Chocolate & Raspberry - A Great Combo!

I know the popular combo is white chocolate and raspberry, but I'm not a huge white chocolate fan. So I like pairing raspberries with milk or dark chocolate. I really like using the freeze dried raspberry powder at the moment - it gives a real raspberry flavour, though the colour isn't a strong pink so you may want to add some colouring to the icing if you want a deeper pink colour.

I was introduced to the 1M piping nozzle a while back (relatively late in my cake decorating experience really!) and its great - so easy & quick to make cupcakes & cakes that look fancy!

Best Ever Chocolate Cupcakes!

1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup boiling water
1 1/3 flour
2tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
115gm butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2tsp vanilla
2 crunchy bars, chopped (optional)

• Stir boiling water & cocoa in a small bowl. Leave to cool.
• Cream butter & sugar.
• Add eggs one at a time.
• Beat until smooth, stir in vanilla.
• Add dry ingredients & beat til just incorporated.
• Add cocoa mix & stir til smooth.
• Add crunchy bar pieces if using.
• Place in cupcake papers & bake 16-20mins at 180'C.
• Ice with your favourite buttercream frosting when cool.

Makes 16 standard cupcakes.

Do let me know what you think if you give them a try 😊

A little bit of magic.

My friend's daughters love Unicorns and, lets face it, so do I - so I use them as an excuse for indulging in unicorn related things. So for a special afternoon tea when one of these lovely girls turned 5 back in November, I made unicorn cookies.....100s of them it turned out. That's a good recipe that one! So there were herds of unicorns left over from the afternoon tea party (which we had on a yacht!) - this meant my bake for Good Bitches Baking that week was sorted. Quite likely unicorn cookies weren't going to bring the kind of magic the recipients need, but hopefully the pretty colours of the sweet treats brought a little brightness to their day.

I used this sugar cookie recipe from Cake Warehouse and made this egg free royal icing. I've not made egg free royal icing before - it was great, and so much easier to make another batch when you run out! As far as I can tell, in NZ corn syrup is glucose syrup (well, that's what I used and it worked!)

Anyway if you're like me you just want the pictures of Unicorns, so here you go :)

 

                           

Do you believe in Unicorns?

Gingerbread!

Very busy and very behind with blogging these recipes, so today will be a quick photo, type recipe & push publish kinda day! (And I've just realised I'm out of order with posting when I made what, but we won't let that get in the way of progress!)


Gingerbread

100gms butter (softened)
3/4C sugar
2 eggs
1C golden syrup
1C milk
3C flour
2tsp ginger
2tsp cinnamon
1 1/2tsp baking soda
crystalised ginger pieces (optional)

• Cream butter & sugar til light coloured, add eggs & beat.
• Warm syrup til runny & add milk, stir.
• Sieve dry ingredients several times
• Fold the syrup mixture & dry ingredients alternately into the butter mixture. Do not over mix. Fold together until no dry flour remains.
• Turn into 2 loaf pans (or 20cm square cake tins) lined with baking paper. Sprinkle with chopped pieces of crystalised ginger if using.
• Bake at 150'C until a skewer comes out clean from the centre, about 30-40mins for square pans, 40-45mins for loaf pans.

Note: 

- I used molasses instead of golden syrup (I'd run out!) & it still tasted good, probably a bit darker in colour than normal.

- I used individual loaf pans, so it took less time to cook, but I can't remember how long! I just guess anyway! (Should I be admitting that?!)

Friendship Brownie

With study for & sitting a Uni exam, I forgot what day of the week I was living in - it was about dinner time when I remembered it was Tuesday.....and I was scheduled to make a baking delivery the next day! So a quick look through the recipes I was given at my Hen's Party to find something quick & easy....and that I had the ingredients for! My good friend Fi's, Brownie recipe ticked all the boxes, so I quickly whipped a batch up.

             Friendship Brownie

           250g butter
           4 eggs
           1 Tbsp vanilla essence
           1 1/2C sugar
           8 Tbsp cocoa
           1 C flour
           2 tsp baking powder
           Choc chips
           Walnuts
           Icing sugar to serve

• Melt butter
• Add eggs, sugar & vanilla. Beat well.
• Add sifted flour, baking powder, cocoa. Mix well.
• Pour into a greased slice pan.
• Sprinkle with choc chips & chopped walnuts.
• Bake 180' for 35min.
• Sprinkle with icing sugar to serve.

Can't really go wrong with chocolate now can ya? 😜

Spring Blossom

There are lots of trees covered in blossom round my neighbourhood, so I decided to send some blossom inside on this cake. Some midweek sweetness for the local hospice - a Lemon Drizzle Cake tweaked slightly by giving it a Raspberry Butter Cream Frosting. I love the combo of lemon & raspberry flavours - do you?

