Spiced Pear Cupcakes with Caramel Cream Cheese Icing

Did you know it's National Pear Month in Australia. Yup it's happening all around you right now and I bet quite a few of you might have even been participating and supporting local growers by eating a delicious juicy pear. There are also all kinds of exciting pear relating goings on around, including your chance to win for dinner for 2 HERE and lots of other foodie events around the country. You can find out more at rediscover the pear HERE.

We don't actually need to rediscover the pear in this household, despite all the cake and cookies I bake we are big fruit eaters here, and yummy Australian pears are always in the fruit bowl during their season.

OK - these green dot ones look good but that is way too much frosting - 

trust me don't do that, make your swirl smaller like the other pics.

In celebration of the pear, I came up with this light and delicious spiced pear cupcake topped with a swirl of creamy caramel cream cheese icing.

The light and fragrant cupcake was reminiscent of a tea cake and matched the decadent icing well.

But if your looking for something less creamy they were also lovely without any icing, or dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar.

Those cinnamon sugar ones were really good warm so these are the only photo's I got :)

Spiced Pear Cupcake (makes 20 - 24 cupcakes) store in an airtight container for up to 3 days

Note that this recipe calls for Extra Large eggs in place of large eggs, just because that is what I mostly have in my fridge. I use organic eggs when possible and always free range.

1 large pear cut into very small pieces (yield around 1 3/4 cup) I used Sweet William variety
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp all spice
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
4 Extra Large Eggs
250 (8 3/4 oz)grams unsalted butter softened.


Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F). Line 2 muffin trays with paper cases.

In a medium bowl mix together the pear, cinnamon and all spice.

Sift the flour and sugar into a large bowl and make a well in the center, add the Eggs and softened butter and mix well at low speed using an electric mixer until just combined. Scrap down the sides. Increase the mixer speed to medium high and mix for 2 minutes.

Using a spatula fold the spiced pear mixture into the cupcake batter. Spoon batter into prepared tins filling the paper cases 3/4 full.

Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to cool.

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

200g (7oz) Cream Cheese at room temperature
100g (3  1/2 oz) Unsalted Butter at room temperature
3 cups sifted icing sugar
1/4 cup caramel (like top and fill) or make your own dulce de leche following the instructions HERE

Place the cream cheese and unsalted butter in a large bowl and mix until combined. Add the icing sugar one cup at a time and mix at medium low speed until incorporated, increase speed to high and mix for 2 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the caramel and mix until well combined. If you are spreading the cream cheese onto the cakes you can use straight away if you would like to pipe place in fridge until the mixture becomes firm.

Alternate Cinnamon Sugar Topping

Melt 125g (3.5 oz) unsalted butter in a bowl. In a separate shallow bowl mix together 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 2 Tbsp (2 Tbsp 2 tsp US)ground cinnamon. Dip the tops of the cupcakes in the melted butter and then into the sugar mixture.

Tahlin's Safari party, Safari Cupcakes and making black fondant

 
One of the best things about doing what I do is some of the amazing people I have met.

I have been really lucky through my work to meet a bunch of other party and sweet minded people who I have worked with on various projects and I can honestly say that to date I have yet to meet anyone I didn't like and quite a few of them have become friends I've worked with many times.

Like Daneve from Ah-Tissue who is genuinely lovely, and oh my goodness so super talented and inspirational.
A little while back I made some cookies and cupcakes for her son's Safari party. The designs were created by Daneve and her partner to work in with the theme.

The whole party was totally amazing! If you haven't seen it yet you should pop on over to her blog to see all the shots.

Here is the link to Tahlin's party on the Ah Tissue Blog.

and the photo's used in this blog post (apart from the one in the cupcake instruction section) are by Katie takes a picture.

How I made the cupcakes

The cupcakes were inspired by the beautiful invitations and were giraffe and zebra print disks of ready made fondant.

As you want them to be firm enough to hold their shape, plan to make these a few days before the party. In ideal conditions they will firm up in a day but with humidity or rain you might need a little bit longer.

Knead the fondant until pliable and add any colours then place them in a airtight container. For my safari toppers I used white background with black stripes and the giraffe was a mixture of ivory and light brown background and brown spots. Dark colours need to be made a day or so before to allow the colors to settle. (see end for black and brown fondant).

