Coconut and Honey

Coconut is one of those foods that people either love or hate. Which one are you? I LOVE coconut and honestly do not understand people who dislike it. I am not judging them, just do not understand it. I found this great recipe for coconut bakes and have been itching to try it out for quite some time. The first time I baked them, I did not get to take the photos before they were gone. So I simply had to baked them again. This time I tried my new colourful cupcake cases.

Yes, it felt like spring in my kitchen!

Well, if you do like honey and coconut, you should definitely try this one. Not only it is super easy to prepare, but they are so rewarding in taste. Yum!

Coco au Miel

You will need:

• 250 ml coconut milk ( you can use regular milk instead)
• 1 heaped tbsp honey
• 200 g dessicated cocnut
• 125 g sugar
• 70 g flour
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 175C (you might try 200C, but be careful that the bakes don't burn), place paper cups in the muffin tray ready. Bring milk and honey to boil, set aside to cool a bit. In a bowl mix cocnut, sugar flour and baking powder. Slowly pour milk into the mix. In a separate bowl beat the eggs lightly, just to break up the yolk and integrate it into the white, add to the mix. Mix all the ingredients well. Fill the cupcake cases, stirring the mix in between to prevent separating.

Bake for 25-30 min, until golden brown.






And here they are straight from the oven:

 And later on the plate:

 My new favourite recipe. Did you like it?

Cherry Muffins

Cherry Muffins again, this time with little cherries on top :-)
Bon appetit!

Pikku Myy

Birthdays are such great times. Especially when you're 2! This time it was a little girl who loves Pikku Myy. The challange was to use no milk and as lillte egg as possible. I ended up with a layer of banana cake and sponge cake, but I did prefer the sponge cake layers, to be honest. I wondered about the Pikku Myy and decided to use a cookie cutter that also made indentations. I used marshmallow mass to cut out the shape.

I painted the mass with edible paints. And here it is, on top of the cake. Happy birthday!

Lemon cake

After all the sweetness it good to eat something tangy for a change. Like a lemon cake. Funnily enough, after putting the cake in the oven, I put the TV on and watched Nigella Lawson preparing the exact same cake.Here's my lemon drizzle cake:

Ingredients:

• 225g butter, softened
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 225g self raising flour, sifted or regular flour + 1tbsp of baking powder
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar

How to do it:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C  for fan assisted ovens. Grease a (20cm) round, deep loose-based tin and base line with baking parchment. I used a bigger one and the cake came out little low for my taste.
2. Whisk butter, sugar and lemon zest in a large bowl until they are pale and fluffy. Add eggs one by one, whisking well between additions and adding 2 tbsp of the flour with the last egg - this will prevent curdling.
3. Sift over the remaining flour (together with baking powder), then gently fold in with a metal spoon along with 2 tbsp hot water. Spoon into the prepared tin, level the surface and bake for 45-50mins or until it is shrinking away from the sides of the tin.
4. Use toothpick to prick the cake all over, pour over the squeezed lemon juice. Sprinkle the sugar over the cake. Leave to cool completely, before removing the cake from the tin. Serve in wedges.

 And before you know it, the cake will be gone. All gone..

Coffee cupcakes

I do not like coffee. I do not drink it. I don't even like the smell of it. But put coffee in a cake or a cupcake and I will love it. Believe it or not, I like adding lots and lots of coffee to my baking. Mocca cake, coffee cupcakes, I love you all!

Ingredients: 
3,5 dl all purpose flour
1 dl demerara sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 dl cream
100 g liquid margarine
1 dl very strong coffee


What I like about them is that they are not too sweet thanks to cutting the sugar in half. I will try doing that in future. You can always compensate for it in the icing.

I used Dr.Oetker's cake cream. It tastes a bit like Advocaat and fit coffee perectly. I have heard that you can achieve similar result by mixing mascarpone cheese with Advocaat and icing sugar. Next time.

 They looked pretty cute with little yelllow roses on them.  And the taste? Well, you would have to bake them to try them. 

Chocolate Cherry Muffins

I managed to buy some frozen cherries from a local Russian stores and could not wait to something with them . I chose chocolate cherry muffins. The recipe is the basic one, the same one from the strawberry muffins. I added 3 table spoons of unsweetened cocoa powder and a cup of (defrosted) sour cherries.

 

I was craving more chocolate so I piped some Betty Crocker's Whipped Chocolate Frosting. Warning: It's very sweet, but it works well with sour cherries. I probably would not recommend it on a basic chocolate cake, but that's just my opinion.

I have recently come across chocolate transfers and was amazed by the number of things you can make using them. I have purchased a few sheets online and waited for the right time to use them. Originally, I planned to use cherries as decorations on these muffins, but frozen ones do not look very appealing. So it was time to try my first chocolate transfer. As I was planning on taking some of the muffins to work with me, I decided on one of my friend's favourite pattern, leopard print. I chose white chocolate as background and here is the final result:

Strawberry cupcakes

Cupcakes are my true love when it comes to baking. I used to avoid them as most of the ones you find in Finland are pretty heavy and quite bland. Until...One summer day my friend invited me to her Tupperware party where she served chocolate muffins. After trying one, there was no going back. They were soft, moist, tasty. They were perfect. A year later, when another of my friends was getting married, I made these strawberry cupcakes based on my friend's recipe. It is such a perfect recipe, as Rachel Ray would call it my "go-to cupcake recipe". Why try anything else if this one is perfect?

Ingredients: 
3,5 dl all purpose flour
2 dl sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 eggs
1 dl cream
100 g liquid margarine
(optional 1dl fresh orange juice)


And here is where the fun begins. Instead of orange juice you can add 1dl strong coffee+3 tbsp cacao powder and some chocolate chips OR 1dl lemon juice+1dl raisins OR 3 dl strawberries OR whatever else you want!
So that time I added 3 dl of chopped fresh strawberries.

This is how it goes:
First mix all the dry ingredients well in one bowl (flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, baking powder, and anything else that you decided to add, e.g. cacao powder, coffee power, coconut flakes.) A little trick I picked from Nigella: sift your flour into the bowl to bring more air into your cupcakes. In the second bowl mix the wet ingredients and add them to the first bowl. Do not overmix it, as you want to keep the cupcakes airy. If you are using fresh fruit, add them last, so they do not get mashed. Place the mix in the cupcake baking form, bake for 15 min. at 200 Celsius.

To make frosting I used vanilla cream powder, whipped cream (not the ready one, but the one that you need to whip yourself), strawberry flavoured icing sugar and a drop of pink food colouring. Little golden edible pearls from Dr. Oetker crowned the cupcakes!

Remember, all your ingredients as well as your equipment should be at room temperature for best results.