Tiramisu Cupcakes

I've been itching to try these Tiramisu Cupcakes.

I know, I see many beautiful cupcakes in pictures online and these frankly, look crap! But I'm all about flavour, so if you can pipe and sprinkle shaved chocolate on these, crack on! 

I cooked some basic cupcakes, with buttermilk, cut a bit out of the middle, put in some reduced espresso to flavour the bottom, filled it with a mascarpone cream filling, popped the bit I cut out on top then dusted with cocoa powder. 

Basic Cupcake mix

125g self raising flour
125g caster sugar
120g margarine or butter
100ml buttermilk
2 eggs
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla extract

Sift flour and mix with baking powder.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, mix in buttermilk.

Fold in Flour mix.

Filling

300ml double cream

125g mascarpone

75ml Coffee Liqueur, I had some Kahlua 

Tblsp of icing sugar

 

Whip the cream until it forms peaks. Stir in the mascarpone, liqueur and sugar.

Cupcakes

I'm a bit obsessed with making cupcakes at the moment. I think it started at work, where a few people brought in some really good looking cupcakes that were tasty and looked good, but were very....traditional? I like to mix it up a bit, and basically make them juicer. 

So I started thinking about filled cupcakes, with jam and the like. The guy at work had the same idea and brought in carrot cake cupcakes, very nice! But still not juicy enough. I thought sticky toffee pudding would be nice, as it's moist and has toffee sauce on it...or what about in it? 

So I Googled a sticky toffee cupcake and found my inspiration already thought of;

http://thelittleloaf.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/peggy-porschens-sticky-toffee-cupcakes/

Rather than buy the caramel, I made it from this recipe;

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1837652/butterscotch-sauce

Although after it was cooking I realised that there was too much cream for it set like I wanted so I caramelised another 100g of sugar and poured the butterscotch onto it. It's not difficult to make butterscotch. The only thing that you can do wrong is to burn the sugar as you're making caramel. It'll be obvious because it'll be black! If you do that, just ditch the sugar and start again. Oh, and don't burn yourself as sugar melts at 170°C, which will take your skin clean off and you won't be able to get it off. Think of that melted crown scene in season 2 of Game of Thrones!

Anyway, I took these to work and they went down a storm. One of the greatest rewards of cooking is making people happy, when someone just eats your food and says nowt it's a major setback. But most waxed lyrical about the textures and flavours in the sticky toffee cupcakes. I put their ramblings down to the sugar rush, but I agreed that we were onto a winner, so I thought of a few more, all available of the internet of course! There are no new ideas anymore!

Lemon meringue 
Lemon sponge, lemon curd filling, baked meringue top? Or just blowtorch piped meringue?

Key Lime Pie

http://thedoctorsdishesdessertsdecor.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/key-lime-cupcakes.html

Lime curd filling

http://www.traceysculinaryadventures.com/2013/09/key-lime-curd.html#.Una0jPm-2m4

meringue topping

Jaffa Cake

vanilla sponge, orange centre, dark chocolate topping
Sticky toffee

Butterscotch filling, cream cheese butter icing
Tiramisu 
Coffee sponge, mascarpone and tia maria filling, chocolate topping
Apple (or whatever fruit) and custard 
Sponge with fruit, Creme patisserie filling 
Chocolate 
Ganach filling, choc topping 
Toffee apple
Apple/Vanilla sponge, Apple and butterscotch filling, Caramel crispy topping 
Banana Rum n Raisin

Creme patisserie/banana cream filling, rum butter icing
Apple crumble 
Sponge filled with fruit, butterscotch Crumble topping
Bakewell tart
Almond sponge, Jam filling, Latice topping 
Trifle

Vanilla sponge, custard, jelly, cream

Black Forest Gateaux

Chocolate sponge, cherry filling, cream topping

Right now I'm experimenting with the key lime pie. I made the lime cupcakes (see top pic) and the lime curd filling. I baked the meringues at 100°C for around 40mins. Set the timer for 20 mins and open the oven door to have a look at them. This cools the oven enough for the meringues to not colour too much. Also, you don't really want to dry these out too much, just dry enough to hold the shape, then cap the cupcake. Tbh, I lost my way at the meringue stage. I was thinking about 2 cupcakes at the same time and this morphed into a key lime meringue, whereas I was going to so Lemon meringue and Key Lime Pie, which would have had more of a cheesecake topping, but it's all an experiment, and I'm happy with the meringue tops. Everytime I type meringue I have to say mer-ing-ooh to remember the spelling!

