So today is another first on my blog, it's my first baking post! When I first started my blog in June, I had no idea in which direction I wanted it to go in. It was just something I wanted to do as a hobby and now nearly 6 months later, I have a good idea where it's going and have got into the swing of writing, although I don't post as often as I would like, I feel like my posts are better quality than if I spent less time. Anyway, back to baking. I knew I wanted to do a baking post but I decided to wait until now as I wanted it to be something special. This recipe can be used all year round, minus the orange flavoring and still turn out really nice. I'm sure your cakes will turn out a lot better than mine, and if you do make them please tag me on Instagram and Twitter @itscarenzab. Let's bake!
 |
| My very bad finished cakes, they look like something a small child had made! |
Ingredients
For the cupcakes you will need:8 oz or 225 grams Caster Sugar
8 oz or 225 grams Butter (unsalted, at room temperature)
8 oz or 225 grams Self Raising Flour
4 Eggs (I used medium, but I don't think it effects it too much)
50 grams White Chocolate Chips
50 grams Milk Chocolate Chips
Orange Zest or Flavoring- you can use vanilla extract, but I would recommend using orange as it gives it a strong orange taste with the orange butter cream
Orange Food Colouring- optional
I would recommend measuring out your ingredients before you start baking as then you have got the boring stuff out of the way.
For decorating the cakes you will need:
1 Terry's chocolate orange
Butter cream- Butter 75 grams, Icing Sugar 175 grams, Milk 1 Tablespoon
Orange Food colouring
Orange Zest or Flavoring
Equipment
For the Cupcakes you will need:
A large mixing bowl or an electric mixer if you have one
A wooden spoon
A butter knife
A fork or whisk for the eggs
A cup to crack your eggs into
Cupcake cases
Cupcake tray
For the Decorations you will need:
Piping bags- Normal and Heat resistant= I got mine from Lakeland for £2 for 25
Nozzles- one very small to do intricate designs, the other a medium star nozzle for the butter cream
Baking parchment
Baking tray
Cool display chairs- again from Lakeland for something stupidly cheap for 25, warning they're very tricky to assemble.
Glass bowl
Pan
 |
| Equipment for the whole process including decorating |
Method
Step One: To make the eyes and mouth of the pumpkins, I melted a whole chocolate orange in a ban Marie. An alternative is you can use black ready rolled icing but this added more orange to the cakes.
If you are using chocolate, quickly put your melted chocolate in your heat proof piping bag with a small nozzle- a quick tip, ask someone to help you decant the chocolate into the piping bag as I split a lot of chocolate and burned myself. Then on some baking parchment draw enough eyes for 20-24 cakes and mouths for the same amount of cake, I would recommend doing simple designs as the chocolate can be quite fiddly. Once you've got the right amount of eyes and mouths, put them in to the fridge to cool while you make, bake and decorate the cakes.
Step Two: Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius- that's gas mark 6 or 400 degrees Fahrenheit, if you want a more accurate conversion click the link . Put your room temperature butter and caster sugar in to your mixing bowl and cream them together until the mixture looks white/creamy and fluffy- you don't want any lumps.
Step Three: Add one egg and a quarter of the flour, repeat this step until the eggs and flour have been mixed in. If your mixture is a bit watery, add a small spoonful of flour until it becomes a thicker constancy. I used a wooden spoon to mix it but if you are lucky and have an electric mixer, I'd use that as it will speed things up.
Step Four: Add the milk and white chocolate chips to the mixture and stir thoroughly to get an even balance of white and milk chocolate chips. Then add roughly a quarter of your orange zest, the rest of the zest will be used in the buttercream for decorating the cakes. If you want, you can add a small amount of food colouring to give the cakes a subtle orange hint.
Step Five: Put your cupcake cases in to the cupcake tray, then put the mixture in the cases. I would recommend going no higher than half way on each cake case as otherwise your cakes will be very varied in heights. Then bake for 20-22 mins, this can all depend on your oven but the way to test them is to stick a skewer in and if batter comes out, there not cooked. Mine ended up over cooking and were very solid, but they were still yummy. Take them out to cool, and began decorating.
 |
| Ban Marie from step one |
 |
| Making eyes and mouths for step one |
 |
| Drawing on before helps you know how many you've done, but leaves marks on the chocolate |
 |
| Getting someone to hold the parchment down helped, as it stopped it from curling in |
 |
| Main ingredients for the cupcakes |
 |
| Desired look for step two |
 |
| Adding the flour for step three |
 |
| Ideal end result for step three |
 |
| Small amount of orange zest to give the cupcakes a subtle hint of orange |
 |
| Good look before adding food colouring in step four |
 |
| Before mixing in the colour on step four |
 |
| As you can see my cakes ended up pink |
 |
| My cakes before going into the oven |
 |
| After coming out of the oven, they no longer looked orange. |
Step Six: To make your buttercream, first you want to cream the butter by itself until it is fluffy- this is something I learnt after making mine and is why my buttercream turned out so flat. Then once the butter is nice and fluffy, slowly mix in your icing sugar after having sieved it to remove lumps. Then finally add your milk, I got my recipe of the back of the Taste and Lyle icing sugar box but if you know a better method use it.
Step Seven: Add the food colouring and orange zest to your buttercream, as you've seen the photo of my final cupcakes you will have seen my cupcakes turned out pink as we didn't have orange food colouring and I mixed the red and yellow in the wrong order, but they tested lovely so I ignored it.
Step Eight: Pipe your buttercream on to your cupcake using a disposable piping bag as it saves washing up, to get the desired star shape use a medium sized star nozzle. Mental note, this takes practice and don't expect them to be perfect first time.
Step Nine: Take out your cooled chocolate eyes and mouths and quickly place them on to the cakes as they start to melt as soon as you touch them. Then enjoy your cakes and have fun tidying up the mess you've made.
I don't have any photos for this step, sorry! So that was my first baking post and I really hope you guys enjoy it (and your cakes)! Don't forget to tag me on Instagram and Twitter at @itscarenzab, if you do make these cakes. If you have any BUSINESS inquires email me at itscarenzab@gmail.com.
Have a spook-tacular Halloween and rest of October.
Love,
Carenza x
