Goonies-inspired Baby Ruth cupcakes

This is one of the best cupcakes ever, in my opinion – I created the recipe myself and was surprised at how good it was. One of my friends said it was better than most shop-bought cupcakes he’d had!

I call it a Baby Ruth cupcake because it recreates the flavours of the US candy bar Baby Ruth – nougat, caramel, peanut and chocolate. The idea came about for a slightly strange reason….

I regularly take part in a blog challenge called Food ‘n’ Flix, where the person hosting chooses a movie, and we all cook or bake something inspired by that movie. This month Heather at Girlichef has chosen a classic, and one of my favourite films as a child – The Goonies.

 

I don’t know whether the generation younger than me has had as much exposure to the film as I did, but I hope that even kids today are watching it and enjoying it. Aside from a few politically incorrect characters that probably wouldn’t be made fun of in films today, the key themes of the film resonate today as much as they ever did: friendship, hanging on to childhood and growing up, and of course pirates, treasure and adventure!

Unbelievably, the film is 30 years old this year – the main actors, including Sean Aston and Corey Feldman, have gone on to some great things (Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings for instace) and while some aspects of the film look dated, on the whole it doesn’t.

I watched the film again after this challenge was announced and while I had the Baby Ruth idea in my head from the start, there were loads of other food references and things that could inspire me. I even found a website listing everything Chunk eats in the movie which is an awful lot!
I made notes throughout the film of the food references before I went on holiday and unfortunately can't find the piece of paper anywhere, though a few scenes do stick in my mind, such as when the boys are in the Fratellis' restaurant looking for ice cream when they find a dead body in the freezer, and of course the moment when Chunk - taken hostage by the Fratellis - bonds with their physically and mentally disabled brother Sloth by offering him a Baby Ruth bar.

Baby Ruths are made by Nestle and are a bit like a Snickers from what I can tell, with nougat, peanuts, caramel and covered in chocolate. I thought that would work really well in a cupcake and I was right! I made a vanilla cupcake, removed a spoonful of sponge from the centre when it was cooked and added a spoonful of soft nougat, used a salted caramel buttercream from Sugar and Crumbs, scattered the top with chopped peanuts and drizzled Choc Shot (a kind of chocolate sauce) over the top. It tasted unbelievable! The sponge cake was really light and fluffy, the nougat in the centre was amazing and the topping was a wonderful combination of flavours. I made these for a bake sale at work and they disappeared very quickly.

Unfortunately as this was a while ago I can't remember what recipe I used for the vanilla cupcake base but that part is pretty straightforward and you probably have your own recipe or can find one easily.

Here are the vanilla cupcakes before and after baking

 

You can see how I made the nougat in this blog post; you can do it in advance.

 

 Spoon out a little of the centre of the cupcake, add the nougat and put the cake piece back in. It doesn't matter if it is a little messy as you will cover them with buttercream.

 

You can either make plain buttercream and stir in a spoonful or two of Carnation Caramel, or use the pre-flavoured mix I bought from Sugar and Crumbs. Their icing sugars use natural flavourings and come in an amazing range of flavours; the 250g bag was just enough.




Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and drizzle with chocolate sauce - I like Choc Shot but you could also use ice cream sauce. And serve - I can guarantee these won't last long!

I'm sending this to Heather at Girlichef  for Food 'n' Flix.

 

I am also sharing this with We Should Cocoa, as the ingredient chosen this month by Karen at Lavender and Lovage is vanilla, and there is chocolate on top of the cupcake. The challenge was started by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

 

 

How to make Soft Nougat or Homemade Marshmallow Fluff

I recently came up with an idea for a cupcake which I will share with you soon, which needed nougat in the middle. I decided that the kind of nougat you buy in bars would be too hard, so wondered if there was such a thing as soft nougat. Luckily there is, it’s not that hard to make and it tastes delicious on its own as well! In fact it reminded me a lot of marshmallow fluff both in terms of flavour and texture so I think I can get away with calling it either soft nougat or marshmallow fluff.

I found this recipe on Craftsy.com which was relatively easyto do; though you do need a sugar thermometer and to be very precise. It's also pretty helpful if you have a stand mixer like a Kitchenaid.

I substituted golden syrup for the light corn syrup as you can't get that in the UK (or not easily). Other than that I followed the steps in this recipe so this blog post is more to point you in the direction of that recipe, and show you how mine looked at each stage. And as I mentioned I will refer back to this post when I write about my amazing cupcakes!

Sugar, golden syrup and water in the saucepan

My brilliant digital thermometer, which I reviewed in this post about making marshmallows. In fact the technique for making nougat is quite similar.

Testing the temperature of the sugar

Beating the egg whites in my trusty Kitchenaid

 

After the sugar is added the mixture thickens

 

I lined a small square pan with clingfilm (trust me - you will never get it out the pan otherwise!) and put it in the fridge to set. It never set really hard like the bars of nougat you can buy - and it wasn't even as firm as the nougat you get in a chocolate bar like Mars. Instead it was more like a thicker, stickier marshmallow fluff. It tasted amazing and I kept eating spoonfuls straight from the fridge, but I did save enough of it to use it in the recipe I had made it for!