Mermaid Kitchen: Birthday Caramel Mochaccino Cupcakes

In case you missed it, it was my Birthday this week. I am 29 whole years old. Although, I fear I can remove the "29 whole years" of that sentence and it would still be true! Now, my Birthday often creeps up on me - I think it's because of how short February is, maybe? I don't know. But I had a whole extra twenty hours this year - so if that was not an excuse to do something then I don't know what was.

The best birthday cakes are a pile

I have bought many cupcake recipe books over the years despite having zero patience for the intricate icing they often demand. I turned to these for inspiration for my cake. The first was very much too much faff for me to deal with and none of the flavour combos seemed worth using, so I turned to the second which I found for 80% in WHSmiths many years ago: Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery. I have no idea where the Primrose Bakery is but I am apparently powerless to a £3 cookbook. (I got one for Chinese food at the same time for a similar price!)

It was a hair out of my face sort of day.

The layout of this book allowed for a little more mix and matching - which appealed - and has basic recipes in the front with more adventurous ones later on. It meant I could pick a simple butter icing and put a little more effort into the cake-y bit! (Guess which bit went wrong: yeah, the "simple" bit, but more on that in a second. In the end, I decided on the caramel cupcake with coffee butter icing and chocolate buttons for decoration because it's my Birthday damnit, I want chocolate buttons for decoration. (29? Really, are you sure I'm not 9?!)

The making mostly went well, but apparently I am on a bit of a bad streak in the kitchen at the moment. I don't know if anyone saw my biscuits I made the other week... So a couple things have gone a little bit drastically wrong! Surprisingly, the only bit that went great was making the caramel sauce which was supposed to be the most difficult bit! So much can go wrong with hot sugar! But it remained a pouring consistency after cooling and made way more than the recipe suggested, so I've got some spare! To be fair, the cake batter was made fine as well, even if I did manage to skip a paragraph and add the eggs at the wrong moment. Whoops. 

An insight to the chaos.

My to-do list was jam packed and I broke up the cake making parts so that everything could cool enough. I am terrible for icing warm cakes. But this is where I went wrong. I left my cakes to cool for too long... in a drafty corner of the kitchen. My reasoning for putting it there was less about cooling and more about keeping it out of the way of the new aquarium my partner collected! The kitchen was a bit of a mess and I wanted to keep my cakes safe and away from it all. Oh the irony. They cooled too much and I feared they may had gone stale!

The butter icing went a little wrong too. No matter how much sugar I piled in, it did not seem to become any less liquidy. I recipe calls for milk, which I usually don't bother with when making butter icing but I figured I should put in because I've never made coffee butter icing before. I should have stuck to my usual approach, the milk and coffee mix made the batter very runny! In the end, after emptying my icing sugar box, I decided to leave it in the fridge to cool and hopefully set. Thank goodness for fridges! The icing finally set over night. And praise be, it was a miracle because the cakes were not as rock solid as they appeared too!

I decided to experiment a little, because I had the idea that the leftover caramel sauce could be used to soften the cupcakes if I poked some holes and drizzled the sauce over them. So I left one to soak and taste tested it against a non-soaked cupcake. There was very little difference between them so I figured the extra hassle was not worth it. (And it meant I could use the caramel sauce in something else!)

So, in the end, I did not need to panic as much as I did about ruining my Birthday cakes! And let me tell you, the caramel cupcakes are mighty fine! Sure, they could do with being a little less crispy on the outside but I know now to not leave cakes in a down draft! Sometimes you just have to do the really dumb thing to learn. Consider me older and wiser.

These aren't the same cases I use for bath bombs, no....

