Rules for a Great (Cup)Cake

Cycling through the centre of London today, I was doing some sneaky scooting between the cars and the pavement to get up to some traffic lights, and I was halted in my tracks by a nice big horse poo. I wasn't best pleased, and definitely wasn't going to be ploughing Jan (my bike) through that, so pulled in front of the posh silver car beside me (he definitely wasn't going to be ploughing through that either). As I sat inhaling the bus fumes and nervously trying to keep as far away from the big shiny Bentley while also avoiding the mess on the road, I thought to myself - How come the police  don't have to clear up after themselves (and it was obviously the police because who else would willingly take their horse out of it's country paddock and ride it through the middle of the City of London on a Monday afternoon)?? I can't quite imagine them jumping down and packing it into an old Tesco bag, but still, don't they know there are rules?!


WELL. 


Admittedly, some rules are more fun to follow than others. And I'm going to put it out there: I'm pretty sure these rules for all-purpose/customizable cake mixture are more fun than clearing up after your pet. 


175g Softened Butter
175g Sugar
3 Eggs
175g Self-Raising Flour
Pinch of Salt
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Tablespoon Milk


Cream the butter and sugar together until it's lighter in colour, and then add the eggs one at a times (add a bit of the flour if it curdles) and then sift in the flour and add the salt and fold them in, making sure you don't beat the air out of the mixture. Then gently mix in the vanilla extract and the milk and then put the mixture in your tin of choice (can be split between two round cake tins or into cupcake moulds, or any other shape reeaally) and bake at 180 degrees for about 20mins - exact timing depends on your oven...


Options for customising this recipe aaaarrreee:


- Leave out the vanilla extract and add the juice and zest of 1 and 1/2 lemons 
- Exchange the vanilla extract for coconut flavouring, the milk for coconut milk and add a sprinkling of dessicated coconut 
- Exchange 40g of the flour for ground almonds, add a little extra baking powder and exchange the vanilla essence for almond essence
- Exchange the vanilla extract for rose or orange blossom extract
- Exchange 30g of the flour for cocoa powder, and add chocolate chips
-Anything that takes your fancy


Here are some variations I've made (and I remembered to take photos of):

Margarita Cupcakes (In honour of my housemate in Chile)
These ones use the lemon variation above for the sponge, and then the icing is just icing sugar mixed with tequila (and water depending on how potent you want them).
Decorate with a slice of lemon and a sprinkling of salt!

Rainbow Cupcakes
For these, I simply split the original recipe into 5 mugs, and added different food dyes to each one. In quite large quantities I might add to get a good colour when they're baked. 
Then just spoon a bit of each colour into the cake tin/cases and bake!

Oreo Cupcakes
Twist the tops off a pack of Oreos, and put the side with the cream on in the bottom of the cupcake cases and add the batter on top (the chocolate one with some Oreos crumbled in).
Decorate with cream cheese icing and the other side of the Oreo.  




And you know what, if this mixture had a horse, and for some reason was riding it through the City of London on a Monday afternoon, it would be down off it's horse and have that mess in an old Tesco bag faster than you can say poo-tastic. 

WHOOPIE (I made) PIES

Whoopie Pies have been around for a while but have just never quite managed to live up to the hype... Probably because they're just never going to be quite as pretty as a dainty little cupcake. They're more manly - a little like the concept behind Coke Zero perhaps. But not quite manly enough to become  popular with actual men. 

They're an odd mix between a cake and a macaroon, and while they travel well, it's a bit of a struggle to make them look nice enough to present to someone for a special occasion. Mind you, often the novelty makes up for that. 

Out of the 3 I've tried making from the Hummingbird Cake Days book, probably the nicest are the Red Velvet ones, but like all things Red Velvet they're an effort. These chocolate ones are a bit less of a faff, but still taste wunderbar. The vanilla and cardamom ones were pretty ace too - nice and chic for fancy occasions. 

The sponge is surprisingly not very sweet. But the riciculously sweet innards make up for that... The icing uses Marshmallow Fluff, which, being in the UK, isn't the easiest to find. I just found some in Selfridges and got quite excited - I have used melted marshmallows in the past though and as long as theyre quite cool (add a teeny bit of water to stop them solidifying again) when you add them to the icing sugar and butter mixture it works quite well. Make sure you give it a good while in the fridge before you ice them too. 

Sponge:

1 Egg

150g Caster Sugar

125g Natural Yoghurt

25ml Milk

1/4 Tsp Vanilla Essence

75g Butter, Melted

200g Plain Flour

80g Cocoa Powder

3/4 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

1/4 Tsp Baking Powder

Icing:

170g Butter

280g Icing Sugar

220g Marshmallow Fluff

Beat the egg and sugar until pale and fluffy, then mix the milk, yoghurt and vanilla together and chuck that in with the egg and sugar. Stir in the melted butter. Sift together the rest of the dry ingredients and add that in two batches, making sure its all mixed in. Leave to set for half an hour in the fridge. 

Heat the oven to 170 degrees C, and blob the mixture onto a baking sheet covered in greaseproof paper (which is definitely necessary). Make the blobs any size you want, the only important thing is to keep them all the same size and shape so they fit together when they're cooked - I like them quite small. Tiny bite-size ones would be great for a party - the less effort to get them in your gob (without getting crumbs all down your gown) the better I say. 

Cook until they're springy on top (10-15 minutes). 

For the icing, mix the icing sugar and butter until well combined then stir in the Marshmallow fluff. If you've got a machine (or someone you can use as a machine) this is good as it is much easier said than done. Marshmallow fluff is shockingly stiff. Who knew sugar could be so unforgiving. If you don't have a machine to hand, it is possible to do this by hand, and if done on a regular basis works nicely towards that Rafael Nadal look (check out his arms if you don't know what I mean...).

The icing will probably now be stiff enough to prop up the majority of your kitchen cutlery - if it isn't, pop it in the fridge for a bit. 

Then all that is left is to sandwich two chocolate blobs together with some of the icing. Don't be shy with the icing - there is a LOT here. I also like to spread some jam on one side too to liven them up a bit. 

Happy Whoopie.