Hatching chicken cupcakes for Easter

Little chicks bursting out of white 'egg' cupcakes... Yes, Easter is here and Dr Cupcake is celebrating!

These little chicks have a cheeky look to them and they're full of character, but surprisingly simple to make, Sitting on top of a chocolate mud cupcake, they make for a festive Easter.

Thanks to Sally Alps of Alps & Amici for this lovely design.

To start, ganache your cupcake so that you have a flat smooth surface (see previous posts). Then roll and cut a small white fondant circle and stick it in the middle of your cupcake, using a drop of water to fix it in place. It doesn't matter if the edges aren't perfect, because these will be covered. Coat the top of the circle with cornflour - you can see a thick sprinkle of cornflour in this pic.

Then cut a larger circle out of white fondant and lay it on top of the cupcake, pressing down gently around the double-thickness circle in the middle, and burnishing the edges carefully with a piece of hard plastic (see previous posts). You will end up with a white fondant-topped cupcake which looks smooth but has a raised circular shape in the centre due to the double thickness of the fondant.

Now take a small sharp knife and make a straight cut through the double thickness circle in the middle.

Then make another cut at right angles to it, so that you have cut a cross.

Using the edge of the knife blade, gently prise the corners of the top layer of fondant up and fold them back a little so that they stick up into the air. This is your 'cracked eggshell'.

If the white base underneath is cut or marked don't panic because the chicken will be sitting on that bit so you won't see it.

Next roll a ball of yellow fondant and cut one side of it off with a sharp knife so that you have a flat surface at the base. Stick this into the 'egg' with a drop of water. This is the chicken's body.















Roll a smaller ball of yellow fondant for the chicken's head and stick it to the body with a drop of water. Be careful not to use too much water or you'll end up with a very sticky chicken.

Get a tiny piece of orange fondant and roll a little cone shape between your thumb and forefinger. Cut the cone off at its base with a small knife - it should be about 2mm long.

Then take a slightly larger piece of orange fondant and make a comb for the chicken's head. This starts off as a flattish sort of oblong shape. Stand the oblong up horizontally, so that one of its sides flattens out to form a base. Then use a small pair of scissors (sterilised nail scissors or barber's scissors are good) to snip into the other side of the oblong, like in this pic. When finished, carefully position the comb on the chicken's head and fix with a very tiny drop of water.

Paint two tiny black dots for eyes, using black food colouring or an edible food pen in Jet Black (available from cake decorating stores).
In this pic, I have done the eyes of the front chicken but he has not yet got his comb on. The chickens at the back have obviously been distracted by something happening off camera to the left.

Hey presto Easter chickens hatching out of pure white eggs!

A small tip, it helps if your cupcakes are quite domed on top - mostly I aim for flat topped cupcakes, but these seem more 'eggy' if they are rounded.

You could have all sorts of creatures hatching from these eggs (if it wasn't Easter of course). I've seen some awesome Paris Cutler designs of baby dinosaurs hatching.

 As we know, it's not all about fondant. Sometimes there's room for old fashioned glace icing (especially when you're doing gluten free orange and almond cakes that sink in the middle and don't give you a flat surface).

These little cakes are iced with a lemon glace icing (lemon juice and icing sugar stirred to a stiff paste) with a little yellow colouring added.

The icing was piped on using a star nozzle to get a slightly 'nestlike' shape, and the eggs pressed into the icing while it was still soft.

I used some pretty little milk chocolate eggs that were a quick purchase from the supermarket. I loved the speckles and the soft eggshell like colours.

Happy Easter, may the Easter Bunny be generous and not lead you on too exhausting an Easter Egg Hunt. :-)

How do I make Pistachio Macaroons?

...I'm glad you asked! These pretty leaf-green treats were a yummy addition to the weekend.

There are a few recipes floating around out there and I've had mixed success. My first pistachio macaroons were lumpy, and an anaemic, queasy green, like the colour of someone's face just before they get really seasick. So this time I found a better recipe, was more careful, got rid of the lumps and most importantly went wild with green food colouring so that the 'queasy green' turned into a nice, determined-looking pastel green. Heaps better!










You need a kick ass food processor or blender with heavy blade and a good motor ... Pistachios are not available ready-ground so you have to grind from scratch and they need to be really, really fine.

As with my post on chocolate macaroons, I found that using an Italian cooked meringue was far better than the French, or uncoiled meringue method, because it's more stable and doesn't sink when you're folding it in to the tant pour tant mixture.
















