Halloween Toffee Apple Cupcakes

It was announced at work yesterday that we were going to have a bake sale - today. A bit short notice for my liking but I really wanted to make something! I didn't have time to buy any extra ingredients so had to make do with what I had at home (and one thing I picked up in M&S at the train station) - but this is me after all. I had plenty of stuff at home!

 

I decided cupcakes would be quickest and easiest and I could decorate them with different Halloween toppers. I was originally going to make chocolate cakes but decided to use a flavour combination that you get a lot at this time of year: toffee apple.

I decided to go with a basic recipe and then add my flavourings and see how it turned out; the result was a light, bouncy cake with both flavours definitely coming through.

Toffee Apple Cupcakes - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

175g butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
175g apple sauce
175g Carnation caramel
175g self-raising flour

to decorate:
400g icing sugar
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
assorted coloured fondant and mini cookie cutters
I also used Marks & Spencer meringue ghosts to decorate - you can easily make your own but I didn't have time

Preheat oven to 175C.

Cream the butter and sugar and add the eggs, the mix in the apple sauce and the caramel.

Finally fold in the flour.

Spoon into cake cases - I had some Halloween ones left over from last year. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked but still springy to the touch.

Allow to cool. When the cakes are cool, decorate them however you wish.

I made up some royal icing for another recipe, by  whisking egg whites and cream of tartar with the icing sugar, and spread this on top of several of the cupcakes.

I sat the M&S meringue ghosts on top of some of the cupcakes, and for others used black fondant and a mini cookie cutter to cut out bat shapes. I also moulded a skull and some pumpkins from white fondant that I coloured orange and green. I made a monster's head with the rest of the green fondant.

I am sending these to the blog challenge Food 'n' Flix, hosted this month by Elizabeth at the Lawyer's Cookbook, as the film she has chosen is perfect for Halloween - Hocus Pocus.

I'm also sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as she welcomes recipes that fit to the time of year or topical events that are happening.

 

Finally I am sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat aka the Baking Explorer. Their theme is black and orange, or anything Halloween related.

 

 

Toffee Apple Oreo Popcorn Chocolate Fridge Cake with Haagen Dazs ice cream

With Bonfire Night just around the corner I wanted to find a recipe I could make to use two things I bought on holiday in America: toffee apple (or candy apple) flavour popcorn and caramel apple flavour Oreos.

 

In the UK we have only ever been able to get chocolate Oreos - with Golden Oreos recently launching over here. But in the US there are a whole host of limited edition flavours at different times of the year, and I've never been able to get hold of any of them before, until now. The caramel apple cookies have a part green, part caramel colour filling and are very sweet and quite different but do taste quite nice!

I wanted a recipe that would allow me to use both the cookies and the popcorn and the obvious thing seemed to be a 'fridge cake' - basically melted chocolate mixed with broken biscuits, and often marshmallows like a rocky road, but this time I was going to use popcorn instead.

To serve, you can cut or break it into pieces and eat it as it is, or make into a dessert as I did. I was sent some vouchers for Haagen Dazs ice cream to celebrate National Chocolate Week and I used one of the vouchers to buy some of their pralines and cream ice cream. I actually thought pralines were something to do with chocolate - and it often is. Pralines are frequently chocolates containing small pieces of nut though in the case of the Haagen Dazs ice cream it was 'smooth vanilla flavour ice cream, crunchy praline pecan pieces and sweet caramel swirls'. Either way the ice cream was absolutely delicious.

I served a few scoops of the ice cream and a few pieces of the chocolate fridge cake in a tall sundae glass which made a very good dessert. Here's the recipe for the fridge cake

Toffee Apple Oreo Popcorn Chocolate Fridge Cake
an original recipe by Caroline Makes

400g plain chocolate
50g butter
250g caramel apple Oreos
100g candy apple popcorn
to serve: Haagen Dazs ice cream

Melt the chocolate and butter in a large pan and remove from the heat. Add the popcorn and broken up cookies (into large chunks - not crushed). Stir in gently until well combined.

Line a small oven tray or serving dish with greaseproof paper and spoon in the chocolate mixture. Leave in the fridge until set.

Remove from the fridge at least half an hour before you want to serve or the chocolate will be too hard to cut or break. Remove the ice cream from the fridge about 15 mins before serving so it softens a little.









