Greek inspiration ― Olive & Ouzo cupcake

When Cat asked me to do a guest post for Sugar Daze I thought it was a great opportunity to play around with a couple of ideas I'd been having for new cupcake flavours. I thought about Greek products that might go well in a cupcake and might go well together.


Some of the ingredients I had in mind were figs, olives, brandy and ouzo.


I've had this jar of sweet olive preserve for a while now and I've been thinking of a good way to get them into a cupcake. Here in Greece it's very common to make a sweet preserve of various fruits and vegetables even.



It's not jam, marmalade or jelly but fruit or veg that is sometimes blanched and then stored in a sugar syrup. Depending on the fruit it can be boiled in the syrup or separately. You can get all the popular fruits such as cherry and grape and also more unusual things, such as baby egg-plant, all in sweet preserve form. They are often served on a small saucer, just a spoonful and are considered a healthy treat. They are fat free but are full of sugar!

In the photo below we have sour cherry on the left and my olive preserve on the right:


The thing that I admire about the women who make 'spooned sweets' as they're often referred to here, is that it totally encompasses thriftiness. Not a thing goes to waste. The abundance of fruit and vegetables from the trees and gardens can be preserved in sweet form for months.

Sweet Olive preserve is not widely available in Greece, well not at the supermarkets anyway, you probably have to go to a shop that specialises in sweets and other Greek produce. I get mine from a wonderful local shop: Melokipos (Honey garden).

So anyway... I was thinking that olives and figs together would be a very unusual concept but in the end I realised that the cinnamon and clove that are in the preserved olive just wouldn't work together so well.


I'd already soaked some dried figs in brandy overnight so in the end I made a simple batch of plain cake adding the finely chopped olives to half of it and the finely chopped brandy soaked figs in the other half.


I often use the simple recipe of 100g flour, 100g sugar, 100g butter & 2 eggs recipe when I'm doing experimenting. I can tell afterwards if I need to change the recipe to get it more or less moist, it's a good starting point.

There was a delicious smell in the kitchen as they were baking! For the frosting I made a simple buttercream; for the olive cakes I added some ouzo and for the fig cupcakes I added some brandy.


Findings: The Olive & Ouzo cupcake was really good and I'm not even an olive fan! Alex thought it was a little dry and maybe it could have done with a slightly more moist cake. The ouzo in the frosting is very interesting. You can barely tell it's there and then right at the end you get the slight taste of aniseed.



The Brandy Fig cupcake was divine too. I'm partial to figs so I knew this one was going to be my favourite.


I can't wait to try something similar when the fresh figs are in season, towards the end of summer. I also think that some cocoa in this cupcake wouldn't go amiss. It won't be too painful to have to do some more experimenting!

Whoopie pies

Whoopie pies and macarons are two things I have been meaning to have a go at for a long time. I see lots of recipes for both on Tastespotting.


A couple of weeks ago my sister in law asked me whether I had ever made whoopie pies. She'd seen them in a magazine (which I gave her...) and assured me she would be more than happy to do a taste test!

The same day as she mentioned it, I had seen this list of recipes at the kithcn.

I went ahead and made the first ones on the list. Making a few little alterations to it. They were delicious. My sister in law agrees.

I might have whoopie pies in the shop from time to time, but I feel that, since they are essentially the same as cupcakes but in a different shape and not so easy to transport or eat, it's probably best to stick to cupcakes!


I might have to keep making them until I've made up my mind.

Liz Cupcakes

Ice cream sandwiches ― Update

There is a lot going on over here behind the scenes. No, my next post is NOT going to announce the shop is open. Although I'd love it if that was what my post was about, wouldn't you miss all the renovation photos?

The thing is, I really can't blog about it until things are official. Let's just say we seem to be finally moving forward and not backwards. Let's say now we really are coming face to face with bureaucracy.

When we finally get this place open, I'll consider it one of my life's achievements. That is, if I haven't gone missing under a mountain of paperwork.

So, let's all have something tasty to cool us and our nerves down.


I've seen quite a few recipes for cookie ice-cream sandwiches flying about the internet lately. I love ice-cream sandwiches, so I was itching to try.

I found myself with some spare chocolate chip cookies which I'd made for topping the cupcakes from the last post. There was also some cheapy ice-cream in the freezer, so I decided to go ahead and sandwich some of them together.