Dust your workbench with a little cornflour(cornstarch) and using a small plastic rolling pin roll out the fondant until it is a few mm thick (1/8 inch). Cut out a round shape in the size you would like the cupcake toppers to be, mine were around 6.5cm (2.6"). If you don't have a suitable round cutter you can always use the rim of a glass or cup.

Place the round cut shapes onto a parchment paper lined tray.

Now roll out the black fondant and cut out another round shape and using a sharp knife hand cut stripes. Make them messy not just straight up and down. If you are working along the circle the stripes should kinda fit into each other like mine do. When you have enough to cover the white circle (you will not use the whole black circle) arrange them onto the white disk, if needed use a really tiny amount of water* and then roll on with the plastic rolling pin very gently so you do not ruin the circle, although if you do you could just reuse your circle cutter to even it up. Cut any excess black overhang off with a knife.

*I dip my clean, for fondant use only paintbrush in the water and then dry most of it off with a paper/absorbent towel. especially when using black, red or other strong colors that easily bleed.

 (this photo by Darren Frankish - thanks Darren)

For the Giraffe print toppers, cut out a round of the ivory colored fondant, place it flat onto the parchment paper. Cut out the round of brown fondant and hand cut the spots, make them uneven and work in together. If you do not mind if the sides are not so sharply defined you could just pinch off pieces of the brown fondant and shape them into the spot shapes with your fingers which is much much faster.Adhere the spots with a small amount of water and gently press on using a plastic rolling pin.

Yup really that's how I made them and it does take a long long time. Alternately you could paint on the stripes with edible black paint or food colour.

Then I made up a batch of vanilla cupcakes and baked them in brown paper cases and topped them with vanilla buttercream piped in a swirl with a 1M tip. It was a flat swirl starting in the middle and working out to the edge. Toppers can be pushed carefully onto the top just before serving.

Colouring Fondant Black

I'm going to share a little trick with you on how I colour my ready made fondant black.

Start with chocolate fondant, yup they make chocolate fondant which I think tastes great (I use the Bakels brand), knead until pliable and then add Americolor superblack food colour until you reach the desired color. Store at least overnight to allow the colors to set.

I like this method for 2 reasons. Well technically one reason which has 2 benefits.

You use less colour which means:
1. the fondant will not get sticky (if it does get sticky you may need to add a little cornflour to the mixture and knead it in); and
2. There is less risk of a bitter food color taste.

Don't get me wrong it's still a messy process but you will use way less color and I think the fondant tastes waaaay better.

Here are a couple of places you can buy the Bakels chocolate fondant in Australia online:

Baking Pleasures

Cakes around town

and in the US I noticed that Michaels sells Wilton chocolate fondant and you can get Chocolate Satin Ice online from Sugarcraft



Oh and you know if your totally sensible and your using a lot of fondant you could just buy ready made black cause they sell that as well........but then it wouldn't taste like chocolate.

Vanilla Frappuccino Cupcakes

Vanilla Frappuccino Cupcakes. I know YUM how super delicious do they look.

I'm going to share something which seeings as I love sweets so much you might think is weird, but I don't like real cream. 

Buttercream I am totally into, certain types of that super fake mock cream I really like (hello jam and cream donuts) but real cream from a cow just does not do it for me.

But I love the look of it, I always want to say yes to spiraling swirls of cream when I pick up my fancy coffees but I never do and end up with flat looking although still delicious decaf treats (Ummm decaf yes :( yet another weird thing).

So to make myself feel a bit special I made up these super dooper swirly Vanilla Frappuccino cupcakes.

and then I popped them into my favourite cup.


OK so I'm going to have to show off this cup because it is my favourite and I love it. It's a Spode lidded chocolate cup, so that your hot chocolate stays warm of course......ha like mine ever lasts long enough to go cold.

Truthfully I didn't come up with the cupcake in a cup idea, totally stole it after seeing some inspiring pictures from the lovely Penny's facebook page at P.S. I love you.

But the cupcake is totally mine.

To make the cupcakes pipe coffee vanilla buttercream (recipe below) onto vanilla cupcakes using a Wilton #1M tip swirling around like your making a soft serve icecream. Practice a couple of times on the workbench if you like before you start on the cupcakes.