I found it easiest to break up the fridge cake using a dinner knife (that is, not a particularly sharp one) - do be careful! I then alternated pieces of the fridge cake with scoops of ice cream in this dessert. The ice cream was lovely - very creamy and luxurious. It was very popular in my house!

Thanks to Haagen Dazs for the ice cream vouchers

I'm sharing this with Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host based around the location of each F1 Grand Prix as this weekend it's America and that's where I bought the popcorn and Oreos in this recipe.

Mug Cakes: Sticky Toffee Pudding and Dr. Oetker Review

Last Christmas I received a book called 'Mug Cakes' full of recipes to make in the microwave in a mug. It's a brilliant concept- when you really fancy something cake-y for dessert but want it then, not in an hour's time! I have already made a few mug cakes (chocolate, and toffee and pear) and when the weather was bad a little while ago we really fancied cake, so I flipped through the book until I found something we would both like where I had all the ingredients. I decided upon a sticky toffee pudding.

To make one, you need:
The largest mug you can find
2 tbsp. butter, softened, plus extra for greasing the mug
4 tbsp. toffee sauce
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp. dates, chopped
3 tbsp. brown sugar
4 tbsp. self-raising four

Grease the inside of the mug and spoon in 3 tbsp. of the toffee sauce.

 

 Place the butter, egg, 1 tbsp. toffee sauce, vanilla and dates into a small bowl (or another mug, but a bowl is easier) and beat together with a fork. Fold in the sugar and flour and mix in. Spoon into the mug that has the toffee sauce at the bottom.

 

Microwave for 2 and a half minutes on high if you have a 600 watt microwave or 2 minutes for a 1000 watt microwave. You can estimate somewhere in between eg 2 minutes 15 seconds for a 800 watt microwave.

Leave to cool enough that you can eat it; you can either turn the cake out into a bowl as the toffee sauce at the bottom should then run over the top, or eat it straight from the mug - to save on the washing up!

That's what we did and the cake was lovely and the toffee sauce at the bottom was an added bonus.

Not long after this I saw that Dr. Oetker had launched its own range of mug cake mixes which are even quicker - you just mix milk with the powder, microwave them for a minute and you're done! I thought this was a brilliant idea - mug cakes are pretty quick anyway but you still can't quite make them in a television advert break by the time you have found the ingredients in the cupboard and mixed them together! Whereas the Dr. Oetker mixes really are super fast.

I was sent three flavours for review: chocolate, chocolate chip and lemon. I have to admit I haven't tried the lemon yet (but will update this post when I do!) - the weather has gotten warmer again and I don't really fancy cake!

You literally just mix the powder with milk. This is the chocolate chip...

... and this is chocolate flavour.

Microwave and the cake is risen and ready.

I was sent a few other bits and pieces by Dr Oetker including this chocolate cupcake centre - it has a nozzle you insert into the cake, squeeze and it fills it with chocolate sauce.

I topped it off with a mini chocolate heart. These are so cute and brilliant for decorating cakes or desserts.

This is the finished chocolate cake - it hasn't risen anywhere near as much as my home-made mug cakes do.

Side-by-side an instant hot dessert. The cakes did definitely taste more artificial than my homemade version and I found them incredibly sweet. I'd prefer these with a little less sugar but for those times when you have immediate cake cravings - or like when I was a student, you don't have an oven - I think these are a great idea.

 

Thanks to Dr. Oetker for sending the cake mixes, chocolate filling and hearts for review. All opinions are my own.

Banoffee Cheesecake with a Cornflake Base

It all started with a basket of fruit that we were sent at work. By the end of the week, there were a couple of bananas left that were going really soft. I was the last person in the office on the Friday (sigh) so thought I may as well take them home as they would only be thrown away otherwise - even though I don't like bananas! A few of my boyfriend's family were coming to our house at the weekend for an informal barbecue and I wanted to make dessert; I knew they liked bananas even though I didn't so I thought this would be a good way to use them up. Though I don't think the person who sent the healthy fruit basket necessarily expected the fruit to end up in a sugary dessert - we did eat the rest of the fruit whole!

I remembered that I had bought some cornflakes at Easter to make chocolate cornflake cakes and it had been a massive box. I'm not a big fan of cereal anyway and find cornflakes very plain so most of the box was left. I wondered idly whether you could use cornflakes as a base for cheesecake rather than crushed biscuits - and it turns out you can!

