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.

 

 

Giant Cookie - Nigella's Buttermilk Birthday Cake

This month's Random Recipes asked us "if you had ten seconds to grab one book, what would it be?". That's cookery books of course - the idea being if you were leaving your house in a hurry and could only take one recipe book with you, which would it be?

I knew right away - even though I have over 100 cookery books, one in particular stands out: Nigella's How To Be a Domestic Goddess. Not because it's my favourite or even the one that I use most, but because it was one of the first cookery books that I owned. I was given it as a birthday present by my friends, who all clubbed together (£20 was a lot of money to a student back then!) and presented it to me on what I think was my 20th birthday. It's a huge book with a lot of recipes, and I like the idea that they are all themed around being a 'domestic goddess' - so mainly cakes but with biscuits and savoury pies and the like. My favourite chapter is called 'the chocolate cake hall of fame'. I think that while I was swamped in academia I rather liked the idea of being a domestic goddess at the same time- even though my entire cooking facilities consisted of a double hot plate (provided by the university) and a mini oven (provided by my grandmother who used to have it in her camper van- so I was the only one in my building with an oven!). So I guess the other reason this cookery book would be the one I grabbed in a hurry is because of the memories that are attached to it.

So in accordance with the Random Recipes challenge, I opened the book at random and decided I would make whatever was on that page: it was the buttermilk birthday cake on page 210.

I can't find the recipe on Nigella's official website but there is a version of it - with small differences - on the Guardian website here. 

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and the sugar together.

Mix in the eggs, then the flour, bicarb of soda and salt (the recipe I used didn't include the lemon).

Finally fold in the buttermilk and vanilla

In the book, Nigella talks about using different moulds like Barbie or a train - this is after all meant to be a children's birthday cake. I had a giant cookie mould I'd bought ages ago and never used, and thought this would be a good opportunity.

There are two silicon moulds of equal size, with a flower pattern and 'cookie' word in the middle. The moulds are very strong and robust and worked really well.

Spoon the mixture equally into the two tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes (the exact time will depend on the size and depth of the mould you are using).

You can see the pattern on the baked cake, though it is a little hard to read the word 'cookie'.

I mixed icing sugar with butter and some melted white chocolate to make a delicious buttercream, and used it to fill the cake.

It does look like a giant custard cream!

I'm sending this to Random Recipes, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

Wedding Cupcakes, How to Make Sugar Flowers and some Reviews

I was delighted to be asked to make some cupcakes for the wedding of my boyfriend's lovely cousin and her fiance. They wanted the cupcakes for the evening buffet, and the bride sent me a photo of some she liked, which were covered in white with white roses and bows. She also told me that the wedding colours were white and pale pink. I didn't have much time (as I didn't get a huge amount of notice) and wasn't sure I could make that many edible decorations in time, so the bride-to-be had found a website where we could also buy some. I ended up using a combination of both and also came across a product that made making edible flowers a lot quicker and easier, which I will review below.

I spent several evenings over the course of a week making the flowers. I used flower paste, as you can roll it thinner and it dries harder than fondant, so is ideal for modelling.

The Craft Company is a supplier of cake decorating products, ingredients and baking equipment that I have used before and have always been pleased with their service and quality. They contacted me to ask if I would like to review a product from their range, and I chose this blossom cutter and mould set, which costs £9.98. It is also available in other flower shapes including butterfly, daisy, hydrangea and petunia. I chose the 'blossom' shape as I thought it would be ideal for the wedding cupcakes.

The set is very simple to use. Roll out the flower paste and use the cutter to cut out the shapes.

Place the flower shape on one side of the silicon mould - one side has an indent and the other side is raised.

Close the mould and press down gently - you don't actually need to press very hard at all.

Open it out and you have a beautiful flower with petal details. This is really quick and easy to use and would be a God-send if you are having to make a lot of flowers for a big cake or lots of cupcakes. I was sent this free of charge but is definitely something I would have spent my own money on. The cutter and mould also comes with an instruction leaflet which was easy to follow.

I made several flowers in the space of just a few minutes and left them to dry.

It's also very easy to colour the flowers (or use coloured flowerpaste in the first place). I used pink lustre dust on the flowers, giving more coverage to some than to others.

