Character Cupcakes and a Fantastic Fudge Frosting

Sunday, 7 Jul 13

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I’ve been engaged in an ongoing war with my new oven. I won the first few battles, for example quite successfully baking macarons at Chinese New Year (with a reasonable success rate) after working out that the oven ran a fair bit hotter than my old oven. However, the oven must just have been warming up (pun not intended), because my most recent forays into baking have resulted in cracked, footless macarons, burnt cupcakes, and spotty-topped cheesecakes, despite using tried and tested recipes. However, I have had some successes, specifically with these adorable Sesame Street themed cupcakes for a charity drive and baby’s 1st month celebration.

These cupcakes are ridiculously simple to decorate, and so I won’t bother with a recipe. The basic idea is that you fill a ziplock bag with dessicated coconut, and drop in a few drops of food colouring and shake to tint it to the desired shade (blue for the Cookie Monster, green for Oscar the Grouch and red for Elmo). I find tinting the icing also helps to intensify the colour, and thankfully, it means that you can do a really rough job with the icing, no piping required! Their eyes are white chocolate chips or discs, with spots of melted dark chocolate to indicate the irises. Likewise, Oscar had dark chocolate eyebrows and frown, while Elmo had a yellow peanut m&ms nose. And most importantly, the Cookie Monster was accessorised with a cookie! (although I hear he’s a little more balanced in his food choices recently…)

So that’s not much of a recipe, so I thought I’d share my favourite chocolate fudge frosting recipe instead. This came about because I’d accidentally split the simple icing sugar+cocoa+butter+milk buttercream, and realised that adding melted chocolate somehow brought the mixture back together. Try it and let me know what you think!

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 Recipe

200 grams unsalted butter, softened (really soft in winter when using a metal bowl)
6 cups icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup cocoa powder, sifted
100 grams melted dark chocolate, cooled
1 tsp vanilla essence
a generous pinch of salt
about 50 ml milk

Cream the butter until soft and pale. Add icing sugar and cocoa powder 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until fluffy. Mix in vanilla essence and salt. Add milk a little at a time until desired consistency is achieved. Stir in melted chocolate until combined. Pipe, smear, and swirl onto cupcakes as desired…and remember to lick the bowl. And the spoon.

Posted at 10:54 pm in (not)Recipes, Recipes, Sweets | Respond?

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