Sprinkle a little cocoa powder or drinking chocolate onto the top of the cupcake. I use a tea strainer to do stuff like this as it is easy to control. Just pop the cocoa into the strainer hold over the top of the cupcake and gently tap against your other hand.

Finish off with a mini straw wafer cookie, the ones in the picture are mini corinthian ones you can pick up at Woolies, but any brand will do. Make sure you pop the cookie straws in just before serving as they get soggy if you leave them in.

Coffee Vanilla Buttercream

228g unsalted butter (8 oz or 2 sticks) at room temperature
60ml milk (1/4 cup)
6 cups sifted icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
2 tsp vanilla extract
3tsp instant coffee mixed with a small amount of hot water, just enough to melt it.

Pop the unsalted butter, milk and 4 cups of icing sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix at high speed until light and fluffy about 5-6 minutes. Scrape down sides as required. Add the remaining sugar one cup at a time mixing for 2-3 minutes between additions. Add the vanilla and coffee and mix well.

If the buttercream is not the correct consistency add extra milk 10mls at a time (I didn't add any extra to this one).


Any cupcake will do the Vanilla cupcake I used is the Magnolia recipe, I don't post other people's recipes here on my blog but I am sure you could find it if you searched.

C & J's wedding

I have been a bit of a poor blogger at the moment. Life has been a bit crazy as life is.

One of the things I have been busy with is making the cake, figurines and cupcakes for my cousin's wedding.

It's not really something I do for people, or am particularly great at, but the bride is adorable and was the flower girl at my wedding years ago.

Plus she is the total opposite of a bridzilla, more of a sweeterella and wanted a really relaxed yet elegant looking cupcake tower.

The tower was 80 vanilla cupcakes and with a one tier chocolate mudcake topped with figurines I made myself out of ready roll fondant. In the darkish reception it looked pretty good.

C & J wishing you a lifetime of joy, happiness, health and sweetness ♥
 

Peppermint Marshmallow Christmas Tree Hi Hat cupcakes

I made these late at night with sore feet from a day of shopping and no will to decorate. I think you can tell.

But see what I did here, I used some free editing and pretty props to redirect your attention so you can't see what a bad job I did.

I've talked about it before I call it the pusscat dolls effect, and it works a treat until you look closely. 


Oh alright I know I didn't really trick most of you and they weren't really that bad but the dipped ones were a bit messy as I used some green wilton melts and didn't really thin the chocolate out enough.

Yup not taking my own advice, but I was really really tired. Please do what I say not what I do.

Oh and loooove these teensy weensy little edible stars I picked up at Little Betsy Baker. 

The marshmallow topping seemed to be a hit in my family, my daughter actually rolled her eyes saying yum as she licked it from her fingers.

If you don't love peppermint you can omit it and I think this topping would also make great 'snowball' cupcakes without the green colour.

Pussycat dolls redirection props

Pom pom from Ah-Tissue

Cupcake Wrapper co Christmas wrapper from Details Details

Single Cupcake Stand from Mon Tresor

 Recipe after jump

Chocolate 'Christmas Pudding' Cupcake Tutorial

OK I seem to have a bit of a fake pudding thing going on here. Obsessed much?

Seeings as I don't actually like pudding so I don't know where it's coming from.

I do however like these chocolate cupcakes, they're a bit of a reworked version of the sundae cupcakes I make which were inspired by the super talented Hello Naomi.

 

Sundae cupcakes.....change the colours and they become Christmas Pudding cupcakes

I did make one change which I am really happy with that I've been thinking about ever since I made the last batch. Instead of a rolled red ball of fondant on the top I have dipped a Tim Tam Truffle in red chocolate. It's like a cakepop topper....sooo much yummier.
I also did a version with some coffee flavoured ganache I had sitting around and I'm loving it as well. Of course you could just use a jaffa which would be tasty as well.
Oh and how lovely are the petite little mini stands. My wonderful friend Jo gave them to me as a gift, and she bought them for me from Mon Tresor.

Of course the cupcake wrappers are from The Cupcake Wrapper Co. I was lucky enough to win this packet of Christmas wrappers on their blog a while back.