CARAMEL SAUCE

INGREDIENTS

• 250g golden caster sugar
• 135ml water

METHOD

1. Pour the sugar and 5 tbsp of the water into a saucepan and place over a low heat.
2. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. (It loses its grittiness.)
3. Increase to a higher heat and leave to boil for 10 minutes. I stuck a timer on and stirred occasionally, for fear of burning.
4. After 10 minutes, it should look dark amber in colour (and smell amazing!).
5. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool for a minute or two, stirring to help cool it down. Be careful! Hot sugar hurts when it hits the skin, so be careful of spatters.
6. Once cooler, add the remaining water. It will bubble! It will be scary! Just keep your hands clear and stir it carefully. (The book suggests doing it over a sink and/or tilting away from you.)
7. Leave to cool completely before using in a recipe or storing in an air tight container.
8. In theory, it makes 75ml of sauce but I definitely had 200ml!

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

CARAMEL CUPCAKES

INGREDIENTS

• 110g unsalted butter (room temp)
• 120g light soft brown sugar
• 120g dark soft brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp of vanilla essence (or 1/2 tsp if you have good quality stuff)
• 125g SR flour, sifted
• 120 plain flour, sifted
• 75ml caramel sauce (there is a shop made one called Vatrine if you would rather not heat up sugar)
• 50ml double cream

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160C and place cupcake cases into a muffin tray. (I actually experimented with this - I tried a cupcake tray and a muffin tray. Go muffin, they come out more even and easier to ice!)
2. Make your caramel sauce if you are using your own (or haven't already).
3. Cream together the sugars and the butter until pale and smooth. I use an electric hand whisk, but elbow grease works too.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
5. Add the vanilla extract.
6. Sift the flours into a separate bowl and combine them. To start with, add a third of the flour mix to the sugar batter.
7. Mix until it just comes together. (I would say what this looks like, but this is where I went wrong!)
8. Add the caramel sauce and beat well.
9. Add the next third of flour and mix until it just comes together. (This is when I added the eggs - paragraphs are not ideal for recipes, I cannot tell you how many times I've got a recipe wrong from losing my place in paragraphs!)
10. Add the double cream and beat well, again.
11. Put in the last third of flour and mix until combined.
12. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases. For the first time ever, I used an ice cream scoop to help me with this. My god, it makes life and portioning so easy! I wish I'd tried this years ago!
13. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. They should be slightly raised and golden brown.
14. Leave to cool - preferably not in a down draft for hours. 
15. Now they are ready to ice!

It is advisable to leave the cakes in the tray for a few minutes before transferring to the wire rack. It helps them keep their shape and helps you not burn yourself. Or is it just me that's the clumsy oik?

Brb, drooling.

COFFEE BUTTERCREAM ICING

INGREDIENTS

• 150g unsalted butter (room temp)
• 1 tbsp semi-skimmed milk - but only if you want super runny icing!!
• 2 tsp of instant coffee in a small amount of hot water (I used half an espresso cup's worth)
• 350g icing sugar, sifted

METHOD

1. Make your super strong mini coffee! (And a normal sized and strength one for yourself if you fancy it.)
2. Mix together the butter, coffee, and half the icing sugar until smooth. I usually do icing by hand because of how puffy icing sugar is but you can use an electric whisk as well. It may help the butter and coffee to not curdle.
3. Once combined, gradually add the remaining sugar to make a smooth and creamy consistency.
4. If you're me, keep adding sugar and bung it in the fridge until it solidifies!
5. Apply to your cupcakes in the desired quantities and decorate accordingly.
6. Any leftover icing goes very nicely on bourbons. Yes, I went there.

Decorating station.

Despite the panic, I am very happy with how my Birthday cupcakes turned out. I especially liked how I've been eating them all week!

Game changer!

What's your favourite cake flavour combos? Do you have the patience for icing? Should I step away from cupcakes and never venture there again! Lemme know, below.

Also, any tips on how I can end up not wearing cake mix?!

Ginger dog + black jumper = Yeti Emily

Also, also. The more eagle-eyed of you will have noticed my Birthday cupcakes contained four types of sugar in it because I am actually 9. The 20 of my age is clearly a lie!

Listening to: Made in Wales

I thought it fitting as I am writing this on St David's Day, rather than my usual Wednesday!

And yes, I am largely skipping to all the Tom Jones songs. What of it?