'Death by Oreo' cupcakes!

Sorry for how quiet it's been here the last month! I had exams so had to get my head down and hit the books for a couple of weeks in preparation. However, it's over and done with now, so normal service shall resume!

'Death by Oreo' cupcakes (makes roughly 20)

Ingredients:

2 packets of normal sized Oreo cookies

1 box of mini sized Oreo cookies

Dry Ingredients:

225g self-raising flour
225g sugar
21g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon of salt

Wet Ingredients:
120ml milk
2 eggs
55g chocolate (melted)
110ml boiling water
90ml oil
½ tablespoon vanilla

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degress celcius.

2. Line a muffin pan (a cupcake pan will be fine if you don't) with large paper cases.

3. Take an oreo, and carefully twist it open. Place the biscuit with the icing on at the bottom of the case, repeat. (It's good to have an extra packet of Oreos for the inevitable casualties!) Keep the other half of the oreo for the frosting.

3. Place your chocolate in a small bowl, and then place over a pan of simmering water until it is melted. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together all your dry ingredients.

5. In another large bowl, whisk your eggs until they thicken slightly and turn pale in colour.

6. To the egg mix, add in the milk, vanilla and oil and whisk well.

7. Then add in the cooled chocolate, and again whisk.

8. Add the wet mix into the dry mix, (or vice verus depending on which bowl is bigger!) and mix just to combine. Then mix in your hot water.

 9. Fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way full (due to this it was hard to work out how many cupcakes the recipe would actually produce, so I had a couple without oreos in the bottom).

 10. Bake in the oven for around 15-18 minutes, or until when the sponge bounces back when pressed lightly with a fingertip.

 Frosting ingredients:

125g unsalted butter

250g icing sugar

1-2tbp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Oreo halves (crushed)

1. While the cupcakes are cooling, you can make a start on the frosting. First of all, take your oreo halves and blitz them either in a food processor, or place in a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pill until they reach crumb consistency.

 

2. Whisk together the butter and icing sugar, adding a splash of the milk and vanilla extract until the mixture is light and fluffy.

3. Mix in the oreo crumbs.

 4. Once the cupcakes are cooled, either pipe on the frosting with a piping bag and nozzle, or just spread over the cake with a knife.

5. Cut a mini oreo in half, and place it on either side of the cupcake. (Note, best to do this before serving, as mini oreo's go soft very quickly in the frosting!)

 Recipe adapted via a cup full of cake.

Strawberry and vanilla cupcakes.

I whipped these up for our german visitors and placed the cakes (once cooked and frosted) in the tea cup cases my brother had given me for my birthday.

Vanilla sponge (makes about 15 cupcakes)
125g butter
125g sugar
125g self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla extract

Cream the butter, then add the sugar until it is also creamed.
Add half the flour and one of the eggs. Mix thoroughly. Repeat with the rest of the flour and the other egg. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and mix. Divide between paper cases and bake in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or until skewer comes out clean of when the top of the sponge is pressed with a fingertip it bounces back.

Strawberry frosting (frosts about 12)
80g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
1-2 tbsp of milk
1-3 tsp of strawberry flavouring

Cream the butter and then add the icing sugar. Combine the strawberry flavouring with the milk and while mixing, add in a tsp of the milk/strawberry mixture at a time. Icing should be thick enough to stick to the back of the spoon. Keep tasting the icing to see if more strawberry flavouring is needed.

I used a piping back with a large star nozzle for mine. Added some pink glitter sprinkles as well which I thought was cute!

Dinosaur Sprinkles!

I've been dying to use these sprinkles ever since I bought them and today was the day! Whipped up some plain cupcakes and frosted them with the vanilla frosting recipe from Hummingbird - fast becoming a firm favourite!

Action icing shots!




Some plain vanilla frosted cakes!


After adding some sprinkles!


The finished product!

My first time icing cupcakes.

So, my icing nozzles arrived today so I thought I'd give them a whirl! I have iced once using an icing bag on a gingerbread house for Christmas last year, but it came out more of a bold line of icing along the edges than anything else.

First of all I whipped up some cake batter.




Here they are just out of the oven.



After waiting for them to cool, I used the frosting recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook which I received for Christmas. I've done quite a few recipes out of there including the Apple Pie and Mississippi Mud Pie which were lovely. I decided on some vanilla frosting - 80g of unsalted butter at room temp, mixed with 250g of icing sugar with some vanilla extract and between 10ml-25ml of milk. I had to add a little extra icing sugar to get mine to the right consistancy so be careful when adding the milk.

After filling my icing bag, I went for it. I started anticlockwise and let the icing flow round. Here's my first attempt!


I went a little bit wobbly on the inside ring but not bad, I think!

My second time was a little steadier and I forgot to take a photo before I put sprinkles on.



I tried a couple of the other nozzles I had received, but mostly stuck to the the first one as I think I liked it the best. I made a simple butterfly cake as well, just to see what the nozzle would produce like and it was a little neater than 'dump a spoonful on' method. I also added some Green and Blacks cocoa to the frosting mixture to make some chocolate icing.








The vanilla one was used what was described as a "leaf" nozzle, I liked the effect. The chocolate one completely failed so I just smoothed it over with a knife and topped with some sprinkles.



I think it went okay for my first attempt and I intend to try again some time next week!