I also tried out a version of the 'pudding' using Chocolate Modeling paste instead of fondant. It worked but the fondant is easier to work with, maybe chocolate fondant would be a good middle ground next time I make them.

Modeling Chocolate used instead of brown fondant in this one

Christmas Pudding Cupcake Tutorial

Ingredients and Equipment

Un-iced Cupcakes
Frosting - buttercream or ganache your choice
Rolled Fondant
Brown and Green Gel type food colour
Mini Cake or Cookie pops dipped in red chocolate or jaffas
Cake smoother
Small offset spatula
Mini rolling pin
Round cutter size of cupcake (I used a cup as I didn't have a cutter quite the right size)
Ikea cutters

This is the set of Ikea cutters available from their kitchen wear section

When making your cupcakes only fill the paper cups about half full as pictured so that the end cupcake is even and flat.

Using the small offset spatula, cover the cupcake with frosting in a smooth dome shape.


Colour some fondant brown, roll out and cut out circle shape.
Place on top of frosted cupcake and using a cake smoother gently smooth the fondant out towards the edge.




If you have a lot of overlap you can carefully cut along the edge with a sharp knife.

Roll out white fondant (not too thin as you will be rolling the cut out further) and using the small 'splatter' shape from the Ikea plastic cutter set cut out white fondant.
Using the small rolling pin roll out the splatter shape to make it larger and even more misshapen. Attach to brown fondant using a little water if necessary.
Pop a little buttercream on top to adhere the round 'cherry' I have used red chocolate dipped tim tam cookie truffles for this lot. You could just roll a ball of red fondant or use a jaffa.
Colour a small amount of fondant green and shape some leaves and attach to the 'pudding' using a tiny amount of water.

Once again, wishing I had one of those holly ejector sets, but these hand shaped ones will do in a pinch.

Voila faux Christmas Pudding Cupcakes.

Dessert plate on a skewer, macaron, cupcake and cake pops sticks

Found some pics from a couple of months back of some dessert skewers I made for a competition.

I didn't win........I know my mum thought I should have as well, but there are so many talented people around that that's the way the cookie crumbles, and there were some lovely entries with really great styling.

Close up of oreo truffle cookie pop

They did pop my pictures up on the blog so I was happy to see them up there.

These skewers were made from mini cupcakes wrapped in marshmallow ribbon fondant, oreo truffle cookie pops decorated with a fondant daisy and a lemon buttercream macaron.
Cupcake with Vanilla Italian Buttercream wrapped in marshmallow fondant ribbon.

The recipe for the individual portions are mostly already on the blog:

Click here for Macaron with lemon buttercream recipe

Click here for Marshmallow ribbon fondant instructions

Click here for Oreo Truffle Cookie pop recipe

Oh and I did a pink version as well, chocolate buttercake with rose vanilla Italian buttercream topped with a raspberry, raspberry macaron and tim tam truffle cookie pop. Yummo!

and yes I do have some Christmas stuff planned soon, I promise, in fact tomorrow I have the day blocked off for a bit of baking.

Update

here is the link to the contest I entered winner page http://www.pizzazzerie.com/how-tos/cupcake-skewer-contest-winner/

Cupcake pom picks from Ah Tissue Loving them

 

Thought I would share some pictures of these cute new Australian hand made cupcake pom picks from Ah-Tissue,
how gorgeous are they...... look how effortlessly they add height and colour to the cupcakes.

I was lucky enough to be able to make up the cupcakes and fondant toppers to help showcase this new product.

I sooooo love it when someone who actually knows what they are doing with a camera takes photo's of my treats they always look 100% nicer.

Cute Christmas cupcakes


sweet little ladybird topper

 Baby boy and girl perfect for a baby shower.....


and it goes without saying that I love the pink cupcake pom pick, but I think this one below is my favourite


It makes me think of a delicious neapolitan ice-cream.

Cupcake pom picks - Loving them!

Ah Tissue has a wide range of pom pom products available which are perfect for dressing up your party table


Cupcake pom pics from Ah-Tissue

Cupcakes and fondant edible toppers Bubble and Sweet

Cupcake wrappers by The Cupcake Wrapper Co

All images belong to Ah Tissue and used with permission.