Choc + Peanut Cupcakes

These cupcakes are so wrong I don't want to be right. I instantly felt my thighs get fatter just reading the recipe.
But let's not let that get in the way of something totally delicious.
My beautiful friend whipped these cupcakes up while I finally mastered the perfect frosting for this recipe! Great success!
We made these for a tea party & I churned some more out to take to a NYE party & they were pretty popular!
I didn't get a chance to take step by step photos as I was in a rush!
I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!


Ingredients:
3/4 cup Self Raising Flour
1/4 cup Cocoa
1/2 cup Sugar (brown, granulated or caster work fine)
1/3 cup Butter
2 Eggs
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
1/3 cup Milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence
1 large Tablespoon Peanut Butter (crunchy or smooth)
Choc Peanut Butter Frosting:
2 cups of Icing Sugar
1/3 cup of melted peanut butter
50 grams of butter
1/2 a block of dark chocolate (chopped)
Method:
1. Preheat oven at 160 degrees celsius. Place 12 cupcake cases on a cupcake tray. Sift dry ingredients (flour, cocoa & sugar) into a bowl, make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients (butter, eggs, oil, milk, vanilla & peanut butter). Mix well with an electric beater or whisk.
2.Fill each case half way, place a peanut butter cup in the middle then cover with another tablespoon of mixture. Bake for 15-20 or until a skewer inserted near centre comes out clean. Allow to completely cool.
3. Choc Peanut Butter Frosting: Sift Icing sugar into a bowl. Melt peanut butter & allow to cool before adding to icing sugar. Beat icing sugar and peanut butter and butter together. Chop chocolate finely and stir into mixture.

Sugar & Dairy free Plum & Cherry Crumble Cake

Sugar & Dairy free Plum & Cherry Crumble Cake

 

Since I've finished Uni, I've had so much time to myself, so I've been able to get back into baking! 

I got an early Christmas/Graduation present this year, something which I have been coveting for a long, long time and much to my delight I finally got a KitchenAid stand mixer! 

Isn't it beautiful!?

Needless to say this little baby has nearly paid for it's self, I've been going a bit baking crazy since I've got it but no one has complained or planned an intervention just yet.

Both of my parents have Diabetes and most of the treats I've been making (Will be posting them soon) have been laden with sugar and full fat butter which isn't good for them so they have either had to drool over them and miss out or eat them and have reactions to the sugar. Being the amazing daughter that I am I decided that I would make an effort to make some things that they could enjoy without worrying about what effect it would have on their health.
Plus, if mine & my baking partner in crime's plan goes ahead we'll be selling our treats at the market. We would also love to tap into the vegan, gluten intolerant , lactose intolerant, diabetic, egg/nut allergy niche as well as the normal stuff. It would especially be interesting to see if there was much of a demand in our area as we're in a rural town and there isn't a great deal of choice apart from one cafe specialising in gluten free food. We'll be blogging our baking adventures & road to selling our stuff over at our blog Get Your Bake On.
I adapted my recipe from Taste.com.au. I like to put my own twist on things so I've added Cherries as well as plums & blended them instead of cutting the fruit. I've also added Almond Meal and Vanilla. 

Anyway, here is the recipe for the Plum & Cherry Crumble Cake:

*Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees.

Ingredients

• Melted Dairy Free butter, to grease
• 175g Dairy Free Butter, softened
• 155g (3/4 cup) Agave Syrup
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Essence 
• 225g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100g (1 cup) almond meal
• 6 ripe plums, halved, stones removed (Blended)
• 1/2 a cup of Cherry's, stones removed (Blended) 

Crumble topping

• 2 tbs plain flour
• 25g (1/4 cup) rolled oats
• 25g Dairy Free Butter, finely chopped
• 1/3 of a cup of Dates (Blended)
• 45g (1/4 cup) Almond Meal 

Step 1: Blend butter and *Agave Syrup until smooth. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                           

*Interesting factoid: Agave is a natural sweetener similar to honey and derived from the plant that is used in making tequila, agave nectar can be used to sweeten both food and drink. This sweet syrup is an ideal alternative to sugar and offers health benefits.