Tant pour tant:                     
100g ground pistachios
80g ground almonds
200 g icing sugar
green food colouring (gel is best)                     

Italian meringue:         
200g caster sugar
75ml water
 2 x 80g egg whites*
*Measure out the egg whites to get 160g (usually about 4 egg whites). You will use this in two separate stages, hence, 2 x 80g.
Pistachio buttercream: 
250g unsalted butter
75g icing sugar
80g ground pistachios 
green food colouring (gel is best)      

Preheat your oven to 150C, and line three metal baking trays with baking paper. 
Start by grinding your pistachios, with a small amount of the icing sugar, in the food processor. The sugar is useful because otherwise the oil comes out of the nuts and makes them sticky and harder to grind finely. As you are grinding them, check the fineness of the grind - you're looking for a sandy consistency like in the pic above. Add the ground almonds about halfway through the process.
 When the pistachios and almonds are ground very finely add the rest of the icing sugar and blend the tant pour tant thoroughly. Then pass the tant pour tant mixture through a fine sieve. This may seem obsessive but I assure you, it really does result in smooth, well formed macaroons. Do it!




Whisk 80g of the egg whites lightly, just until they are foamy, and combine them with the tant pour tant mixture, stirring well. You should end up with a thick mixture that is difficult to stir. 

At this point start adding your green food colouring. I use gel colouring which is available from cake decorating suppliers in little pots for about $5 per colour. There are different chades of green, I used leaf green. 


Use the colouring sparingly and remember the golden rule: you can always add more, but you can never subtract it once it's in! But conversely, remember that adding the meringue later will lighten the colour, so make it a bit darker than you want it to end up. Then put this mixture to one side and start the meringue.












For the Italian, or cooked, meringue, take the other 80g of egg whites and beat them to stiff peak while you make the sugar syrup.

Place the castor sugar and the water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil on a high heat. You need to bring it to soft ball stage or 115C. You will see this happen through the change from a watery consistency to a thicker, glossier mixture. You will notice the bubbles looking slower and softer.

Once you see this take the pan off the heat. When it's off the heat and stopped boiling, it should look like this pic. 


Then pour the hot syrup onto the beaten egg whites in a thin stream, beating constantly, to combine. When you have finished adding the syrup, keep beating for a few minutes. Beware,  the syrup will heat up your bowl and utensils.






 
You now have a beautiful creamy glossy meringue!

Stir a quarter of the meringue into the tant pour tant, just to lighten the mixture a bit, then lightly fold in the rest. Do not over stir the mixture. 

Fill a piping bag with the mixture by draping the bag open inside a large mug or jug and spooning the mixture in. (Apologies, the pic shows chocolate macaroon mixture, not pistachio, but I wanted to include it here so you got the idea of how to neatly fill the bag)

Cut the end of the piping bag to make a hole about 1cm wide, then hold the piping bag vertically and pipe straight downwards onto baking trays lined with baking paper. As you can see, I was aiming for perfect circles, but the mixture was a little runny and tended to spread a bit far which can make the shape harder to achieve. 


Then leave the piped macaroons to rest BEFORE BAKING for half an hour, to allow them to form a skin over the top. This is a very important step - if you don't leave them long enough, they won't form this skin, and the air inside them will, when heated, just pop through the top of the macaroon and crack them open instead of staying inside and making them rise up on their little 'feet' as they should. 

Bake for exactly 14 minutes, then remove from the oven. Slide the entire baking paper sheet onto a slightly wet benchtop and let it sit there for a few minutes - this will make the macaroons easier to remove from the paper. 
After five minutes, gently peel the paper back from the macaroons one by one, or, if this is getting too sticky, use a small metal spatula to lift the macaroons off the sheet. 

Make the buttercream next. Cream the butter with electric beaters until whipped up and pale, then add the sugar and ground pistachios. When this is well combined, add green colouring sparingly until you reach a shade you're happy with. 


Then sandwich pairs of macaroons together with the buttercream. 

It's worth being extra careful with the matching up of the pairs - slight variations in size and shape can look messy, but if you are completely obsessive like me, you can usually divide up your whole batch into nearly-exact matches. 









These keep really well in the fridge - at least a week (if you can resist them that long). 

There are some FAQs that might help if you encounter problems in my earlier post 'How to make the perfect Chocolate Macaroon"


Happy eating!!

Gluten- and dairy-free babies with dummies

Babies with dummies – for no reason other than I thought they were cute :-)

This design is courtesy of Paris Cutler of Planet Cake.

 I guess they would be good for a new birth or a baby shower but you’d have to check whether the mother to be was cool with sinking her teeth into a cakey baby... personally it wouldn’t bother me but some are more sensitive about cannibalism :-)

 

This weekend I wanted to experiment with some new recipes for friends and colleagues who are gluten- and dairy- free. 

I ended up with gluten-free/dairy-free two ways: an original Dr Cupcake recipe of a cherry ripe cupcake, made with the juice from stewed cherries, and a Jaffa cupcake, made with orange marmalade. 

Both have a topping of 70% dark chocolate to give them a nice even surface and make them extra yummy!  