Eastbourne Lemon Drizzle Cake

115gm unsalted butter, softened
115gm caster sugar
4 free-range eggs
180gm ground almonds
30gm poppy seeds
zest & juice of 2 lemons
125gm self-raising flour, sifted

Lemon Syrup
100gm caster sugar
90gm lemon juice

Lemon Icing
225gm icing sugar
zest & juice of 1 lemon

• Preheat the oven to 180'C. Grease & line the bottom and sides of a 20cm springform cake tin.
• Beat the butter with the caster sugar until light and creamy.
• Add the eggs one by one, beating each in well.
• Fold in the ground almonds, poppy seeds, lemon zest and juice, and the sifted flour.
• Bake for 40min or until lightly golden.
• Make the lemon syrup by heating the sugar and lemon juice in a pan until sugar has dissolved.
• While cake is still warm, make lots of little holes in the top and pour your syrup over.
• For the icing, sift icing sugar into a bowl, add lemon juice and zest, stirring until smooth.
• When the cake is cool, poor the icing on the middle and let it drizzle down the sides.

Option: Make your favourite buttercream recipe and add some raspberry flavouring or freeze dried raspberry powder, spread over the cooled cake.

I made the blossom flowers out of pre-coloured fondant icing, & because I didn't have any pink dusting powder, 

I mixed a little freeze dried raspberry powder with water to paint the centres of the flowers.

Baking Things Better

Things have been a bit stressful lately, so while considering what I could do to help myself I decided to join Good Bitches Bake. Good Bitches Bake take baking donations from people like me, and deliver it to people who could do with a little sweetness in their lives, like Hospice's and Womans Refuge's. Its a win-win situation - I get to bake, which helps me feel productive & creative, but someone else gets to eat it (so I don't have to try and fit in even MORE exercise!).

As mentioned in a really old post, for my Hen's Party my girlfriends gave me some of their favourite recipes. So I thought since I'm going to be baking more regularly, it'd be a cool thing to bake my way through the recipes they gave me - and even cooler for you 'cos I've decided I'll do what I originally said, and share them here in case you want to try them too.

This weekend's baking (my first bake for Good Bitches Bake) I made Belgium Bars (like a slice version of Belgium Biscuits) - spices, sweetness & raspberry...makes a pretty tasty combo!

Belgium Bars

200gms Sugar

200gms Butter

1 Egg

1tsp Cinnamon

1tsp Mixed Spice

4tsp Baking Powder

2cups of Flour

3-4Tbsp Raspberry Jam

Icing

250gms Butter

500gms Icing Sugar

2tsp Raspberry Flavoured Essence

Freeze Dried Raspberry Power/Jelly Crystals for Sprinkling

• Heat over to 160'C and line a 28xm x 18cm slice tin
• Cream Butter & Sugar together
• Beat in egg
• Sift dry ingredients then mix into creamed butter until well combined
• Spread half the mix out to cover the bottom of the tin (you may be able to roll it out first) and prick with a fork/skewer
• Cover with Jam, and then spread other half of dough to cover the jam
• Bake for 20-30 mins til starting to brown, then cool out of the tin on a cooling rack.
• To make the icing: whip softened butter til creamy, then add icing sugar in 3 or 4 additions beating between each til smooth. Add raspberry flavouring & mix. If icing is too stiff add a small amount of warm water.
• Once the slice is cool, ice with butter cream & sprinkle with raspberry powder. 

Options: I cut the slices first before icing so I could make the piped icing look neater - if piping icing on, you may want to smear a small amount of icing on the slice first (like a crumb coat) so the piped icing will tick.

If you want you can flavour the icing using freeze dried raspberry powder instead of flavouring - you'll need a Tbsp or 2 (but taste test to get the strength of flavour you want)

Enjoy!

And here they all are ready to go to their new home :)

Looking for Corporate Gift Ideas?

Does your business or workplace give out gifts to clients, staff members or anyone else? Choosing handmade and locally made products would be a great way of rewarding those people you want to give gifts to while showing your support to local businesses. Feel good gifts on all levels :)

Here are a couple of sweet design ideas that you could choose for this years Christmas season.

Hand Stamped Peg Magnets - these wooden clothes pegs can be stamped with words of your choice (up to 10characters will fit) and are then attached to strong magnets. They're great for keeping the fridge, magnetic noticeboard or other magnetic surfaces tidy and pretty all at the same time. You could get your companies name stamped on them, or words that say something about your product. Or pick one of my pre-designed options. You can choose how many pegs you want in a pack too. The ideas are endless. 

Or you could choose pegs that match your colour scheme, or a random assortment of coloured designs so everyone gets something different.

Bookmarks - Fabric covered buttons attached to a giant clip, these make great gifts. Choose a fabric that matches your colour scheme or an image that matches your organisations theme to personalise these gifts.

Security tags - These will funky up any workplace. Fabric covered buttons attached to reels, they have a slide clasp on the back for attaching to the waste band and a dome clip to attach your keys or swipe cards to the tag - the dome clip is on a retractable cord so you can pull your swipe card away from your waist when you need to use it (its about half a metre long).

Prices are negotiable depending on the quantity but all are under the $10 per item mark. Email sweetdesignsnz[@]gmail.com to enquire.