We're the Kids in America...woah-oh

Here's a little round up of my Miss America party.  Blog posts are short this week because I have been busy baking all week in prep for my birthday dessert bar this weekend!

This was how the house was decorated...on the night England played USA - oops!

Here were my cupcakes on display at the dinner table. You can check out some more close up pictures of them and the recipe I used here.

Miss Wendy Wisconsin and Tina Texas (we were the birthday girls)

All the Miss America contestants want is world peace!

Some amazing homemade meringues...yes they are blue! accompanied by some yummy fruit and cream ... following on in the red, white and blue theme!

And of course there was no way I could pass up on this delicious oreo birthday cheesecake!

Rounding off the night with some sneaky present opening...our actual bday isn't til the 22nd! I was delighted with a whole array of cupcake goodies!  Thanks to my friends for an awesome night of murder mystery birthday fun! and thanks to my birthday twin Laur for hosting such an awesome night!

A little teaser of some American themed brownie cupcakes...

I am rather controversially baking American Flag cupcakes on the day that England plays America in the World Cup!

I am about to leave to head to Harpenden for my Miss USA murder mystery party and I just hope that I don't run into any England fans on the way with my American flag painted nails and patriotic cupcakes in tow...come back in a few days to see more pics and a full write up, but if you don't ever see the end of this post you'll know what happened to me!

I baked them using my absolute favourite Martha Stewart Brownie Cupcake recipe paired with vanilla bean frosting - it's the perfect combo every time! 

Brownie Cupcakes a la Martha Stewart:

Makes 12

225g milk chocolate

1/2 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)

1 cup caster sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

1/2 cup plain flour

1/4 cup sifted cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.  Stir occasionally until just melted, about 4-5 mins.

Remove bowl from heat.  Whisk in sugar and salt until mixture is smooth, whisk in eggs to combine.  Gently whisk in flour and cocoa just until smooth (do not overmix).

 Fill cupcake cases until 3/4 full.  Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until a cake tester inserted halfway in centres, comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached, about 25-30 minutes.

Vanilla Bean Frosting:

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 

1 tablespoon milk

Mix together sugar and butter until they are blended and creamy.  Add vanilla bean paste and milk and continue to beat for another minute.  If desired, add more vanilla bean paste to taste, or more icing sugar to make it stiffer.

Check out the other cupcakes this week at 

Twenty million Mexicans can’t be wrong....I &hearts America!

This weekend my friend is having a Miss America murdery mystery party.  It's pretty exciting, I was desperately hoping to be Miss California (since it's my fave place in the whole world) but I ended up as Miss Wisconsin, so I now have my sash all ready...wedge of cheese and all - Wisconsin is known as 'America's Dairyland'.

I offered to make some American themed cupcakes for the affair...any excuse! I have also been wanting to make Patriotic cupcakes for aaaaaages, my sister got me some really cool stars and stripes cases but the pattern will probably bake out with the brownie cupcakes I'm planning so I will just use my plain blue ones instead.  I would have liked to get red and white in the same variety and have a fun little theme going on with the cases but sometimes I have to draw the line with my baking purchases so I'm drawing it there!

I also really wanted to purchase these amazing red, white and blue sprinkles but the cake company I wanted to buy them from was on holiday until this week so they wouldn't have arrived in time.  I realised since I have white fondant, food colouring and star cut outs already I should stop being so lazy and make my own which is what I plan to do!

Here is my little inspiration board that is helping to shape how my cupcakes will turn out!


The cupcakes on the top left with blue sanding sugar on top come from this awesome blog.
The three coloured cupcakes on the top right are from a blog that I borrow ideas/recipes from frequently - grin and bake it.
The patriotic sprinkled cupcakes are from sugar bean sweets, and the star covered cupcakes come from here.
The American flag cupcake is from the almighty Martha Stewart!

Some mint-spiration!

One of my big loves is dessert bars! I have a few favourite websites that showcase professional dessert bars and also ones submitted by everyday bloggers.  My very favourite one is Half Baked, you definitely need to check it out! It is amazing how creative these people are who do this! If you want to look at an amazing professional dessert bar designer then head over to Amy Atlas.

For a while now I have been wanting to have a go at doing one myself! So for the past month I have been scouring the internet for inspiration and buying far too much in preparation for my birthday in a couple of weeks time when I will finally get to put all my blog surfing into action!  There has been many a fight in my household over whether I need to buy special plates when we have perfectly good ones already, or why I need to order special m&m's from America, or why I need to be buying more cake stands when I own a zillion already...but it all comes down to colour co-ordination! so yes I need new things to tie the whole table together!

