#08 Cupcakes: information & inspiration

Some friends were asking me 'where are the recipes for those cupcakes', and I had to admit I followed the same recipe as always, but for the 'look' of the cupcake I had surfed the internet! So hereby, for you guys, and perhaps others, some sites I look at and some books I use :)

Basicaly, you'll just need a book you can use for your basic recipes. I have a dutch book called '500 cupcakes' (Bol.com url) which has a lot of basic recipes, classics, chocolate, muffins, healthy, fat-reduced, funny, etcetera.

Then you can work your way out from there! Whenever you have the chance to bake, try something different, a new recipe, colours, tastes, looks, anything!

For example, I was sick of using the same old butter/icing sugar (poedersuiker) recipe for the topping, so I went searching the internet. Afraid of trying ANYTHING I found there, I just kept with what I was making and tried to make them different like with oreo-topping!

When I went on a trip to london last July, I found a book called 'Cox Cookies & Cake' which had some new recipes, but also some cool new ideas for cupcake decoration. First off, I found an amazing sweet fattening topping: icing sugar+butter+cream cheese+white chocolate+vanilla.. hmmm my mouth is watering again! The next thing was that I found out about new methods of decoration. I found a really great store in London called 'Jane Asher' and bought a **** load of things :D..

- Colour Paste: I can buy colouring where I live, but this paste is so much better! In stead of pouring the whole bottle in, I only need a tip of a toothpick to get a soft colour, and two more tips to get the darker colour!
- Edible Glitter. Glitter does make everything better.
- Mo(u)lds! Bendable ones especialy. You can buy them on etsy.com but also on a lot of baking websites, and some of the baking stores in Holland. You can use fondant (or marsepein) and literaly mold it with these molds, instead of hand crafting something like a rose or a butterfly :)!

Now for the inspiration, it depends on what things I would still want to make, decorate and bake. In the case of christmas however, you get the typical christmas-y bakings :D. So I'll scout the local baking stores, spend all my well-earned money from my new job and start baking. But if I want to make 'nerdy ' cupcakes, I'll just go on google .. yes you read it right, google! If that doesn't work, I go on Deviantart, which is a pretty good and big resource for more ideas and inspiration in general. And if you still don't know what to do after looking at the ocassion and the internet, try some of these links 000>

Some links:
http://www.cupcakesenmuffins.nl (Dutch only)
Pokemon
(Retro) games
Cute faces, 2
Superheroes, 2
Settlers of Catan
Mario!
Actually cake, not cupcake, lego
My inspiration for the cookie monster cupcakes

General links:
Passion for Parties (look at the yummy part)
All things Cupcake (really good!)
Bakerella (likewise :D)

#07 Chocolate chip cookies

Okay so since I've learned from my 'perfect takes time' lesson, or rather the 'time' lesson in general, I've either been baking on time or not XD! So right now I am eating one of the triple chocolate chip cookies I've made today! At a local supermarket (AH to go for dutchies) they have this beautiful creation made out of chocolate, with three kinds of chocolate parts within. This cookie is thick and soft and melts in your mouth as if you are touching heaven.

So of course I wanted to reproduce this cookie! I went on the internet and came upon the following recipe:

♥ 125 grams pure/dark chocolate
♥ 150 grams selfraising flower
♥ pinch of salt
♥ 125 grams of butter (unsalted)
♥ 75 grams of brown sugar (NL: ik gebruikte hier basterdsuiker)
♥ 50 grams of white suger
♥ 1 package of vanille sugar
♥ 1 egg
♥ 150 grams of white chocolate
♥ 150 grams of milk chocolate

So you got cookiedough based on dark chocolate, but you can still put some dark chocolate in there, broken. However, if you use chocolate from the supermarket, regular chocolate bars, it will melt a lot into your cookie/dough when you bake them. So instead of supermarket chocolate, you should look for chocolate at a local baking/cooking store, where they buy them in 'drops'. You should ask them for ..why yes.. chocolate drops.

