52 Recipe Challenge - Week 25.

So weeks 23 and 24 seemed to fly by and before I know it I’m sat here once more writing about why I’ve neglected the blog for what seems like the fifth or sixth time. It might not be new year yet but keeping up with the blog is high on my resolution list! Worry not I have done a recipe this week!

Whilst I’ve been away from the blog I have been out and about sampling the hot chocolate and chocolate cake in the Blue Moon cafe as well as the cocktails at The Wick at Both Ends.

They are as good as they look in the picture! I’ve also watched The Lancashire Hotpots with my Dad, panic bought Christmas presents and started trying to sort out my house for Christmas.

This week I decided to make some cupcakes which have intrigued me for a while the Malted Cupcakes in the: Cupcakes from the PrimroseBakery book. I decided to make these partly because they looked nice and partly because I had some Fluff, an American make which is a kind of marshmallow stuff you can get in jars; which looked like it would work as a topping.

To make this you need:

110g butter

120g light brown sugar

100g caster sugar

2 eggs

185g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

50g Ovaltine

125ml semi skimmed milk (the recipe says at room temperature but I’m not sure why.)

½ teaspoon vanilla flavouring

1 tablespoon sour cream

The remainder of a jar of fluff or according to the recipe a batch of marshmallow or chocolate buttercream icing.

To start off I turned on my oven to preheat and then got out my muffin tin and lined it.

Next I measured out my dry ingredients the flour, baking powder and ovaltine and then sifted them into my mixing bowl.

Whilst doing this Frankenstein the cat came along to see what I was doing.

I stopped to tell him that the cakes weren’t for cats before measuring my caster sugar then the soft brown sugar, once I did this I weighed the butter and put the lot in the food processor.

Then I then mixed them together.

As the sugar and butter were mixing I got the bottle of milk out and poured 125ml into  the measuring jug and then returned the rest of the bottle to the fridge. When I did this I stopped the sugar and butter mixing then checked the mix before scooping the stray bits down with a spatula.  When it the butter and sugar seemed creamed together enough I added the first egg, mixed that in then I added the other one and finished mixing it. After I did this I double checked the recipe and reduced the oven heat from the top heat down to: 180c/ Gas mark 4.

Next I got the sour cream from the fridge and spooned the remnants of the tub into the milk, (I had eaten the rest with nachos the night before) and then added the vanilla flavouring before stirring it all together as best I could. When I checked the measuring jug I realised that the fluid in the measuring jug had gone up too much and that I couldn’t add it all in to the mix.

Once I mixed the milk, sour cream and vanilla flavouring together I took this along with the flour mix to the food processor. I started off by pouring a little flour to the mix about a third as the recipe suggested and stirred it together in the food processor.

When that was combined I added a  bit of the milk and sour cream and stirred it up.  The recipe said to add a third of the milk mix too but I thought this wasn’t the best idea when I had too much liquid.

Then I repeated this process until I had no flour and 50ml of the milk and sour cream mix left and all the ingredients were combined, when this was done I used a tablespoon to spoon the mix into my muffin cases and put them in the oven. After I put this batch in the oven I set the timer to 25 minutes and looked at my food processor mixing bowl and saw that I still had loads left so I got out my bun tin, lined that and filled those too.

When the timer went off I checked on my muffin sized cupcakes and as they were ok took them out of the oven and swapped them with the buns.  When all of the cupcakes were cooked I put them on the side to cool.

Then I  smeared Mashmallow Fluff on top of most of them as icing until it ran out.  I then delved into my cupboards, pulled out my stash of Malteasers and crunched a few of them up on top of the iced cupcakes then finished them off by putting a whole Malteaser on each of them.

These cupcakes took a bit more faffing to make that most of my baking and I think I like things you can just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix thogether the best; however, they did go down well with the people most of the people I shared them with. Which is great because this recipe made loads!

That's partly because the recipe assumes you have a 12 hole muffin tin which I don't so I ended up with 18 cupcakes, 6 large & 12 bun sized but as they were very tasty I think they may have to be made again for a special occasion in the future.