needs more sugar

Well, this looks like a happily ever after cupcake story doesn’t it?

It wasn’t that way from the start you know.. I had wanted to make a bunch of cupcakes and also a mini layer cake to go with it… buuuut in a first for me I read the temp wrong in the book, there’s two methods for the cake – one for small cupcake or dariole sized cakes, and one for a large cake. So it looks like I set the temp about 30 too low for the layer cake – plus I cooked it on the bottom of the oven under the cupcakes. Anyway – it failed!

I can’t be certain of their validity – but there are reports of me maaaaybe chucking a tantrum and throwing aforementioned failure into the sink and making a lot of noise. I can’t trust these sources though. ;)

There’s a silver lining though…

Ingredients:
(This gave me 32 cupcakes.. and one mega failed mini cake)

4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
500g unsulted butter, chopped
2 cups milk
4 cups caster sugar
300g white chocolate, chopped
4 eggs, whisked
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Ingredients  - filling:

440g tin condensed milk
1 cup whipped thickened cream

Ingredients – buttercream:

8 cups icing sugar
200g room temp unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup of the caramel mix we make below
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Method – Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 155°C
2. Sift flour and baking powder together into a bowl, make a well into the centre and set aside
3. Put the butter, milk, castor sugar and white chocolate into a metal bowl and place over a large saucepan of simmering water
4. Stir continuously using a wooden spoon until chocolate has melted and the sugar has dissolved
5. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature
6. Fold eggs and the vanilla extract into the cooled choc mix, pour this into the flour and mix until well combined
7. Divide the mixture between cupcake cases, bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean
8. Cool completely on a wire rack
9. Take a sharp knife and cut a circle out of the top of each cupcake
10. Into the holes of the tops of the cupcakes, spoon some of the caramel filling until it is level with the top of the cake
11. Using a wide star tip, pipe the buttercream on top of the cupcakes

Method – Caramel:
(Cheats tip below under crumbs).

1. Remove the label from the tin of condensed milk and place into a saucepan of boiling water (the water must cover the tin)
2. Boil for 2 hours
   Note: you will need to top up the saucepan with more boiling water about every half hour
3. Carefully remove the tin from the water using a pair of tongs and place on wooden cutting board (I don’t know why it has to be wood?)
4. Place a can opener onto the tin but don’t open it yet or you will end up with caramel EVERYWHERE and some serious burns
5. Cover the tin and opener with a tea towel – now you can puncture the tin to let the pressure out
6. Remove the tea towel and open up the tin to reveal the caramel
7. Pour the caramel into a bowl and cool to room temperature
8. Fold a fork through it, using a spatula fold half the whipped cream through until just combined, fold through the remaining whipped cream

Method – buttercream:

1. Just use my usual buttercream method for this
2. Substitute 1/2 of the milk for 1/4 cup of the caramel mix above

Look at that gooey caramel river!! Yum!

Crumbs…

• Keep the little tops that you cut out of the cakes in an airtight container and take ‘em to work, no one is going to say no to little cupcake bites with their morning cuppa!
• Soo… you can totally cheat on the caramel and use top’n'fill if you want. I’m sure it’s not as good as the real thing – but I was feeling super lazy today and did that, but I’ve posted the caramel recipe for you anyway.

Tags: caramel, chocolate

This entry was posted on November 28, 2010 at 7:53 pm and is filed under cupcakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.