Now for the rest of the recipe:

♥ Preheat your oven at 170 degrees.
♥ Melt the dark chocolate.
♥ Add flower, butter and salt in a different bowl. (I tried mixing this, which turned into a disaster! :P)
♥ Add the two different sugars to the melted chocolate and add the egg and vanilla.
♥ Mix all the ingredients!
♥ Now add the amount of chocolate chips/ broken pieces (you can vary, I added a bit less).
♥ Now make 12 scoops of chocolate on a baking plate covered with baking paper. Or any amount of scoops you want. Just keep in mind that when you make 12 out of this dough they'll be more soft on the inside, while making more than twelve will make them more crispy. And of course, if you make more, the amount of dough per cookie will be less, so you might want to keep an eye on the baking time!!!!
♥ Make sure you have at least 6 cm between every scoop and DON'T flatten the scoops! I had to use two full baking plates because of this.
♥ Try to consider them as ice-cream scoops. They will melt in the oven and form flat thick chocolate cookies
♥ Bake them for 18 minutes, check if they are done by using a knitting needle or cocktail pricker and let them cool for 4 till 5 minutes. They will harden in this time, so it is normal that they are very soft, still on the outside when you take them out of the oven :)!

Bon apetit! (there should be a ` there somewhere right? XD)

#06 Perfect takes time

So apparently I'm a perfectionist when it comes to cooking and drawing! It has to come out right and perfectly the first time I make it.

I fell in love with the cheesecake from the Bagels&Beans, which is a lemon cheesecake with 'bastogne' biscuits for the bottom. *_* I found the recipe on the B&B website, so decided I should make it for an upcoming picknick. However, I hadn't enough time, which resulted in a fluid warm cheesecake. It tasted good though!

Yesterday, again with not enough time, I wanted to try out a tiramisu for the first time. After one hour in the fridge, it was still fluid. What is wrong with me?! I keep making fluid deserts that aren't supposed to be fluid! So I had to put the tiramisu in the fridge for about 24hrs. Now, it's not that fluid anymore, but it tastes like whipped cream. JUST whipped cream. That's not how it's supposed to taste! Argh..

So yeah, I'm angry that things don't work the first time, but maybe it's a little lesson for me to learn, besides not trying to be perfect: take your damned time! If you have 2 hours, and the pie will take 2 hours, it can still run late! Take your time to bake something nice, and good-tasting. You may need to extend baking times, or fridge times... you might even have forgotten to buy an ingredient.

#05 cupcakes 2

After having found my number one shop in London for bakery, it didn't took me that long to spend all my money. It also didn't took long for me to 'test' all these new kitchenery. From colours to rainbow sparkles, from rose molds to sprinkles,.. i bought it all, and I used it all.

I can finaly make cupcakes look as pretty as they taste! I've taken a next step in my hobby, and it does look like an expensive one. Therefore, I won't just make cupcakes for just any random occasion, and/or ask for compensation if people want to eat my treats. I still feel selfish about that.. a bit strange, to ask people for money while you enjoy making things and enjoy seeing other people actually enjoy the things you made. But alas, I'd rather make them a lot, and be able to do money-wise, than to be stuck in a never-ending circle of spending money on them ..

Anyway, back to these cupcakes! I tried to make them as different as possible, and even used a new recipe for both the topping as the cupcakes themselves. The topping was so delicious I could kill myself over it, but the cupcakes were rather.. wrong. I did something wrong in the baking, I just don't know what.. so for now I'll just stick to my other recipes!

A lot of cleaning....

Ah yes, tomorrow there will be a new batch, made for friends of mine and my boyfriend's; they are going to spend their evening filling themselves with cupcakes and trying to kill eachother (?) or whatever goals they chose, in a game of RPG. Good luck boys :D!

#04 Big dishes: pasta and noodles

I just love to make dishes that can be eaten over two days, with the two of us! Either that, or it can be served for four people. I used to hate a certain dish; stir-fryed chinese noodles with chinese vegetables, chicken and the enclosed herbs and spices. [NL: roerbakmie!] It was not until I went to the university and had to start cooking for myself four days out of seven, I started to realize that that dish was actually quite good.

Although it tends to differ from the way my mother's taste, the dish is made the same way. It comes in their own handy packages and it is easy to make. Not to mention the fact that there is less dishes due to the use of only two pans. (My boyfriend thanks me for this ! He is the dishwasher :D!) And the fact that we can eat twice from it, so no cooking the next day, AND no more dishes regarding pans.

Another big dish I like to make is a pasta dish. I have yet to go into detail with the recipe, but I can tell you this: it's just delicious and easy! You have to cook the pasta, and some vegetables (I use carrots) as long as they should cook. When it is done and strained off, add these ingredients and a pasta sauce of choice, a lot of mozarella, and ham, to a large oven-plate. Bake it in 20 to 30 minutes on 200 degrees C.

I hope I will come up with another dish like these, or stumble upon... Because I love coming home from something and realizing I don't have to cook because I already did that yesterday!

#03 Tapas and left-overs!