  Step 2: Add dry ingredients to the butter, eggs & Agave. Blend until smooth. You'll find that the mixture is quite thick but that's OK because you will need it for the layer of Plum & Cherry puree to sit on top without seeping through.

Step 3: Blend dates until smooth & add both dates & melted butter to the dry ingredients (flour & almond meal).

Step 4: Add mixture to a lined & greased spring form tin starting with the batter then adding the layers of Plum & Cherry Puree & finishing with the crumble mixture. Bake for 50 -60 minutes on 150 degrees. 

Diabetic friendly Apple Tea Cake

It's not burnt..its "rustic"

I really love cooking for people, especially my family because they are my biggest fans.
I felt really sorry for my Dad recently, because I usually cook things that he can't have due to the sugar content and all he can do is appreciate the smells and sight of the treats I cook for others. My Dad loves muffins and cakes, especially the fruit ones, so I thought I would bake him a Diabetic friendly tea cake.
I adapted my recipe from Taste, there was a fair amount of sugar in this recipe so I opted to use Maple Syrup as I have heard that the sugar and calorie content is better than straight sugar and have found that my Dad's blood sugar levels do not seem to be too affected if he eats my food that I have included Maple Syrup in. Hooray! Wholemeal flour is better for Diabetics (or those who want to eat healthy) and I found that it gave the cake a really nice texture. But you could use normal white flour with this recipe. I also used more apples as I topped my cake with them, unlike the recipe from Taste which has a crumble topping.

Ingredients (serves 8)

• 4 apples
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• 4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup of Maple Syrup
• 250g unsalted butter
• 1 2/3 cup (250g) Wholemeal self-raising flour
• 4 eggs 

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (not fan-forced). Grease and line base of a 23cm springform cake pan.
2. Peel and core the apples, and cut into segments. Toss half of the apples in lemon juice and half the cinnamon (2 teaspoons) in a medium saucepan, top with water and bring to the boil. Draining when done. 
3. Place eggs and remaining sugar in an electric beater and beat until very light and fluffy. Melt remaining butter and pour into egg mixture. Sift in remaining flour, then fold apples in carefully until combined.
4. Pour into the pan, and carefully lay the remaining apple slices over top. Sprinkle with the other half of the cinnamon (2 teaspoons) and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
5. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Glutard, Lactard, Diabetic...everything friendly Apple & Pear Crumble

I don't know about you but I LOVE Apple Crumble, it's pretty much my all time fave dessert! This one that I made was a bit of a last minute decision and I had to mostly use things I found in my parents pantry (bless parents, they always seem to have more than I do!).
I decided to make this dessert using Dairy-Free spread as our friends daughter has an intolerance to dairy and egg and I do with lactose but...I don't really stick to a dairy free diet (oops) I just love milk and cheese SO much! It's a sad, sad life being a Lactard. I like the Olive version of Nuttelex, I found the normal version of it to taste a bit fake but at least this one has a bit of flavour, when you're intolerant to things you've got to get flavour where you can!
 I missed the usual buttery taste in the crumble but I added in extra flavour by using extra Cinnamon and Coconut in the crumble. I also opted not to use flour in the crumble either..this was basically because I forgot but it worked out just as well.

My secret weapon!

My Dad is Diabetic so I thought while I was at it I might as well exclude the copious amounts of sugar that you usually put into a crumble. I was pretty excited to find some interesting porridge mixes that we had obviously bought but not used, I found a Date and Oats mix that I thought would go really well in the crumble and that fixed my problem of not having enough sugar in the mix.
Serves 8
Ingredients:
Crumble:
1 Cup of Shredded Coconut
2 Sachets of Uncle Toby's Date & Oat porridge (Probably the equivalent of 2 cups of oats..I didn't really use measurements)
1/2 a cup of Nuttlex (melted)
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of Cinnamon
Apple and Pear Filling:
5 Jazz apples
4 green pears
1 tablespoon of Cinnamon
1 teaspoon of sugar
Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees.

- Fill a medium saucepan with about 5 cups of water adding cinnamon and sugar to the water, bringing to the boil so it has time to infuse.