As I mentioned, I also bought some cupcake toppers, from a website called Sugar Sugar Cake Decorations. There was a wide selection of products to choose from, and in several different colours. I ordered some bows, large roses and small roses in white, and mini sprays of roses in pink. Everything is handmade to order and you are asked to allow a few days drying time; these arrived in the space of a week and were carefully packaged in tissue paper and bubble wrap. I was also really pleased that the box was flat enough that it went through my letterbox - I can only get to the local sorting office once a week due to their opening hours so was a bit worried if I would get these in time for the wedding but they were delivered to my door.

Here you can see the products I ordered; they weren't too expensive though it's obviously cheaper to make your own if you can - I knew I wouldn't have enough time and I was happy to cover the cost of the cupcake ingredients, toppers and wrappers as my present to the happy couple.

I also decided to make some roses myself and used this Jem Easy Rose cutter which I also bought at Cake International, though you can get it from many stockists online. It's really easy to use once you know what you're doing, and did come with an instruction leaflet. Roll out your sugarpaste and use the cutter to press down and make a flower shape.

Roll a small piece of flower paste into a cone, and place in the middle of the flower.

Fold up each petal in turn, curling it around the cone in the middle. When you've done that, cut out another flower, place the rose you've just made on top, and curl up the petals of the second flower.

You may need a little edible glue on the second flower to get the petals to stick. Once you've folded them around, ease back the edges of some of the outer petals to create a curve at the top.

 I bought this PME pink lustre spray at Cake International. It's really easy to use and you can either give an even coverage or more of a subtle hint depending on how you spray it.

I gave some of the roses a light coating and left them to dry. I left the other flowers white.

 I also made one rose out of pink sugar paste but I decided the pink was too dark for what I wanted. Here are a selection of the flowers I made.

The bride had requested vanilla cupcakes, which I have to admit made my life easier! I used a simple recipe that turned out to be really light and fluffy; I usually find vanilla cupcakes too plain to be interesting but these were extremely good.

You need:
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream the butter and the sugar, then mix in the eggs and fold in the flour and the baking powder. Add the vanilla extract. Bake in the oven at 175C for about 15 minutes; it will depend on the size of the cupcakes.

Most of the cakes were either flat or only slightly raised which was good. I covered some in fondant; I cut out circles with a pastry cutter and secured onto the cakes with a thin layer of buttercream.

I used more buttercream to fix the roses I had made onto the cakes. I was really pleased with these.

Pink and white rose cupcakes - I actually liked these more than the edible flowers I bought, though I have to admit they did save me a lot of time, as I wouldn't have been able to make enough of these to go on to every cupcake (I made nearly 60 cupcakes in the end).

I wanted to put cake wrappers around the cakes and found a website called Essesea that offered personalised cupcake wrappers, among other items. I chose plain white wrappers which I personalised with the name of the bride and groom and the date of their wedding.

Unfortunately I found that when I put these around the cupcakes they weren't quite big enough, and I had to secure them with sellotape (rather than tucking tab A into slot B, as they didn't quite reach). I think it's because I used large cupcake cases -the website does say these wrappers will fit standard-sized cupcakes rather than large muffin-sized cakes, so it's my own fault. They worked fine in the end with the sellotape anyway, and I thought they looked really good; the bride was very pleased when she spotted them.

The wrappers were 50p each so would be quite expensive if you needed a lot; I used these for some but not all of the cupcakes.

I covered most of the other cakes with royal icing and then placed the toppers I had bought over the internet on top. I also decorated some of the cupcakes with tiny white pearls all the way around the edge - it took a long time and was very fiddly so I didn't do all of them that way.

I bought some more cupcake wrappers from a website called Cake Craft World; they were only £1.99 for a pack of 12 so a lot cheaper than the others. They are a solid colour with a delicate rose pattern, so not quite as nice as lacy wrappers but a lot cheaper. They were also easy to fix together and fit around my cupcakes perfectly.

Here's a cupcake with a smooth royal icing top and one of the flowers I made using the blossom cutter and mould from the Craft Company.

A selection of cupcakes, some with the flowers I made and some with the decorations I ordered:

I also piped some buttercream roses onto some of the cupcakes; I will do a separate post on this.

 I took a couple of my cake stands to the wedding reception, and put them out with the cupcakes for the evening reception.

I was quite pleased with how these turned out and I had several nice comments from other guests at the wedding. I also created a cupcake bouquet but I think that deserves a separate post all to itself!

Thanks to The Craft Company for sending me the blossom cutter and mould set to review; I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions are my own. I paid for the other items mentioned in this post with my own money and chose the suppliers myself.