You know those days that you have absolutely no idea what to make or cook? Or that you just want to make something different than regular pasta? I had that yesterday. It started out as a day on which I just wanted to refuse cooking, even though it would pleasure my boyfriend to eat something not made in 2 minutes.

After walking around the supermarket together, I remembered the lovely book he gave me; a big tapas book. I remembered something with ham and cheese from the book, but also some things that I had made before, when I tried tapas for the first time.

The first time making tapas was after I ate them for the first time at a restaurant. My boyfriend loves them and wanted to take me out for dinner one day, so he thought he would introduce me to this 'new' cuisine to me. After tasting the delicious (but very garlic centered) tapas, I fell in love with them, it was like a big buffet of small things. So one day I decided to copy the filled mushrooms I ate there. It worked! Just a reminder to myself; don't give them to your boyfriend for lunch at work when you know he doesn't have a microwave at hand that same day >.< , the mushrooms are not that good when they are cold to stone-cold!

The second time making tapas was yesterday. And the best part was that I only bought two different things. I remembered what I had left in the fridge so I chose to make tapas from left-overs and whatever I have in the house, standardly. Sooo..this is what I made:

♥ scrambled eggs with onions, potatoes, pepper, salt & papric powder
♥ cottage cheese in parmaham (that is prob not english, so em.. very thin sliced salty meat)
♥ cucumber with cheese & tomatoes with cheese
♥ the aforementioned filled mushrooms with red pesto (they are better with green!!!! pesto though!), onions, some olive oil and the insides of the mushrooms that I had scooped out. All the latter parts baked in a pan and filled into the mushrooms. Then I put some cheese on top of each, and in the oven they went! 200 c 15-20 minutes, and they were done :3
♥ little pizza's made with bread meant for kebab and/or shoarma you know those little flat round breads? (pita-broodjes of shoarma broodjes) On top of that I put some pasta saus, tomatoes , oregano and cheese. I could have added some mushrooms when I think back of it :(. Same as the mushrooms, 200c 15-20 min. They're good with papric's/peppers as well :D!

The problem with the most tapas is actually that a lot are made with fish, which my boyfriend doesn't like, and I don't like the raw fish >.<. And the other problem is that a lot are made with vegetables and nuts of which I am allergic O_O. But allas ! I made a full tapas dinner without me dropping on the table choking to death XD!

Even if I say it myself, I think it was quite a succes, and so did my boyfriend. Oh and not to forget: home-baked cupcake for desert!!! :D

#02 Ten random tips for baking and cooking..

01: Like I said in my first post, make sure that your hands are nice and cold when you plan to knead dough, otherwise it will stick to you hands like glue. By making your hands cold with some icecubes, it should stick less!

02: When baking minced meat (gehakt), you don't need to use any forms of butter or oil. It is actually already fat enough to bake itself. Less fattening too!

03: After you've cooked rice and you want to pour the water out, instead of using a strainer (vergiet) and getting rice all over your kitchen, just put a fork between the pot and the lid, just slide it in between and hold the lid as tightly to the pot with oven mitts and start pouring the water out! Less dishes to wash as well :D.

04: When you have french bread you have to heat up or finish baking (afbakbrood :D), then you should slightly wetten both sides with some water. It gives a better, less crunchy result.

05: Instead of peeling your potatoes, you can just clean them with a soft brush or sponge. Just rub the dirt off, and cook and bake them. It's said that eating potatoes with their skin on is healthier.

06: Talking about potatoes! When you cook them for 15-20 minutes (Depending on what potato you have), it will take less time for you to bake them afterwards.

07: By putting some salt or a small lump of butter in the water in which you are cooking you can prevent it from boiling over when it seems to be about to happen...

08: When cooking pasta, spaghetti, rice and etcetera, add some bouillon/broth to give it some extra flavour. Seriously, when you put enough of that **** in there, you will eat that spaghetti DRY.

09: Try to match the times you need to cook and bake things. For example, you need your rice to cook 10 to 12 minutes, but the meat you baught is done in 4 minutes, while the veggies need almost 20 minutes (like corn!). It doesn't need to be on the dot, just make sure that one thing isn't cooling down for 10 minutes, while the other is still hot but underdone.

10: Always read a new recipe through and through and through... so that you aren't overtaken by the fact that you have to prepare a meal for 4 other people within one hour and you overlooked the fact that it takes 3 hours to prepare 8D! Or that the cake you want to make is made for a 20cm spring cake tin, which you don't have. (That last one happened to me, but luckily I was prepared, as I started with the cake one day earlier!)

-- So anyone else got tips or hints for in the kitchen :D ?--