-Peel and chop apples and pears fairly thick and add to the boiling water leaving them for 5 minutes or until soft.
- Strain apples and pears and place in a baking dish (I opted for a round baking dish but you could use any really)
- For the crumble add the dry ingredients (Oats, Sugar, Cinnamon and Coconut) together in a mixing bowl
- Melt the Nuttelex in microwave for 30 seconds and pour in with dry ingredients
- Mix until all ingredients are combined and pour over the top of apples and pears until they are completely covered.
- Turn the oven down to 150 degrees and bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden.
- Serve with yoghurt, ice cream (soy if you are a Lactard) or cream.

I added the Cinnamon and Sugar to the water instead of adding after I had boiled the apple & pear so the flavour would soak in, it worked really well!

Before

After! Yum!

Enjoy!
JK. xx

The day I discovered Chocolate and Peanut Butter S'mores....

I have recently delved into the world of Pinterest and I have to say I'm addicted. There are SO many amazing recipes on there that I would love to tackle and that's the premise behind me creating this blog I suppose!
I'm in my final year of uni and I realised..I have no hobbies!! I've spent the past four years of my life studying and occupied with writing essays until all sorts of crazy times of the night/morning and then the rest of the time spent NOT doing assignments I'm trying to mentally recover so there is little time for anything else.
So I thought I would make this blog in a way of forcing me to do something OTHER than think about Uni work during my holiday break, or in 6 months time..work! So let's call this a training exercise! I really enjoy cooking food and I love cooking for other people so that's generally my motivation for cooking (apart from the necessities) so if you can get something out of my cooking adventures, that would also give me great joy! So here we go:

Choc - Peanut Butter S'mores: 

The end product!

I based my recipe from a great food blog I discovered; The Girl Who Ate Everything. I tweaked my recipe a bit though. There is SO much butter used in this recipe, definitely a sometimes food!
Usually I bake as a distraction (usually from uni work) a good friend of mine called it "Procrastibaking", so yesterday as I was trying to work on my last assignment for the semester I thought, what better time than the present to get my Procrastibake on!
***Caution: You may make a mistake posting your baking adventures on Facebook as I had a baked goods deal going down at Uni as a result, but it's all in good fun and there was more than enough to go around! ;) ***
Makes 16 slices
Ingredients:
Base:2 packs of M&M's Biscuits (roughly 12 biscuits all up) but you could use any other biscuit of your choice.
1/3 cup of butter (melted)
Marshmallow Center:
*The original recipe suggested Marshmallow Fluff, but I would have no idea where to find this particular product of wonderment so I opted to make it myself *
1 large packet of Marshmallows
1/3 cup of butter (melted)
Choc-Peanut Top:
1/2 a cup of Smooth Peanut Butter (you could also use crunchy if you're feeling a bit fancy, my housemate hates crunchy peanut butter so I opted for smooth to keep her happy ;) )
1/2 a cup of Dark chocolate melts
1/2 a cup of butter(melted)
Method:
Base: 
- Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees ( for a fan forced oven)

- Crush biscuits in a food processor and add butter once crushed, stir to combine.
- Grab a baking tin and line it with some baking paper then spread the base mix over the paper evenly until its all covered.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Refrigerate for 20 minutes

Choc - Peanut top: *I would recommend doing this before the marshmallow center as I found out because I was a bit of a keen bean that, the marshmallow actually goes hard SUPER quick so it would be easiest to do that bit last. By that time the base should be ready to take out of the fridge anyway! *
- Heat a medium sized saucepan and add the butter, melt and let it boil a little.
- Add peanut butter to the saucepan, when melted take it off the heat.
- Add chocolate to the saucepan and stir to combine

Oh it get's better...

All sorts of crazy delicious!!! 

Next step after the base has cooled is the Marshmallow center! This was so fun!
Marshmallow Center:
- In a large pan melt butter and bring to the boil
- Add the marshmallows a little bit at a time until all melted, these babies will fluff up really quickly and then melt down into a sticky goo.

How awesome does this look?!

  - Next, pour the marshmallow over the biscuit base and allow to cool in the fridge for 5 minutes.

Choc - Peanut top: 
- This step is simple, pour the Choc-Peanut mix allllll over the base & marshmallow middle and keep it in the fridge for 30 mins!

WAWAWEEWA!

Enjoy! If you try making it, I'd love to hear how it worked out! I know everyone I shared this with LOVED it!
JK.