Recipes below, first to the decorating: 

First you need to cut large circles from flesh-coloured fondant for the top of the cupcake.

To get a lovely ‘flesh’ tone, mix a small drop of ivory colouring and a small drop of red colouring into a tennis-ball-sized piece of fondant icing.

When you place the large circle on top of the cupcake, use a ‘smoother’ like this rectangular piece of hard plastic to gently smooth and burnish using a circular motion. You can make your own smoother by cutting a rectangle of plastic from the packaging of toys, kitchen equipment, foodstuffs, etc. 

Then you need some small blue circles for the base of the dummy.

 Place the blue circle slightly more than halfway down the ‘face’, securing with a drop of water.

Make two small indentations above the blue circle for the eyes. I used the end of a small paintbrush. 

Then roll two tiny balls of white fondant for eyeballs and press into the indentations, fixing with a tiny drop of water. Indent two smaller circles into the eyeballs and roll black fondant into balls and fix in place – these are the pupils.

Make an indentation on either side of the face, about 7mm from the edge of the cupcake, to indicate where the ears should go. Roll two pea-sized balls of flesh coloured fondant for the ears, fasten into place with a drop of water each, and use an indenting tool to hollow out one side of the ‘ear’. 

Twist some small cones of yellow, brown, red or black fondant for the lock of hair, and fix to the top of the face with a drop of water. Then roll and cut a strip of pastel pink or blue fondant about 5mm wide and 10mm long. Place a dot of water in the centre of the strip and fold both edges in to the middle so they just touch. Wrap another strip of the same width but only 5mm long around the join and fasten it underneath. Push the ‘bow’ inwards from the sides to make it stand up a bit, and leave this assembly to dry for a few minutes. Then indent a hole in the top of the bow and fix a cachou in it with a drop of water. Place the finished bow just beneath the lock of hair, and fix with a drop of water. 

Finally, fashion a dummy handle from a pink fondant ball. First roll a thick short cylinder, stand it on end and narrow out a ‘waist’. Then press the top (above the waist) between thumb and forefinger to flatten into a circular disc, and piece this with an indenting tool. Leave to harden for a few minutes and fix to the blue base with a drop of water. 

A word on the cake recipes used:

Cooking gluten and dairy free cakes can be a bit tricky, because most flours contain gluten, and most cake recipes contain flour and often milk as well. I am not an expert on gluten but I understand that it is linked, or bound, to the starch component of grain flours (wheat, rye, barley, maize).

If you don’t often cook for food intolerances and allergies it is worth knowing that there are some traps for young players. Who would have thought for instance, that icing sugar could contain gluten? And yet, if you buy ‘soft icing mixture’ instead of pure icing sugar, you’ll see that it lists ‘wheat starch’ as an additive. THIS IS GLUTEN!! 

 

Also, if you are a fondant icing user, have you rolled out your fondant with cornflour – and if so, have you checked that your cornflour is gluten-free? Some are, some aren’t – and remember that even if you buy a lovely gluten-free cornflour today to use for your gluten-free cookery,  if you have used a gluten-containing cornflour to roll out fondant in the past and you are using fondant mixed or rolled previously, it will be contaminated with gluten. So be very careful because you don’t want to poison your friends :-)

The first recipe is a Dr Cupcake original. I adapted it from a standard gluten-free, rice flour cake. The texture of the rice flour is very fine and makes for a fine, crumbly and rather dry cupcake. This does not keep well – I recommend refrigerating or freezing if you are not eating them the same day (don’t refrigerate when they are fondant iced though because it will make the icing go tacky – you must just eat them straight away).  

The second recipe is one that my mum gave me years ago, you can make this as a loaf cake as well – it does sink in the middle, but you can fill up the dip with fruit (if making a loaf cake) or chocolate (if cupcakes, see below). These have much better keeping qualities, they should be okay for about five days, longer if refrigerated. The marmalade is really good in this cake, even if you don’t usually like marmalade – it stops the cake from being too sweet but keeps it very moist, almost syrupy, and a bit tangy. Yum!

Red Cherry Cupcakes

*Gluten-free / *Dairy-free

Makes 10 cupcakes

2 eggs

1 cup castor sugar

1 ½ cups rice flour

1 ½ tsp gluten-free baking powder (check packet)

Pinch of salt

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup cherry juice (from stewed, tinned or fresh cherries)

Red food colouring

50 g dark chocolate 70% cacao (check packet to ensure there are no milk products)

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat eggs and sugar together until thick and pale. Stir in the rice flour, baking powder and salt until combined, then add the vegetable oil and cherry juice. Adjust the colour by adding the food colouring until you have a dark pink mixture. Spoon into cupcake papers and bake. Check after 20 minutes – the cupcakes are ready when the top springs back lightly when touched.

