Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes - Happy Birthday Mark x

Mark is a friend of Melissa's from work and a follower of the Brighton Baker blog from the very start.  I'm told that he often asks Melissa when he's going to get a mention and I was half tempted just to stick his name randomly at the end of a completely unrelated blogpost just to appease him.

But Mark - as it's your birthday - our gift to you is a post dedicated entirely in your honour.  Last night I cooked up a batch of birthday cupcakes that Melissa should be delivering to you as I type.

Knowing that Mark has a sweet tooth and loves chocolate cake, we found a recipe in the lovely Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days recipe book that looked spot on.  The recipe is actually called S'moreanne Cupcakes, but if you live in the UK like me then this name might not mean much to you either.  Apparently a s'more is an American campfire treat: marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between crackers and toasted.  Sounds like my kinda treat - think I'll be trying that one next time we do a barbecue on the beach.  But S'moreanne sounded a bit girly and obscure so I have renamed these little beauties Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes.  And look how pretty:

These cakes begin with a chocolate cupcake baked with a topping of crushed biscuits and grated dark chocolate, then they're finished off with an Italian meringue frosting, a sprinkling more of crushed biscuits and a square of chocolate.

The chocolate cupcakes were a cinch to make, but I've not made Italian meringue since pastry school and I was a bit nervous as to how it would turn out.  It involves boiling sugar and water to exactly 121°C and pouring it in a steady thin stream into half whipped egg whites.  I'm not sure if I got it totally spot on but it turned out pretty well and I love how you can create little peaks in the icing which look a bit like the flames of a campfire once you flash it under a hot grill. 

If I made these again I think I would change the crushed biscuits for honeycomb which would give these cakes an extra dimension in terms of texture and sweetness.  Also as honeycomb is also known as cinder toffee it would go even better with my new name of Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes.

So Mark, you've finally got a mention on the blog.  Hope you like it, and the cakes too :o) x  

Wimbledon Cupcakes - a birthday gift for Laura

I was a wee bit late with my edible birthday present for my friend Laura this year - mainly because she'd just kindly volunteered to take one of our large carrot and honey cakes off our hands that we had left over from the Kemptown Carnival and I was in danger of enforcing cake overload on her and her boyfriend.

So a couple of weeks later I flicked through my recipe books to try and find something special with a little twist that would match Laura's bubbly personality.  I couldn't see a recipe for a champagne cake which was my initial thought, but a strange connection fizzed in my brain as Melissa had the tennis on in the background and I stumbled upon a recipe for strawberries and cream cupcakes my lovely new Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache cookbook.  They perfectly encapsulate Wimbledon in cake form and I love how the cases look like little tennis skirts.  I have no idea if Laura even likes tennis but hoped that she would love these cute little cakes and they seemed too topical to resist.  I knew the hidden strawberry jam in the middle would be right up her street so tennis fan or not they would still make a great gift for her. 

These cakes also have the added bonus of being better for you - they have no fat added to the cake batter but instead use grated courgette and ground almonds giving them a wonderful flavour and texture.  But what I think makes these cakes special is how all the elements of the cake, mascarpone icing, fresh strawberry and strawberry jam in the middle all balance and work together really well to become greater than the sum of their parts - if you close your eyes you're transported to Wimbledon sitting on the freshly cut grass of Murray Mount eating strawberries and cream - divine.