TUTORIAL TUESDAY : Pina Colada Cupcakes

Hi there Pi-ettes!

I am writing after a very busy weekend, workwise and party wise! As you all know it was the lovely Nicky's birthday party on Friday and then I have also been out for the bank holiday too :D. I've also been very busy with uni work and completed one of my three assignments. I have an interview for a job this week as well eeek, so everything is going to continue to be hectic until my exam on the 22nd.

The majority of this blog will be about the baking I did for Nicky. I made her a birthday cake and then I did Pina Colada cupcakes for the party. For her cake I did two plain vanilla cakes sandwiched with buttercream and jam and covered in ready to roll purple icing, see the pics below. I topped it with some lovely icing flower decorations:

1 <3

2, look at all that glitter!! <3

For the cupcakes, I made pineapple sponge cupcakes with the following ingredients 2oz butter, 5oz sugar, 120ml (1 can)coconut milk, 1 large egg, 5oz plain flour, 2tsp baking powder, 425g (1 large can) of crushed pineapple. To make them I just creamed the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat the egg and coconut together and added to the butter and sugar a bit at a time, it did look slightly curled but ends up okay in the end. I then sifted in the flour and baking powder a little at a time then added the pineapple. The mix makes 12 cakes and can be cooked at 180C for 20mins until springy.


I then made Malibu butter cream. I needed around half a beaker of Malibu to give a good taste, with about 50g Butter and 275g icing sugar. It was incredibly yummy and addictive! I split the mixture into 3 and added a bit of flavored colouring into each, I made one strawberry pink, one lemon yellow and the third orange.

To decorate I cut down some straws, added some cocktail decorations and some cocktail umbrellas and put on some sprinkles and jelly orange and lemon decorations. Its quite a simple (as always) and unique recipe. And I have to admit me and the girls got a bit tipsy making the buttercream haha. I will add a more indepth recipe to the taskbar as usual when I next have time :). Hope you like the pictures below:

Pina Cola - Cupcakes <3 Strawberry and Orange

<3

I have also added a picture of the birthday girl <3 :

The girls at Nicky's Party!

On another note, me and Billie were meant to be at a cupcake class this weekend but unfortunately being a Sunday and a bank holiday there were no trains or buses to Worksop :( we are hoping to rearrange, so fingers crossed!!!

After my interview on Thursday I have my Dad's garden cake to do so I will be posting about that at the weekend/at the beginning of next week.

Ciao for now,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

TUTORIAL TUESDAY : Caramel Cheesecakes

Good evening!

I promised I would re introduce the Tutorial Tuesdays after a few weeks AWOL and this week its going to be Mini Caramel Cheesecakes <3. I have made full sized caramel cheesecakes before but wanted to use the mini star shaped tins my sister got me for xmas again (they last featured when I made the mini black forest gateaux).  I trawled the internet trying to look for recipes to use and they are either way too complicated or use american ingredients for which direct substitutes aren't available here. So I kind of made it up. The response from the boyrfriend wad the base wasnt really cheesecakey as I used ginger nuts so feel free to substitute for digestives as they give a more 'cheesecakey' base as he put it.

The full recipe if you want to make these has been added to the task bar at the top, but for a taster here are the basics:

So I started with greasing the mini star tins, you could do this in muffin tins but I think you would have to grease them well. Then preheating the oven to 170 degrees.

I then made the bases by mixing 240g of biscuit crumbs with 4tbsp of light brown soft sugar and 70g melted butter. (its easy to make biscuit crumbs by putting the biscuits in a see through food bag and rolling with a rolling pin.) I then packed the crumbs evenly between the tins and put in the oven for 5 minutes.

To make the filling I creamed 450g cream cheese then added 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, 30g sifted flour and 200g of light brown sugar and stired well. I then added two eggs one at a time stiring well. The mix was then shared equally between the tins and put in the oven for 20 min (until set).

When they were cool I spread a layer of dulce de leche on top and sprinkled on a few pieces of chopped up snickers.

And volia :

Caramel Cheesecakes - Picture taken by the lovely Chris Green (Luke's flatmate)

So thats it, they are pretty simiple and I think they could wow at a dinner party? Tommorow I am making Nicky's Birthday Cake so I will let you know how it goes :), fingers crossed. I will probably post again Saturday about the cake and cupcakes for Nicky's Party and then I've got the cupcake decorating class to look forward to on Sunday :D.

Ciao for now,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)