Happy Birthday Christie's Lifestyle - Marshmallow Cupcake Recipe

I can't believe it's been a whole year since I started this little blog with my First Date's post. I have really enjoyed getting back into blogging and I think this is the longest I have kept blogging up for!

I've really got back into using my camera and it's been great to work with a number of brands in the past year. To celebrate, I decided to bake some marshmallow middle cupcakes, they turned out really yummy and are really easy to make so keep reading for the recipe!

    

Visit my tutorial to see how I ice my cupcakes.

Method
Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.
Slowly add the flour and cocoa powder and mix until smooth.

Add batter to cake cases and  pop a marshmallow into the middle of each case.

Bake in the oven at 180 Degrees for 15-20 Minutes or until risen. When these come out of the oven you will find the marshmallow has melted, but you should have a nice dip in the cupcake. Press a fresh marshmallow into this hole whilst the cake is still warm and it should fill the gap nicely.

When the cakes have cooled down, mix your icing sugar, butter and cocoa powder then pipe onto the cakes. Top with mini marshmallows for decoration.

Thank you to everyone who has read/followed/shared and liked my blog posts. I really appreciate it and I hope to continue for years to come!

BIG MASSIVE CUPCAKE

Who doesn’t love a giant cupcake?! I recently got this cake mould which makes a giant cupcake! I was intrigued. I’ve had one of these moulds before, but when I took the cake out of the oven to check it, it fell on the floor and I never tried it again, until now when I decided to give it another go.

I used my usual cake recipe, which can be found on my cake pop post (here).

This time, I decided to add cocoa powder (I didn't measure it) so I could have a chocolate cake.

We only had 3 eggs, which meant I couldn't fill my moulds to the top, so next time I will double the recipe. Also, due to the size of the cake I baked this for around an hour.

The top of the cake crumbled a bit when I tipped it out, but I knew I could cover that in icing.

To make the base of the cake, I re-filled the mould with melted white chocolate and a bit of food colouring, then let it set in the fridge. I only half filled my mould, as the cake was only half the size it should have been.

I then iced my cake using the Wilton 1M nozzle, and my favourite icing bags. These are really heavy duty and I've never had a problem with them. You can buy them here.

I placed the cake inside the chocolate mould, then piped some chocolate buttercream roses onto it. I think it looks pretty good, but it tastes even better! The roses are super easy to do, I've done a post on that too which you can read here.

I can't wait to try more cakes like this. The colour possibilities and designs are endless, and they make a great birthday cake. I might even try a Christmas design with a red chocolate bottom and green icing! I'm excited already. 

Rose Cupcakes - Icing Tutorial

One of my favourite things to do on a day off is to make cupcakes! I've had a lot of people ask me recently how I do my rose cupcakes so I thought I would attempt a tutorial on them. I just bought a new icing nozzle and trust me when I say it’s all about the nozzle! The best thing about rose icing is that it takes no time at all, in fact it's probably quicker than regular piped icing, but looks a lot more neat and professional.

I use a standard cupcake recipe which involves weighing out my eggs and then matching the quantities of butter/flour and sugar. I have posted the recipe that I used below, but this can be changed/adapted and by no means am I a cooking expert!

I decided to test my new Wilton 1M Flower nozzle for these cakes. Cupcakes are super easy to make, even for a beginner in the kitchen. I think they look pretty good, I really want to experiment with different nozzles and designs. Suggestions welcome!

Ingredients

2 x Eggs

120g Flour

120g Sugar

120g Butter

For the Icing

75g Butter

150g Icing Sugar

Cocoa Powder (for chocolate icing)

Recipe:

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.

Slowly add the flour and mix until smooth.

Add Vanilla Essence to taste (for Vanilla Cupcakes of course!)

Add to cake cases and bake in the oven at 180 Degrees for 15-20 Minutes or until Golden

Whilst my cupcakes were in the oven, I mixed my icing ingredients and left the icing in the fridge to chill so that it was easier to pipe.

I have filmed a super quick video below so you can see how easy these are to create, I think the finished product looks yum!

  Thanks to my boyfriend James for helping me take these photos and film my first video! You can check out his photography page on Facebook here (go on, give him a like!).

Stay tuned for a future post where I attempt a giant cupcake with mini roses piped on top. Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you out.

Pop! goes the cake ball.

I have well and truly caught the baking bug! I’ve seen cake pops everywhere at the moment and couldn’t wait to try them out. I saw recently that Pound Land had cake pop moulds in stock, which is brilliant when other shops are selling them from £7-£10, but  when I went to pick some up, I thought they looked a bit small, so I picked up my cake pop set and recipe book from The Works (here) and got my sticks from Poundland.

These couldn't be simpler to make, and the recipe was exactly the same as if I was baking cupcakes, and I followed the below method. I wanted my cake balls to look like mini watermelons!

 Ingredients

2 x Eggs

120g Flour

120g Sugar

120g Butter
Few Drops of Vanilla Essence
Pink Food Colouring
Chocolate Chips

For the Outside

100g White Chocolate (Melted)
Green Food Colouring

Recipe:

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.

Slowly add the flour and mix until smooth.

Add Vanilla Essence to taste (for Vanilla Cupcakes of course!)
Stir in choc chips & food colouring!

Add to mould and bake in the oven at 180 Degrees for 15-20 Minutes or until Golden

 

It really is that simple! Or so I thought..

I mixed up my ingredients and placed the cake batter into the first mould. I then put the second mould on top and stuck these in the oven. I was a bit dubious that they wouldn’t work, especially as I wasn’t able to check on them or see how they were rising.

After about 20 minutes, I took them out and let them cool. I removed the mould and to my wonder, I was left with cake balls! They didn't actually look TOO bad.

When the cake balls had cooled off I prepared my coating. For this, I melted white chocolate and added green food colouring as I wanted them to look like mini watermelon balls. I then stuck my cake balls onto the sticks, and dipped them into the chocolate. This is where it all when horribly wrong. The sponge just fell off the sticks. I was left with a big gloopy lumpy mess. It was all going so well too!

Perhaps I should have chilled my balls before I coated them? Perhaps the chocolate didn't melt enough? All I know is that my lovely cake balls were ruined. They look horrible. I wouldn't feed them to my dog (although I can confirm they didn't taste too bad). 
 
These are on the same scale as the time I tried to make a peppa pig cake for my sister's birthday. That also went horribly wrong, but that's a story for another day.

 I will learn from my mistakes, and try again another time! Any tips are welcome!