Chocolate and Merlot Red Wine Cupcakes - Wilton Shot Tops Kit

I've long been making cocktail cupcakes and bundts, experimenting with recreating the flavours of my favourite tipples in the form of cake. So I was really excited when I went to the Lakeland product launch in July and saw this Shot Tops kit from Wilton - and even more excited when they gave me one to try.

The set contains little plastic pipettes in the shape of either wine bottles or cocktail glasses; you fill them with alcohol (or any liquid) and insert them into the top of the cake, for people to squeeze the liquid into or over the top of the cake as they eat them. I'm sure I remember someone doing something similar on the Great British Bake Off but having to use 'proper' pipettes, I don't think they were sold for home baking at the time!

The kit I received also contained a small recipe book, and there were some great-sounding recipes for cocktail-based cupcakes in there, but disappointingly not all the recipes actually involved the pipettes. I wanted to make one of the recipes that did, and also thought about inventing my own cocktail recipe, but decided that to review the kit properly I should make one from the book.

I was going to stay with a good friend down in Devon over the August bank holiday and she enjoys various cocktails but is a particular connoisseur of red wine -she actually helped me pick the wine we had at my wedding. So I decided to make a rather unusual sounding chocolate and merlot cupcake - not strictly speaking a cocktail but apparently chocolate and red wine go together. Wilton says: "The concentrated, rich taste of merlot wine and not-so-sweet dark chocolate is a natural match when combined in these intensely flavoured cupcakes."

The cupcakes consist of a chocolate base, buttercream with red wine reduction and pipettes containing red wine that you drizzle over the top.

The recipe says this makes about two dozen cupcakes, but I got 16 large ones out of it. You need:
2 cups plain flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup granulated sugar (I used caster)
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup sour cream

for the icing:
2 cups merlot wine
1 cup butter, softened (the original recipe says to use half butter, half shortening, but as that's basically lard I didn't want to)
4 cups icing sugar

for the infusion:
1 1/2 cups merlot wine
Wilton Shot Tops infusers

Preheat oven to 180C, 350F. Beat the sugar and oil with an electric mixer in a large bowl then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Add some of the flour mixture, alternating with the sour cream, until it is all mixed in.

Place cupcake cases in a muffin tin and divide the batter evenly between the cases.

Bake for 16-19 minutes in the oven and allow to cool.



Bring the wine to the boil in a small saucepan and simmer until it has reduced to a couple of spoonfuls. Allow to cool completely.

For the buttercream icing, beat the butter and icing sugar in a large bowl. Add the reduced wine and beat again.

Pipe or spread onto the cupcakes.



Cut a small opening in the tip of each Shot Tops infuser and place in a cup of wine; squeeze to draw the liquid into the pipette and when you stop squeezing, it should stay inside. Insert into each cupcake and when you serve, squeeze the Shot Top to infuse the cupcake with wine. You can taste the wine in the middle and it gives the centre a nice moist texture. I don't expect I will use these Shot Tops that often but they really are a great idea!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

- And also with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

Charlotte at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen runs a blog challenge called the Food Calendar and there are several things happening this month that these cupcakes would be great for, including National Cupcake Week from Sept 12-18, International Chocolate Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning.

Wilton Tasty-Fill Heart Pan: Engagement Cake with Hidden Heart

Have you ever bought something and put it to the back of the cupboard, and kept telling youself that you will use it, at some point.....? I've had the tasty-fill pan (who comes up with these names?) from Wilton for a couple of years but never gotten around to using it, partly because the instruction leaflet didn't make a huge amount of sense to me.

The recipe leaflet leaves a lot to be desired, suggesting that you use a boxed cake mix, and frozen Cool Whip or similar for the filling - which is something we don't have in the UK. I also wasn't sure I fully understood the instructions for how to assemble the cake. Luckily there are now plenty of bloggers who have used this tin and explain the process, so I finally decided to take the plunge, and am very glad I did. It's not difficult at all, and the result is very impressive. I made this for a work colleague's engagement and birthday and I had people coming up to me all day asking how I had made the cake and saying how good it was.

Inside the box you get two cake tins which look like this. It's important to get them the right way around; the easiest way to tell is that each tin has the Wilton logo imprinted on it; you want to make sure the logo is on the bottom (that is, facing down and not the right way up to read the name) on each tin.  You also want to make sure that the centre circle is a deep indent rather than sticking up as you will see in the second picture. This is the right way up:

And this is the wrong way. Got it?

I used the recipe for Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake which you will find if you follow the link. I ended up having to make a double quantity of the recipe as the cake tins are very deep - in fact this is the tallest cake I've ever made.

