't recognised here at all so there aren't a whole lot of orange and black anything and secondly, I'm very anti food dye at the best of times but particularly now which limited my choices even further!

So I went with toasted flaked almonds both for flavour and crunch and it was perfect.

The taste test ...

Oh my god. These were anything but dry! I found them rich, fudgy and intensely chocolatey ... and that was before I added the glaze. Hubs loved them too, managing to eat 2 of them after a slice of pie and a slab of steamed pudding (both of which I will be posting about in the coming days)!

Next week another first for me - Rugelach

Perfect Ginger Cookies

Being Australian we would call these biscuits not cookies but seeing it's not my recipe, cookies it is! These really caught my eye when I saw them on Priscilla's blog. I absolutely love anything with ginger and in fact have a big mug of ginger tea first thing every morning (and not just because i'm pregnant!).

I changed the recipe slightly, using golden syrup instead of molasses and adding a little baking powder to give them some lift. I also made them smaller, getting 16 out of the mix instead of 12.

The smell of these freshly out of the oven was intoxicating ... warm, sweet and spicy. I ate 3 while they were really to hot to handle and they were fabulous broken up over vanilla ice cream or just with a cup of ginger tea.

You can find the recipe at Priscilla's Baking Adventures. Yum!

TWD: Pumpkin Muffins & an Announcement!

You may have noticed posting has become a little scarce of late. This has been partly the result of blog fatigue but mostly because there has been something much bigger and much more exciting happening ... i'm pregnant! N and I are thrilled to be able to announce that come April we will be parents.

I've been very lucky not to have had any morning sickness but my tastes have definitely changed and I haven't been cooking much lately, at least nothing blogworthy anyway. I'm planning on remedying that starting this week.

I had to sit out last week's TWD. Apologies to Gretchen of Canela & Comino, the biscotti looked great but I just didn't have the time or energy. I did however, get to this week's recipe for Pumpkin Muffins chosen by Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp.

Whenever I hear pumpkin in a recipe it sounds very American (with the exception of our very Australian pumpkin scones of course!). You can't buy canned pumpkin in Australia so I steamed and mashed my own.

I decided to follow the recipe exactly as I am one of the seemingly rare TWDers who actually like raisins! They came together easily but I generally prefer the melt and mix type muffins where you simply add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Creaming butter and sugar is what you do for cupcakes in my opinion.

The taste test ...
I really enjoyed these though I have to say they smelt divine while baking but weren't as fragrant in the mouth. Next time I would increase the spices considerably. I ate mine warm out of the oven with butter and marmalade and it was the perfect morning tea. Due to an unfortunate misunderstanding the rest of the batch got left out on the bench overnight and weren't edible the next day. Boo. N hates pumpkin so it was doubly disappointing because he was actually going to try these! Oh well. I'm sure there will be a next time.

Next week we have the scrumptious sounding Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes.

Jam Doughnut Muffins

Oh. My. God. I'm actually a little worried that I made these because now I know how easy it is I could make them all the time! I've had doughnuts on the brain for the past week or so and while I considered making some the whole vat of hot oil thing does scare me a little. Then I remembered these little beauties that I bookmarked months ago and voila ... doughnuts! Well doughnut muffins to be exact but the end result is truly awesome.

The recipe says it makes 6 and I made 6 jumbo sized ones. It is telling that I ate a whole one but take my advice and make them smaller ... your hips will thank you!

Jam Doughnut Muffins
recipe from Taste.com.au

300g (2 cups) self-raising flour
2/3 cup caster sugar, plus 1/3 cup extra to coat
80ml (1/3 cup) vegetable oil (I used melted butter)
1 large egg
175ml buttermilk (I made my own with 1 tbs apple cider vinegar topped up with milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract (I just realised now that I forgot to add this!)
6 tsp good-quality strawberry jam
100g unsalted butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a 6-hole muffin pan. Sift the flour into a medium bowl, then add a pinch of salt and the caster sugar.

In a jug, combine the vegetable oil, egg, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Add to the dry mixture and stir to only just combine.

Place a spoonful of the mixture in each muffin hole and make an indent in the centre. Fill each indent with a generous 1/2 teaspoon of strawberry jam. (I misjudged slightly so my jam ended up in the bottom third of the mix). Cover the jam with the remaining muffin mixture and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, melt the butter. Combine the extra sugar and the cinnamon in a large bowl. When the muffins are cool enough to handle, brush each muffin with the melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar.

Serve while still a little warm (the jam in the middle really holds its heat so watch out!)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

This week's recipe was chosen by Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy and what a great choice! Considering how decadent Dorie's picture looked I decided we didn't need a whole cake, so I thirded the recipe and made 3 muffin sized cakes.

The cake mix worked perfectly. I lined a jumbo muffin pan and baked them for 25 minutes at 150 deg C. The texture was probably more cake than brownie but very soft, moist and intensely chocolaty. Maybe a few minutes less would have given a more fudge-like middle but I was totally happy with these.

The taste test ...

The cake was delicious! I will definitely be making this again. The muffin size works really well and I love doing individual serves. My only issue was with the caramel.

It took about 15 minutes to get a beautifully clear, deep amber toffee (I was tempted to make toffee apples at this stage) but when I added the cream and butter it all went wrong. The caramel went really milky and cloudy looking and cystalised as it cooled. The end result looks dull and uninviting. It tasted nice but a bit sugary rather than smooth as I had envisinged. While I did halve the recipe I've never had any trouble working with sugar before.

So if anyone out there can tell me where I went wrong I would be very grateful! My taste testers didn't care but the perfectionist in me really wants to make it, well ... perfect!