I have settled for the combination of chocolate and mint, so the table will be decorated accordingly in the colours of green and brown.  I will be making mint chocolate oreo cupcakes, oreo truffles, mint brownie pops, my sister Mara will be providing the whoopie pies, my sister Mel is going to make the bunting and my mom is providing the Root Beer - accompanied with green straws of course!  I am so excited to see how it turns out!

So I thought I'd give you a little sneaky peek into my 'mint-spiration', I have stolen this phrase from Kate over at Grin and Bake It because it is genius! but all credit goes to her  for thinking up such a witty title!

The delicious looking whoopie pies and polka dot cookies featured above both come from her blog.

The five layered green mint cupcakes are baked by the very talented Liz at Hoosier Homemade.


The amazing brownie pops come from Jonna over at Get off your Butt and BAKE!


The brownie balls are a creation of mine I made a while ago, and the coconut m&m's were imported from the U.S by a seller on ebay who has a rather tasty selection of American delicacies on offer that we can't get over here.  If you fancy all things American like me you should definitely check it out, the prices aren't too bad...and if you love coconut you have simply got to try these m&m's - they are to die for! They will be featuring on the dessert table in some cute little jars I got at a farm shop near where I live, along with some green apple and root beer jelly belly's too!

Iron Cupcake...Not a celebration for me!

 

The sole pic I managed to take

 before my cupcakes were devoured!

Yesterday morning I awoke with excitement, as I always do when Iron Cupcake is upon us! I had stayed up til 2.30am the night before finishing off my cupcakes and was ready to go 'celebrate' and stuff myself with cupcakes! Then disaster struck...halfway through the day at work I got sent home as I was sick!! This was my worst nightmare...I sent out pleas on facebook to anyone who might be going from Reading direction who would want to take my cupcakes along! I had just spent too much planning, money and effort for them to go to waste! but no-one responded.  I went to bed and set my alarm for 3pm hoping I'd be feeling better by then, as this was when I needed to start catching my train to make it on time!


My alarm went off, and I still felt terrible.  There was just no way I could face London rush hour on the underground when I couldn't even walk to the bathroom! I was so upset, and was still secretly hoping I'd be able to just struggle on and make it but I had to admit to myself I was too ill and would have to just give it a miss.  I let my sister know I wouldn't be able to come, took one sad look at my cupcakes waiting in my cupcake courier and thought about how I would have to be 'binning' them later!!


Then at about 5.30 a cupcake miracle happened!! my prayers had been answered! It is clear to me that God knows the desires of my heart!!  I felt a whole lot better and after quickly checking the train times on the internet I realised I might just make it for the end of cupcake tasting time! So off to London I rushed.  When I got there I was still too unwell to taste any of them :( but I enjoyed looking at the photos of what everyone had made...since when I arrived at 7.30 the platters had well and truly been cleared and there wasn't a cupcake in sight which may explain how my cupcakes disappeared before I'd even laid them out! 


So I apologise for the lack of photos, there was simply not much left to photograph by the time I arrived! except for the few that were still being eaten by my sisters table, and I borrowed some of the table next to us too because they were too cute not to take a picture of! Andrea's beautifully decorated cupcake won the prize for the best decoration, I think it's easy to see why:

She also won the 1st prize for the amateur competition with a pink champagne and strawberry cupcake.  Pictured below are a fun looking mint cupcake and a cute popcorn cupcake!

And this baker used cute little umbrella's as their decoration! I think some of the eaters on my table told me it was an alcoholic cupcake but they thought it was pretty tasty.

There was also a cute looking American cupcake, which appeals to me due to my love of all things American! It had star sprinkles on and an American flag sticking out of the top but unfortunately they were all gone so I couldn't take a picture.  

Watch out later in the week when I will be making my own American themed cupcakes for a Miss America beauty pageant murder mystery party I am attending!

As always check The Caked Crusader's blog within the next few days for a full write up and all the pictures of the entries.

'Pop goes the Brownie' cupcakes

I had been planning my cupcakes for the Iron Cupcake competition ever since I found out the theme was 'celebration'.  I initially thought I wanted to incorporate something that would go pop! my friend suggested putting a party popper on the top of each cupcake that people could pull before they ate it! an awesome idea...but not edible, so it got me thinking along the lines of popping candy.  I know you can't really bake popping candy into cakes, I've read up alot about it and something about the chemistry of it makes it stop popping! but I do know it works in chocolate.  