Wait for the cupcakes to cool, then heat some water in a small saucepan. Place a clean dry heatproof bowl on top of the saucepan and chop or break the chocolate into small pieces, placing these in the bowl. Stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted. Using a teaspoon, drizzle chocolate over the top of each cupcake and spread evenly with a spatula. Finish with rolled fondant (if using rolled fondant, be careful to use a gluten-free cornflour or pure icing sugar with no wheat starch added to roll the fondant out). 

 

Orange and almond cupcakes

*Gluten-free / *Dairy-free

Makes 12 cupcakes

3 eggs

100g ground almonds

50g castor sugar

1 tsp gluten-free baking powder (check packet)

175g orange marmalade

100g dark chocolate 70% cacao (check packet to ensure there are no milk products)

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the eggs with an electric beater so that they are very thick, creamy and form a ‘ribbon’ – this will take between 5 and 10 mins at full speed. Mix the dry ingredients together and fold them carefully into the egg mixture, being as careful as possible not to lose the air from the eggs. Then add the marmalade and fold in. As soon as the mixture is evenly combined, spoon into cupcake cases and bake for about 20 minutes. Check cakes with a skewer – if it comes out clean, the cakes are ready. These cakes will rise, then fall in the middle quite deeply – this is normal. 

When cakes are cool, heat some water in a small saucepan. Place a clean dry heatproof bowl on top of the saucepan and chop or break the chocolate into small pieces, placing these in the bowl. Stir occasionally until the chocolate is melted. Using a teaspoon, drizzle chocolate into the centre of each cupcake, filling the dip entirely so that the top of the cupcake is a level ‘lake’ of chocolate. Leave in fridge to harden.

Finish with rolled fondant (if using rolled fondant, be careful to use a gluten-free cornflour or pure icing sugar with no wheat starch added to roll the fondant out).

Enjoy!

Shirt and Tie Cupcakes for Parliament Week

As Parliament is sitting this week, it seemed appropriate to dress up a little!

Our pollies are quite fashion conscious and the choice of tie can be crucial. So I did these 'stuffed shirt' cupcakes to take in to work today.


















First I ganached the cupcakes. You start off with a cooled cupcake, and brush it with a little apricot jam diluted with water.

Then you spread it evenly with ganache (a mixture of cream and chocolate, made by pouring boiling cream onto small pieces of chocolate and stirring until it dissolves and becomes a thick, glossy mixture). The ganache needs to 'set' overnight after it is made to make sure it is the right consistency.

Finally, you dip a small metal spatula in boiling water and smooth the top so that no creases, dips or bumps remain. This gives you a completely flat surface to work with.

 For the shirts, I mixed up some pastel coloured RTR fondant using gel colouring (no one wears really bright business shirts).

Each shirt required one large circle, one wide strip, one little square and one tiny strip the same length as the square. This picture shows the quantities for two shirts.

You also need a contrasting fondant colour for the tie, and from this contrasting colour you need to hand cut a tie about 1cm wide at its widest point, and about 6cm long. You also need two small triangles, one .5 cm wide and one 1cm wide. These are not shown in the pic.





Use the big circle to cover the top of the cupcake. Adhere it with a few drops of water and burnish the top with a piece of flexible plastic, or a small cake smoother, to make the surface absolutely smooth and even.

Fold the wider strip in half lengthways and shape it into a horseshoe, or open-ended circle. This will be the collar of the shirt.









Using a little water on its base, stick the collar onto the top of the shirt.

Then stick the square piece of fondant onto the right side of the cupcake with a tiny drop of water, and stick the little strip across its top with an even smaller amount of water. This will be the shirt pocket.

Using a large needle or a small pointed working tool, prick tiny holes around the edges of the square to imitate stitching on the pocket.

Make the tie from a contrasting colour. You will need to hand-cut the ties, using a tapering oval shape as the base. Make them a little longer than the space between the bottom of the collar and the edge of the cupcake, and when positioning them, bend or fold them up a little so that they are more three dimensional.

For the knot in the tie, cut a tiny triangle out of rolled fondant in the same colour as the tie. Stick this over the top of the tie.

Try to tuck the little corners into the edges of the collar for extra realism :-)

Then cut another triangle, slightly bigger, to make a handkerchief for the shirt pocket. Stick this in place.

Stripey ties are really effective!

For stripes, roll out one colour as your base, to about 4mm thick (slightly thicker than you want it to end up). Lay this aside and cover it with plastic to stop it drying out.

Then take a second colour and roll it out slightly thinner. Cut long thin strips (2mm) from this, using a ruler and a sharp knife. 

Lay the strips across the base colour, making sure they are parallel. Then position your rolling pin and roll firmly in the direction of the strips.

You can then use your new 'stripey' colour to create fashionable ties for your stuffed shirts!



 Happy parliament week!