I used this recipe from RTE Food but I had to almost double the amount of cornflakes as it wasn't anywhere near enough to cover the base of the glass-bottomed pie dish I was using.

To serve 8, you need:
2 bananas
100g chocolate, melted
300g cornflakes
100g caster sugar
100g butter
100ml double cream
400g soft cheese
50g icing sugar
dash of vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate and mix with the cornflakes in a large bowl. Press down the cornflakes into the base of the serving dish and place in the fridge for half an hour to set.

 Heat the butter and sugar in a pan until the sugar has dissolved and carefully place the peeled bananas sliced in half into the pan. Bring to the boil and turn the bananas occasionally until they are caramelised.

Remove the bananas to a plate with a slotted spoon. Keep the caramel over the lowest heat until you are ready to use it otherwise it will start to set hard.

Mix the soft cheese, cream and vanilla and icing sugar and spoon onto the cornflake base.

Slice the banana and place over the top of the cheesecake then drizzle over the toffee sauce.

This was a delicious cheesecake (though I took the banana pieces off mine!) but it doesn't keep long - the cornflake base started to go soggy after the second day. It won't be sitting in our fridge for long I expect anyway!

 

I'm sharing this with Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Camilla at Fab Food 4 All, and Helen of Fuss Free Flavours, as it uses up leftovers.

 

 

Chocolate, Toffee and Pear Mug Cake and Fruit Bow Review

The Dot Com Gift Shop is one of my favourite online retailers as they have such a broad range of gifts and so many of them are themed around cooking, baking and kitchenware - I have a few gifts earmarked to purchase this Christmas!

They recently sent me a fruit bowl to review, that I think would make a great Christmas gift. It comes in two parts but it's very easy to screw on the base - you don't even need a screwdriver. It's a large bowl so would be good for people with families or who eat a lot of fruit - though it's also a good way to encourage people to get their five a day!

I love the design; the white wire work would fit in almost any kitchen décor and it looks both modern and a bit vintage at the same time, if such a thing is possible! It costs £19.95 which I think is a good price for the size and quality.

I filled my fruit bowl as soon as I received it, leaving me to wonder afterwards what to do with all the fruit! I recently came across a lovely little cookery book called Mug Cakes by Mima Sinclair - I knew you could make cakes in a microwave as I remembered a girl called Kate doing it at university as we didn't have an oven in halls - and a while back I made my own chocolate mug cake. It never occurred to me there could be a whole book of recipes dedicated to microwaving cakes in a mug or that so many flavours and ingredients would work!

I love pears and bought a few for my fruit bowl so when I saw a recipe for chocolate, ginger and pear cake in a mug I decided to try it. I changed it though as I left out the ginger and added toffee sauce instead; the original recipes uses both ground and stem ginger but I had all the other ingredients in the house and liked the idea of just throwing the cake together from what I had. I also used milk chocolate instead of plain which I think gave a more fudgy taste. So this is what I did:

You need:
1 tbsp. softened butter
20g milk chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 an egg, lightly beaten
1 tbsp. semi-skimmed milk
2 tbsp. caster sugar
2 tbsp. self-raising flour
pinch of salt
1 ripe pear, peeled
1 tbsp. toffee sauce

You need to make sure your mug is big enough - the recipe book recommends a 350ml mug. The easiest way to check is to fill a measuring jug with water, pour it into the mug and you will see if it holds 350ml!

Place the butter and chocolate in the mug and microwave for 10-20 seconds until melted.

Add the egg and milk and beat together with a fork.

Add the sugar, flour and salt and mix carefully with the fork until smooth.

Slice the base off the pear so it will sit in the mug and press down gently so it is in the middle of the cake mixture.

Microwave for between 1.5 and 2 minutes depending on the power of your microwave (2 mins for 700 watts, 1 min 50 seconds for 800 watt, 1 min 40 for 900 watt etc). Leave to cool before you eat! To serve, spoon a little toffee sauce over the top - I used a jar of ready made toffee sauce I found in Lidl or you could use the squeezy toffee sauce you can buy to go over ice cream, or Carnation caramel, or make your own.

I wasn't expecting  much from a cake made in a mug in a microwave but this was amazing. The cake was just the right consistency and the pear softened beautifully; the flavours worked well together and this is definitely something I would make again.

 

 

I'm sending this to Cook Blog Share, hosted by Lucy at Supergoldenbakes.