The result was tasty but a little too sweet. The chocolate cookies are fairly sweet anyway and, like I mentioned, the ice-cream was a bit of a cheap one. If I was going to make them deliberately, as opposed to just stuffing together whatever I had in the house, I would choose the recipes a bit more carefully. I'd pick a less sweet cookie and a much better quality ice-cream or even a home-made one.

After you have put a dollop of ice cream on one cookie, you just squash it all together with the other one and, if liked, dip in sprinkles.

Then store tightly wrapped individually in cellophane in the freezer until ready to eat. You have to work quickly, unless your kitchen is nice and cool! An extra pair of hands might have been useful!

Liz Cupcakes

Monkey bread

I first saw a recipe for this on Ree's (aka The Pioneer Woman's) blog. I thought at the time it would be delicious, but I would make it with home made dough and not bought. Before I got around to making it, I saw another version by Deb at Smitten Kitchen.

I finally got round to making it a few weeks ago. Which recipe did I use? Well, sort of both of them. I made my own dough pretty much following the Smitten Kitchen recipe, but then I sort of followed the rest of the instructions from The Pioneer Woman's recipe. A bit vague, I know, but basically I did what I thought would be the easiest! It was divine. And it might be a bit calorific.

You could easily cut down the butter a little. But not too much, since it is supposed to be a treat! I think it makes a perfect recipe for setting up on an evening and then baking in the morning for breakfast. In fact, when I have guests this summer (starting today) I'm going to be making it for them!

Liz Cupcakes

A new yummy flavour

I'm back! Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and wishes for my Dad. The operation went very well and he is recovering very nicely. He stayed in hospital for two and a half days and then I spent a day getting groceries and then the next day I cooked food from morning until night to fill up the refrigerator and freezer so they don't have to think about cooking for a week or so! I haven't been on my feet in the kitchen for so many hours since I baked 700 cupcakes for my Brother-in-law's wedding!

Anyway, the doctors say some sea swimming will help him build up his strength but he has to let 12 weeks pass from the date of the operation, so hopefully they will get to come for some swimming before the summer is over.

Here is a new yummy flavour I experimented with before I left. They were delicious. I'm not going to reveal all my ideas for flavours but if you look closely you can probably tell!


I'd have liked the flavour in the cake to be a little bit stronger, but the frosting was very good!


Liz Cupcakes

Saffron cupcakes ― A Taste of Greece

This is my offering for today. In the shop I want to serve some cupcakes with more unusual ingredients. Today I started experimenting with saffron from Kozani. Saffron has a unusual taste but an amazingly beautiful colour!



I was undecided about what flavour frosting I should pair the cake with. Some of my ideas were almond, orange, lemon, pistachio, honey, rose-water or vanilla. I used vanilla but I think some of my other ideas may also have been good. The idea of lemon appeals because of the whole yellow thing that we've got going.


Kozani saffron is a product with protected designation of origin. It's expensive and it's also organic. It can be used as wonderful natural colouring. I think I'd like to make the whole cupcake organic the next time. I didn't do these ones organic but I think it can easily be done.


So again a little tweaking needed but overall a good cake.

Liz Cupcakes

Behold...the hummingbird!

We're still on our little vacation in the UK, visiting Grandad and Granny cupcakes. Wish you were here. Well, not really! The weather has been very good so far with only two days of rain and it's forecast to be sunny for the rest of our stay so I won't be spending much time in the kitchen!





Here's a little something to keep you going until we get back. This is a hummingbird cupcake (you'll have to excuse the light in these pictures ― they were taken on one of the rainy days). Depending on the recipe you use, hummingbird cupcakes have banana, pineapple, sometimes carrot and coconut inside. The frosting is usually cream cheese. So what's so special about this hummingbird?


Well... (blowing trumpet ahead of me) this is my first attempt at a sugar free cupcake. Yes, sugar free!

What's the point of a sugar free cupcake, you might ask. Well there is a lot of point if you happen to be a diabetic. It was time to try out a few recipes for those who have special dietary requirements, so after doing quite a bit of research and asking for some advice from another lovely cupcake baker, Laura, I had my first attempt.