So alot of thinking later and I decided on doing some kind of chocolate lollipop to go on top that would have popping candy inside.  I had also been thinking along the lines of balloons, one of my original ideas  that was laughed at by my sisters was getting real balloons and blowing them up with just a tiny amount of helium and standing them up on top of the cupcakes...maybe a little far fetched but I thought it would be fun! so I moved onto edible lollipops! I found some fantastic moulds on american ebay, ordered some popping candy in four flavours/varieties, ordered brightly coloured greaseproof cases that wouldn't lose their colour when baked, and got to work!

I was so pleased that the popping candy comes in the four colours that matched the cupcakes cases I had ordered.  I am all about the colour co-ordination! All last week I made up batches of chocolate lollipops just by melting down Dairy Milk with a touch of oil to make it 'pourable' and then I mixed the popping candy in.  It was fun to hear it pop as I was mixing!

Then I poured it into the balloon moulds.  I had two varieties, one which made four smaller bunch of balloon lollipops and one mould which made two larger bunch of balloon lollipops with a 'Happy Birthday' banner across the front, which seemed very appropriate since it was Iron Cupcake's 1st birthday.

This is what they looked like once they had set in the fridge.

After that I set to work on the cupcakes.  I made my ultimate favourite brownie cupcakes from my Martha book.  They are so easy to make, no kitchenaid involved here! and they just turn out beautifully every time I make them.  Here is the recipe for all those who want to try it out:

Brownie Cupcakes a la Martha Stewart

(Makes 12)

225g milk chocolate

1/2 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)

1 cup caster sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

1/2 cup plain flour

1/4 cup sifted cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water.  Stir occasionally until just melted, about 4-5 mins.

2. Remove bowl from heat.  Whisk in sugar and salt until mixture is smooth, whisk in eggs to combine.  Gently whisk in flour and cocoa just until smooth (do not overmix).

3. Fill cupcake cases until 3/4 full.  Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until a cake tester inserted halfway in centres, comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached, about 25-30 minutes.

Of course after my recent success of my Vanilla Bean Frosting there was no other option but to use it to frost these.  

I divided the frosting into four bowls and coloured each one and piped it on to contrast with the colour of the cupcake case. I then finished each cupcake off with a balloon lollipop (containing the hidden popping candy) and each popping candy colour matched the cupcake case too.  So depending on which cupcake you picked up you could have experienced blackcurrant, raspberry, strawberry or apple flavoured popping chocolate!  and a little sprinkle of popping candy over the icing finished them off.

Unfortunately they flew off the platter so fast I didn't have time to take a picture of them altogether, which is a shame because I think they would have looked fun! so here is an individual shot I managed to take before it got eaten up:

Now I want you to bear all of this planning and preparation in mind and see what happened next...in my Iron Cupcake post! and how they nearly never made it to the contest!

And the secret ingredient is....

This may not be new to you, but it is definitely new to me!  I had heard about this 'tastes just liked melted vanilla ice cream frosting' over at the Cupcake Project and since I was planning my Root Beer float cupcakes I thought this would be the perfect frosting for it!

I had to go to Waitrose to buy said Vanilla Bean Paste, that already tells you of it's exclusivity! you can't just pick this up at Tesco or Sainsbury's people! so you know it's going to be good! and it was.  The smell practically knocks you out, it is really strong and I was a bit nervous about adding the two whole teaspoons of the stuff to the frosting but it was just the right amount of vanilla taste when I tested it, and it really does come very close to resembling melted vanilla ice cream! 

You really need to try this recipe, and if you don't already own some...I urge you to invest! your tastebuds will thank you for it! 

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting (A.K.A Melted Ice Cream)

Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 

1 tablespoon milk

Mix together sugar and butter until they are blended and creamy.  Add vanilla bean paste and milk and continue to beat for another minute.  If desired, add more vanilla bean paste to taste, or more icing sugar to make it stiffer.

It has become my new favourite addition to my baking cupboard! and no doubt will be used often!

Update: It appears this post has been generating tons of traffic when people search the phrase 'baking cupboard'.  If you'd like to know more about what I think everyone needs in their baking cupboard you can check out the page I created here.