Kitchen Therapy

Tag Archives: cupcakes


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An English Street Party!

It’s an English, royal wedding, street party at Forever Nigella and this month’s challege is hosted by Mardi at EatLiveTravelWrite!

I bought a new toy and I wanted to use it!

I have never used an icing/decorating/whatever it’s called gun.
I was excited!
I pulled out my favourite Nigella book,
‘How To Be a Domestic Goddess – Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking’.
Just holding this book in my hands fills my stomach with butterflies of anticipation!

I chose Nigella’s basic cupcake recipe and trimmed the peaks ready for icing…


I ate every one of those gorgeous, sweet, crusty tips.

Then I made Nigella’s recipe for butter icing I found further into the book.
The kids and I had so much fun colouring the frosting.
We were going for the red, white and blue of the English flag!

My 3 year old and 10 year old boys decorated these cupcakes with me!
They were excited we were using a ‘gun’ and who cares if it shoots frosting!
We had a blast!

We ate a lot of frosting as we worked!

 And we were pretty impressed with our artwork!
We decided we would be proud to take our final product to any street party!
And I just want to add, that the cupcake and the icing on their own were great to eat.
However when the two were combined it was THE BEST!


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Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

 Oh My Goodness!

We have been working our way through the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook at our house.
We love the Banana Bread which tastes just like the slices you can buy in most of the nicer cafes around Sydney. The golden moist Blueberry Muffins disappear quickly in our house. The kids pack them in their lunch boxes and share them with friends.
Until now I’ve stuck to making the same few things from this book, but we’ve decided to live on the wild side and cook as many of the recipes as we can! 
So after a day at Manly beach, we came home and decided to continue our family time in the kitchen. We voted on which recipe to make next and these cupcakes were the clear winner. I didn’t really have any expectations and have never really been a cheesecake fan, I’m more of a European layered cake kinda girl. After dinner, I served these babies up and could hear the exclamations of delight as my family bit into these light and luscious morsels of heaven! The crumbed digestive biscuits on top have you convinced you’re eating a cheesecake, but it’s so much better than that!

Ingredients

120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temperature
120ml whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
12 large strawberries, chopped into small pieces
200g digestive biscuits

For cream cheese frosting
300g icing sugar
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
125g cream cheese

Method

1. Preheat oven 170 degrees celsuis or 325 degrees farenheit.

2.Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter on low speed until you get a sandy consistency.

 

3. Add milk and vanilla extract, beat on medium speed until all ingredients are well mixed. 

4. Add the egg and beat well for a few minutes to make sure it’s well mixed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Divide the chopped strawberries between the paper cases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Spoon the cake mixture on top and bake for 20-25 minutes.

 

My husband ate about a third of the mixture and I had to shoo him away! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Put broken up digestive biscuits in a food processor and process until finely ground (you can see Emily’s rose cheeks after our beach fun!) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. To make cream cheese frosting beat icing sugar and butter until the mixture is well mixed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Add cream cheese and beat until totally incorporated. Turn mixer to medium and beat for another 5 minutes until frosting is light and fluffy but careful to not overbeat and make it runny! 

 

 

 

 

 

10. When cupcakes are cold spoon cream cheese frosting on top and finish with a sprinkling of the biscuits.

 

ENJOY!

(Recipe pretty much as it appears in Hummingbird Bakery Book)