copy cat cupcake mugs

I have to say I'm pretty over the whole cupcake trend, there's an offensive number of cupcake shops everywhere, too many people seem to think that cupcakes are somehow more sophisticated than regular cakes (they're not, they're actually children's food) or maybe this trend is being supported by germophobes who don't want their food touching someone else's.  I might also be taking against them because I think of them as the bullying product of the baking world.  They allow bullies who only want to share with specific friends to pre-decide which friends they want to share with then bake and bring only that number of cupcakes and woe betide the B-list friend who happens to be part of the group that day, "sorry, I only brought six," because let's face it, cutting a big cake into 7 pieces instead of 6 isn't that much of a deal but since cupcakes are meant to be served without cutlery it really is too much of an imposition to ask one person to find a cutting implement and then give away half their cupcake, and I've seen it happen beyond the school playground. 
 
Okay, these are probably unreasonably strong feelings to be held against an innocent little cake and I should just get over it (no probably about the should get over it).
 
And so on that note I thought I'd try overcome my prejudice by taking inspiration from something I saw while trawling around other baking sites where I found these: http://diaryofaladybird.blogspot.com/2010/07/fondant-fun-hot-chocolate-cupcakes.html
 
I just had to make them, I didn't read the instructions I just thought I'd have a go.  This was my very first time working with fondant icing, I definitely should have rolled the fondant icing thicker and I probably should have bought a smoothing tool or at least been a little more gentle when applying the fondant icing to the cake, but even though my attempt isn't quite as perfect I'm still gonna say, ***NAILED IT!***

Welsh Cakes - Mom

Being less versatile than a Scottish highland griddle scone didn't stop Welsh cakes from making a frequent appearance in our home when I was growing up.  Mostly because of my Dad's incessant requesting of them, he preferred them to scones because they are sweeter and richer.  I think in his mind a scone is meant to be dessert, unlike the rest of us with the mentality that scones start as the savoury part of lunch then become the sweet finish.  I can see his point, if you use bread to make a jam sandwich it's still a sandwich, it's not really dessert even if it is sweeter than a ham sandwich.  So when the lunch crowd became too big for one batch of scones the second batch was Welsh cakes and Dad was happy.
 
I had some difficulties getting things right in my practise runs on these and some research brought out one main difference between our family and the rest of the world in that everyone else seems to cut their scones with a round cutter then gather up the scraps and pat the dough out again.  We cut triangles, in the same tradition as Scottish scones, so the resulting conclusion was that my Welsh cakes were probably too big.  My other issue was that my griddle was again too hot, the griddle needs to be hotter than 3 on my stove but much cooler than 4, if I leave it on 3 it just seems to dry out the dough it doesn't brown or fluff up in the cooking, but switch to 4 for a moment and suddenly it's browned long before it has the chance to cook half-way through.  An electric griddle with a temperature gauge that moves up by actual temperature degrees is really your best bet but I live in London and homes are small, I don't have room for one, I barely have room for a dedicated scone pan. 
 
Just to give you an idea of what happens when the temperature goes really wrong, the cake has browned on both sides but the insides were still raw, really raw and in order to cook it through you need to balance it on its edges and keep cooking it, this one was so raw that balanced on edge the dough inside decided to conform to the laws of gravity and started sliding down to the lower edge bulging it out and, viola, wedge shaped cake - miniature people can go skiing on it.

Welsh Cakes

Heat your griddle to medium heat, this will take some playing around with to find the right temperature.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar

Then cut in or rub in like you would for pastry
1 cup butter

Add the remaining wet ingredients
1 cup raisins  (the recipe says 3/4 cup raisins and 1/4 cup mixed peel but we never used mixed peel)
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk

Mix with a rubber spatula until it forms a stiff dough, don't be tempted to add more milk you're going to be patting this out with your hands and picking up pieces of it, it needs to be stiff.

Take your spatula and divide the dough in the bowl into quarters and kind of push/slap each quarter into sort of a smooth lump, even when stiff this dough is quite sticky but you don't want to knead it too much once it's mixed or it goes tough so I find some shaping in the bowl helps with handling.  Scoop out one of the lumps onto a well floured board or counter top and pat it into a round about 1/2 inch thick and cut into quarters using a sharp knife, you have to cut through the raisins a table knife or metal spatual won't do this.  If you have too much flour on them give them a flip back and forth in your hands before transferring to the griddle see the scone entry for an action photo if you need an illustration of what I'm talking about, I didn't have anyone around to take the picture for me today.

