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Raspberry and Coconut Cakes

I got this recipe from one of the girl’s cookbooks. It is from the Australian Women’s Weekly “Cupcakes” cookbook, they are called Frou-Frou cakes.

I’ve made them a couple of times, but this time I think they turned out much better than my first attempt.

These are quite fiddly to make, so I’m not in a huge hurry to make them again. Having said that, they do taste amazing, and they are definitely worth the effort! I think they look really pretty too.

Recipe makes 12 cakes.

Raspberry Coconut Cake
125g butter, softened
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
3 eggs
½ cup (75g) plain flour
¼ cup (35g) self-raising flour
½ cup (40g) desiccated coconut
⅓ cup (80g) sour cream
150g frozen raspberries

Cream Cheese Icing
60g butter, softened
160g cream cheese, softened
2 teaspoons coconut essence
3 cups (480g) icing sugar (I would only add about 1 or 1½ cups)

Decorations
1 cup (50g) flaked coconut, toasted
fresh raspberries halved (I only had frozen)

Method
1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C or 160°C for fan-forced oven. Line standard muffin pan with paper cases.
2. Beat butter, sugar and eggs in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Stir in sifted flours, coconut, cream and frozen raspberries. Divide mixture among the 12 cases and smooth surface.
4. Bake for about 40 minutes. Remove from tin and cool.
5. Make the cream cheese icing.
6. Remove cakes from cases and spread with icing – this gets rather messy! I found the best way to do this, without getting your fingerprints all over the icing, is to sit the cake on top of an upside-down bowl and ice it, turning the bowl as you ice. There is probably a better way of doing this, but I haven’t worked it out yet.

7. Decorate cakes with coconut and raspberries.

For the icing:
Beat butter, cream cheese and essence in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted icing sugar.

Tags: baking, cooking, raspberries, cupcakes, frou frou cakes, coconut cake, raspberry and coconut cake

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Tasty Morsels

Date Cupcakes with Maple and Cinnamon Icing

7 Nov

We were invited out for dinner the other night and I wanted to take a dessert, so I looked online for some inspiration and found these beautiful date cupcakes at Your Cup of Cake.

Apparently the recipe is originally an Australian one, so it’s come full circle. Welcome Home!

I have made some adjustments to the original recipe.

Cupcakes:
1 ½ cup pitted, chopped dates
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup water
1 cup buttermilk
110g butter
⅔ cup brown sugar (as always, I have reduced the amount of sugar…it was 1 cup)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2¾ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1¾ teaspoon baking powder

Caramel Sauce:
⅔ cup brown sugar (see note on sugar for cupcakes)
1¼ cup cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
110g butter

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 175°C and line muffin tin with cupcake liners. Makes about 20 cupcakes.
2. Bring water and buttermilk to boil. Place chopped dates into a bowl with baking soda. Pour boiling water and milk over dates, briefly stir, then let sit for 20 minutes. I was a bit disturbed by how this looked and smelt (I’ve never boiled buttermilk before), it was all curdled and not at all attractive, but it turned out fine.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar until creamy, about 4 minutes.
4. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla.
5. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking soda together.
6. Slowly add the dry ingredients and the date mixture (alternating between the two) to the butter and eggs. (⅓ dry, then ½ dates, then ⅓ dry, ½ date, ⅓ dry.)
7. Fill cupcakes liners ⅔ full and bake for 13-16 minutes, or until cooked through.
8. While the cupcakes bake, make the caramel sauce. Place all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then reduce heat to low and let simmer for 2 minutes.
9. When cupcakes are out of the oven, use a squeeze bottle to insert caramel sauce into each cupcake, or cut out a small hole on the top of each cupcakes and pour the sauce in using a spoon – I used a teapot with a small spout to fill the holes, I think that was easier than using a spoon and I don’t own a squeeze bottle.

Maple Cinnamon Icing:
110g butter
250g cream cheese
approx ½ cup maple syrup*
¼ cup icing sugar* (original recipe said 4 cups!! This can’t be right, can it?)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
some cream (optional, I added a bit of cream to mine)

Beat butter and cream cheese for 4 minutes. Then add maple syrup, sifted icing sugar, vanilla, cream and cinnamon.
Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and sprinkle with some extra cinnamon.

* Taste the icing and adjust sugar/maple syrup to suit your tastes

How did they taste? They were beautiful – so delicious and moist!

G-Man says they were better than the Chocolate and Zucchini Cupcakes. I’m not sure about that, I still prefer the chocolate ones, but these were definitely up there!

What I’ve learnt from making these: I need to buy a squeeze bottle and I must work on my piping technique!

Update on the piping technique: I picked up this great tip on how to fill your piping bag, amazing! I wish I knew this sooner.

Linking to:

Tags: baking, cooking, cinnamon, cupcakes, date, date cupcakes, maple and cinnamon, maple

Comments 2 Comments
Categories Tasty Morsels

Chocolate and Zucchini Cupcakes

25 Oct

I have had it in my head for some time now that I should make some chocolate and zucchini cupcakes. I’m not sure why, or where the idea came from. I think it may have been that at one stage we had an abundance of zucchinis and so I started looking on the internet for different ways to use them up.

The nicest looking chocolate and zucchini cupcakes I came across were from a website called Dandy Sugar, they look amazing – like a work of art! They were made using this recipe from the King Arthur Flour website. Anyway, I finally got around to making some. I had frozen some grated zucchini from when we had too much of it, so I used this for the cupcakes.

I adjusted the recipe slightly. This recipe made approximately 30 cupcakes:

Cupcakes

½ cup, or about 110g butter
½ cup vegetable oil
1 cup caster sugar (original recipe uses 1 ¾ cups, I don’t think they need that much)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
½ cup buttermilk (yoghurt or sour cream)
2 ½ cups plain flour
¾ cup cocoa
2 teaspoons espresso powder, optional but tasty (I did use this)
2 cups grated zucchini
½ cup chocolate chips

Mascarpone Icing

500g mascarpone cheese (I doubled the original recipe, I really don’t think one pack is enough)
¾-1 cup icing sugar (I used about half of this)
½ tsp vanilla extract

With an electric mixer blend cheese and sugar together until smooth. Stream vanilla in slowly until just incorporated.

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the buttermilk alternately with the flour. Then add the cocoa and espresso powder, mixing unitl smooth. Finally, fold in the zucchini – I used frozen zucchini, which I thawed and drained, but not completely.

Spoon the batter into a muffin tin lined with cupcake liners. Top with chocolate chips. Bake for about 15 minutes or until cooked through. Cool completely before icing. Once cooled, pipe on mascarpone icing. I finished mine with pre-made sugar flowers.