Fluffy pancakes

I went to make pancakes last night, but rather than the usual English flat pancakes I thought I'd try the fluffy American style ones.
The secret to these turns out to be baking powder and whipped egg whites, no massive surprise really. I used Jamie Olivers recipe, he has a fantastic back catalogue online, fair play to the owd mucker!

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/banana-pancakes

My only criticism of this recipe is that if you put sugar and butter in a pan to caramelise, a caramel sauce is not what you get. You need to melt the sugar first with a little water, then when it's turned slightly brown, add butter. It's even better when you add cream and make butterscotch sauce.

I put maple syrup on mine, because I had it.

Personally I prefer English pancakes, but these are worth a try and look pretty cool!

Doing your Chicken breast justice

My philosophy, the very basis of everything that I've learned about cooking, is that you need to compartmentalise everything you cook. Chicken is a perfect example of this. 

The easiest way to cook a chicken is to roast it. Oven @ 180c, rub chicken with oil, season, maybe stuff a half lemon in it. Put it on a high shelf for 20mins, then reduce the heat to 150c, lower the position in the oven and cook for a further 45min-1hr. Rest for 15mins before serving.
You will find this recipe and variants of it from good chefs all over the world. They will tell you that this is the perfect roast chicken and that the breast is juicy and the legs are perfect and you can make gravy from the tray etc. It's all Rubbish! This method of cooking a chicken is a huge compromise. I'm not saying don't do it, but if you want to cook chicken properly, this is not the way to do it.
If I'm doing a roast chicken I like to take the breasts off then roast the rest of the bird as normal. You don't even have to reduce the heat, just leave it in the middle of the oven. You can then cook roast potatoes with it etc. Then cook the breast separately. The creamy breast is a lovely contrast to the crispy legs.

To cook a chicken perfectly though, you need to compartmentalise the chicken. There are 3 parts to a chicken. 
1. the breasts
2. The legs 
3. the carcass and wings

These 3 parts of the chicken are completely separate. This is because the structure of the breast meat is different to the legs and carcass. The carcass doesn't have enough meat on it for a meal, so this is used differently too.
The breast should be gently cooked. It's important to not raise the temperature over around 70c. It's possible to slice it thinly and flash fry it in a hot pan, but you're not gaining a lot from doing that. The best way to cook a breast is to poach it, either in sauce or stock.
The legs need a higher temperature, over 75c, and can take a hot browning. So you can oven roast them @ 180c with vegetables for around 35-45mins.
The carcass always needs to be used for stock.

So always remember, do your breast justice and cook it like a breast, not a leg ;-)

Vindaloo

This is a Madhur Jaffrey recipe. She'll tell you that Vindaloo in India is not a hot dish but is a vinegar based sauce, like a sweet and sour with less sweet. 
I much prefer it to the British Vindaloo. Try it for yourself, it works great with duck.

.5 tsp turmeric

1tblsp ground cumin

1tblsp paprika

1tblsp ground coriander 

1tsp cayenne 

1.5tsps Garam masala

Oil

.5 tsp mustard seeds

.25 fenugreek seeds

15 Curry leaves

2 onions

2tblsps grated ginger

10 cloves garlic

2 tomatoes (can or passata)

120ml cider vinegar

Salt

1tblsp sugar

Roast and grind the first spices

Oil in hot pan

add whole seeds

Add onions, brown
Add meat

Add ginger n garlic

Add spices. Cook until the spices have blended in, around 5 mins.

Add tomatoes

Add vinegar, salt, sugar and some water if needed.

Thicken with cornflour if too wet and make sure you cook it for at least 5 mins.

Flapjack

Oven @ 160°
100g butter
1 banana mashed
150g soft brown sugar
125g peanut butter
75g honey
Zest of lemon and orange
Melt in pan
200g porridge oats or combo of jumbo and normal
150g nuts and seeds
150g dried fruit
Mix, baking tray, oven for 30mins, cool

Links to Favorite Recipe Sites

Sous Vide Pate from http://www.notesfromhomeplates.com