It's also worth mentioning that I think chocolate cake works best here. You really don't want to see where the two layers of cake join, and if you make a vanilla sponge, the edges of the cake will most likely be more browned so there will be a line going through the middle of the cake. Chocolate cake means that you won't see the join.

You need to grease both tins really well and get right into the grooves or the heart shape won't work. I used PME cake release spray. Fill both tins evenly with the mixture and then bake in the oven.

Allow the cakes to cool in the tin then turn out onto a baking rack. Hopefully they will come out clean; any bits of cake that break off or are stuck in the tin mean there is a high chance of the heart shape not working. Mine turned out fine as you can see. Make sure you remember which half of the cake is the top and which is the bottom.

To fill the cakes, first place the bottom half on a cake board and secure with a little buttercream. I didn't want to take any chances as this was the first time I had made this cake, so I made a simple pink buttercream.

Spread the buttercream in the circular gaps around the cake, pressing in and levelling off the top. Do that on both halves of the cake.

Carefully invert the top cake and place on the bottom layer. You can see what I meant earlier about the join - if you had a vanilla sponge which browned more at the edges, as they often do, you would have a distinctive line. I also levelled off the top of this cake so it was flat.

I covered the cake in a cream cheese frosting which I added a little pink food colouring to, and sprinkled some heart-shaped sprinkles, also from Wilton, over the top.

But surely what you want to know is what does the cake look like inside? I didn't cut into the cake and took it into work so when I presented it to my colleague and explained there was a surprise inside, or at least there was supposed to be if it had turned out OK, we all waited with bated breath...

 Ta da! I don't know how this works exactly - the rings on the cake tins don't look in the slightest as if they would match up to make a heart shape, but they do. When you cut the cake, every single slice has a heart shape - which is why I used pink buttercream - in the middle. It's so much easier than it looks and would be the perfect cake for an engagement, wedding, Valentine's day or simply the one you love.

It may be slightly tenuous but I am sending my engagement cake (well, my colleague's engagement cake) to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter this month is E.

I'm also sending this to Food 'n' Flix, the blog challenge that picks a movie each month and asks bloggers to make a dish inspired by the film. This time Evelyne at Cheap Ethnic Eatz has chosen Bridesmaids.

 

I saw the film about a year ago and wasn't sure I would particularly enjoy it as I'd heard it described as "the female equivalent of The Hangover" - and I don't really like the Hangover trilogy. I did find Bridesmaids quite funny but it was a bit slapstick in places for my taste - but it was a very successful film. It centres around Annie, a single woman in her 30s with a failed baking business, who is asked to be chief bridesmaid for her friend Lillian. The other bridesmaids are like chalk and cheese and get into quite a few scrapes before the wedding - including getting food poisoning from a Brazilian restaurant. I did think about making a Brazilian dish to tie in with the film but the connection with a food poisoning scene just somehow didn't do it for me. Instead, I decided to focus on the love story in the film - of course it all ends happily for Annie, who falls in love and even starts baking again.

When I realised that a colleague at work had recently become engaged - and so would be having a wedding, complete with bridesmaids - I decided that this cake would work for this month's challenge!

 

 

I'm also sharing this with Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at Dollybakes, as her theme this month is bank holiday bakes and cakes to share with friends.

 

 

 

Christmas Stocking and Snowman Cakes

 

 

I had some chocolate cake mixture left over from making this cake, and wanted to use a Wilton Christmas stocking and snowman mini cake tin I got for only £5 at Cake International in November. 

 

 

 

I only had enough chocolate cake mix to make four cakes, so I did two stockings and two snowmen. You can't really see the detail in this picture but you can see some of the snowman's features on the cake itself, and some of the detail on the stocking.

 

 

As I'd only made four, and since my dad doesn't eat chocolate cake (I took these to my parents' house at the weekend), I quickly whipped up a half batch of plain vanilla sponge as well.

 

 

I forgot to take a photo of these when they came out of the pan!

 

I wanted to decorate them using red, green and white fondant, and to use the different colours to accentuate the details on the cake, rather than cover the whole cake. I did each one slightly differently, focusing on scarves and hats for the snowmen, and trying out different things with the stockings. I used some gold balls and a couple of edible holly decorations I had in the cupboard as well.

 

I made these to use up leftover cake mix rather than to enter a specific blogging challenge but they do fall quite neatly into a few challenges this month. Firstly yet another entry for Alphabakes as our letter this month is S - it's pure coincidence that my Christmas cake tin is shaped like stockings and snowmen!

Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and Rachel at Dolly Bakes have had several entries from me this month as well, as their challenge Calendar Cakes has Christmas as it's theme!

I'm also sending yet another entry to Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked for Tea Time Treats, as their ingredient this month is chocolate.