Cook on both sides on the medium heat griddle until golden brown and if you can still see raw dough on the edges it will be necessary to cook them on the edges too.  I don't know what people who cut rounds do when they need to keep cooking, score 1 for triangles.

When they're done, transfer to a wire rack to cool, brush any flour clinging to them off with a pastry brush or similar tool.

They're best to eat when they're still a bit warm, split them open and fill with butter and jam and be generous this is dessert after all!

Sandwich back together and munch away.

Pumpkin Loaf - Mom

I am in the worst kind of heaven right now.  I have two freshly baked pumpkin loaves on my counter, they smell fantastic, better than fantastic, they smell deliriously, mouth-wateringly, head-rushingly, drool inducingly amazing, and I have sit in this blissful, pumpkiny, spicey cloud of aroma while I wait for them to cool before I can cut into them.  Other fruit or vegetable based cakes should be ashamed of their own existance, banana bread should go hide itself for being insufficient, zucchini loaf should tremble from its own inadequacies, and carrot cake should resign itself to being a waste of both carrots and cake, pumpkin loaf makes me wonder why people even bother with lesser loaves, but still I have to wait.

This is, fyi, another one of my mom's "saboteur" style sharing efforts.  There are some obvious errors in her email, eggs are listed twice, under no circumstances would she pour that much oil into a measuring cup and think yup I'll add all that in, and a very inconvenient spelling error could have someone without the sensory memory of this cake burned into her olfactory system mistaking cinnamon for cardamom with disastrous results and there's no way she would ever be so stingy with the spices.  She also limited the total of her instructions to "bake in a greased and floured loaf pan for 50 min at 350^" which would have a less intrepid baker shying away from it due to the complete lack of direction on how to make the batter.

Pumpkin Loaf

In a stand mixer, whisk together until pale and the mix falls in ribbons from the beaters when you raise them
4 eggs
3 cups of sugar

add in and whisk until smooth
1/2 cup vegetable oil (flavourless like sunflower or canola)
1 small can of pumpkin (that's 1 3/4 cups - I measured it on the way out of the can)
1/3 can of water (use the pumpkin can to measure)
               if you puree up your own fresh pumpkin and it is already quite watery,
               use 2 cups of pumpkin and omit the extra water

sift together all your dry ingredients then add to the wet and mix until just incorporated
3 1/2 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cloves
3 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice

Pour the mixture into 2 loaf tins (this is a double recipe, you can half it but then you have to use half the can of pumpkin and do something with the other half, just make two loaves and freeze one for later you won't be disappointed).

Bake in a preheated oven at 350^F (177^C) for 50 minutes, poke it with a long skewer to check if it's done in the middle and if not put it back in for 5 minutes at a time until it is.

Just a note, it should be a bit darker on the outside and it shouldn't be so mountainous in shape but my oven was at 325^ in error.  I have been suspecting that my oven has been running hot compared to the temperature dial, to check I bought an proper internal thermonitor to get a more accurate gauge and I was right, but today I mis-read the thermonitor and ended up too low.  So as the loaves cooked unusually slowly, the centres bulged ever higher in what was worryingly threatening to become a volcano of warm raw batter and it took much longer to bake.  But after some nail biting and several extensions of the cooking time it did eventually bake and it didn't spill over the sides and fuse to the tins, so alls well that ends well, get the butter out it's gotta be time to cut a slice now.

Look at that beauty!

Meringues - Grandma Ross

My Grandma Ross used to make the most amazing meringues, they were pure white and crisp and dry and just melted in your mouth.  A lot of times when I'm baking, I end up with an extra egg white and I can't help but whisk it up to make a batch of meringues.  I try to convince myself that they're a virtuous little sweet treat, there's no fat in them after all.
You can multiply the recipe up if you have more than 1 egg white but I wouldn't want to tangle with making a batch bigger than 4 egg whites, my oven couldn't cope.

Meringues

Pre-heat the oven to 120^F (50^C)

Whisk until soft peaks form
1 egg white
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Slowly add in and whisk until stiff peaks form
1/4 cup caster sugar

Blob the meringues onto a cookie sheet that is lined with baking paper (I don't like to recommend using paper all the time, but if the meringues stick to paper you can peel the paper back, if they stick to the tray you're stuck) if you want to get fancy you can use a piping bag to make decorative blobs.

Baking time depends on how big you make them, little meringues can take less than 2 hours (watch a movie and they're done), really big meringues might need to go overnight.  They're done when you pinch them and they crack.

Little meringue kisses.