Now, sugar plays several roles in the baking process. Not only does it add sweetness but it also adds volume (as well as colour) to a recipe. Sugar substitutes don't add volume or colour, only sweetness. Take a look inside the cupcake:


You can see that it is very pale. That is something I am going to try and work on. The overall appearance of the cake was good. The overall taste, well, if you are a sugar addict it might not quite hit the spot, but if you are not allowed to have sugar in your daily life and only on a special occasion, then you would find that this little cake actually does it!

For my first sugar free recipe it wasn't too bad, I thought. I'm going to be experimenting more, so we have a sugar free option on our menu some days or available for special orders.

Liz

Sunset at Silloth, Cumbria, UK ― April 2010
(Nafplio / Shmafplio, it's all the same...)

Leftovers

It's already March. I thought I'd better show you a few of the other things I baked and cooked in December and January before they go out of date!

First up, here are some cupcakes. Lots of them.







I also made this orange marmalade. We were given quite a supply of organic oranges and since the recipe I used calls for boiling the whole orange, I thought that organic oranges were the way to go.



Now, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was given lemons this time. I decided I should try my hand at some limoncello. I've got that brewing. It takes time though, so I'll keep you updated on that if it turns out well. I think it will go extremely well in some buttercream.

We've been doing more running around this week and looking at possible locations for the shop. It has been very enlightening.

I wish there was more interesting things to say but that's all for now.

Liz

Q&A

The last post raised a few questions (on the greek side of the blog) so I will try my best to answer them (even though I can see from your comments that you're all taking care of it yourselves!)

Xanthi, I think it highly unlikely that you will find the Dairy Book of Home Cookery in any bookshop either in Athens or in the UK. The book was never distributed through book shops to my knowledge but was ordered and delivered by the local milkman (does anyone really remember the milkman?) I am not sure if there are 'Milk men' anymore. Every one seems to buy their milk from the grocery store nowadays. According to wikipedia the Milk Marketing Board was dissolved in 2002.

I was fairly surprised to find the book when I did a google search the other day. I thought that perhaps I might find a second hand one on Ebay. It seems that there must be a few still available at various online bookshops. If your children are staying in the Uk for a while they could certainly order it through one of the amazon sellers that I linked to in the last post and have it delivered to wherever they are staying.

Angeliki asked about getting cupcakes to be level on the top and not to dome.

First of all I'll point out that I always use my fan assisted oven. It makes a difference for baking cakes. My oven has two dials. One for the temperature and the other which has the different settings. With mine you can use the fan alone, the fan and the grill together. Obviously we don't want the grill on :P The fan makes the oven the same temperature all over so that it doesn't matter which level of the oven you put your cakes in (this enabled me to make three trays of cakes at a time for the wedding). Most oven manufacturers suggest lowering the temperature between 10 and 20 degrees when using the fan setting.


This is what I would do if my cakes were turning out domed:

First, I would check the oven temperature and maybe lower it by about 10 degrees. They could be rising too quickly because of the high temperature. So, I would try cooking at a slightly lower temperature for a few minutes longer. That should do the trick.


If that didn't work, I would try a different variety of SR flour. Each brand probably has different quantities of raising agent.

Lastly, I would check the size of eggs that I am using, maybe switch to the next size down or use one less.

If that failed, too, I would get a new recipe :)

Mass produced cakes are made using all sorts of pre-prepared ingredients and the amount of cake dropped into each case is controlled by a machine too! I am not a fan as you can imagine. I think the charm of home-made, baked from scratch is that they are not all exactly the same!

I am sure that the effort you made for your daughters cupcakes made them so much more special! I would have done exactly the same if my cakes had turned out domed. Adjusting the frosting to cover it is the genius solution and who can tell?? Another thing you can do is to slice off the dome and discard the domes or even better, make them into butterfly cakes.

Experiment

This week I tried a new chocolate frosting. It was with condensed milk. It didn't turn out the way it looked on the blog I got the recipe from. It was supposed to be thick and a little fudgey but mine turned out too runny to do what I wanted with the decorations. Maybe I didn't convert the measurements properly or maybe I just didn't measure carefully. It's not so easy to measure condensed milk. They tasted ok.

Anyway... you win some you lose some.

I have chocolate brownie cupcakes in the oven now and hopefully they will turn out well. They smell nice. I am hoping to make the choc chip cookie recipe for photographing this weekend.

Update: The brownie cupcakes were out of this world and the cookies were great. The cookie photos make you just want to reach out and grab one. Morning light gives a lovely "I want one of those for my breakfast" feeling...

Liz