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

Changing seasons, changing flavours!

Can you believe Alex took this picture exactly one month ago when we went to the beach?


Winter is most definitely here! The last few days have been rather dismal. Over the past weekend we fired up the central heating for the first time. There were a few technical problems with that and one or two other things in the house but I won't go into all that! I prefer to think that everything is repaired.



The last couple of weeks have seen a change in the scenery in and around Nafplio. The view of the orange grove outside the front of our house is one thing that has changed dramatically.


A couple of weeks ago the oranges were small and very green. Now they have grown a lot and are starting to change from green to pale yellow and some even have their orange color already. It is amazing what a couple weeks of rain and a little sunshine can do!!!


It's exciting for my son. He can't wait for the oranges to ripen so he can have fresh juice! He has been asking nearly every day since we got here "when will the oranges be ready?" I am not sure if he realizes that he won't actually be able to help himself from the oranges across the street.


This week my Father in Law brought a huge bag of walnuts and another of quince from his trees in his village, Klepa, which is in the region of Northern Nafpaktos. Quince is not something I have cooked with before, so I started googling to see what delicious recipes I could find.


We settled on trying some quince jam first. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. We discovered that the color of the jam depends on the type of quince you have, some quinces make very deep pink jam and others make a more pale pink jam. Ours were the variety that make a paler coloured jam.


It was very nice on a slice of fresh crusty bread, but I also think it would be delicious on a freshly baked scone and, if I wanted to be very naughty, with a pile of whipped cream on top. If I get a chance to try it any time soon I will tell you if my conclusions were correct!





The change in the weather has made me put my mind to all the wonderful different flavours of cupcakes we will be able to make in the different seasons. In the café I want to try my best to have some flavors influenced by the seasons. This time of year it would be nice to have autumn-and-winter taste cupcakes. Something with pumpkin and winter fruits, like apple and pears or delicious spices, that remind you of sitting around the fire in winter, such as cinnamon and cloves, maybe cardamom. Quince? I am trying to think of a way to incorporate quince jam into or onto a cake! That could be interesting!

Liz

Wedding cupcakes―the recipe

I promised to post my recipes for the cakes I made for the wedding. The recipe is so basic that you will probably be disappointed.

It is taken from the recipe book I go to when I want to make a well tested, no fail recipe.


This book was first published by the Milk Marketing Board in 1968, it was revised to Metric in 1978 and then the new version for the '90s was published in 1992. The new version includes how to take shortcuts by using the microwave etc. You can still find it if you look on the net; for example here.

It has lots of useful information on ingredients, such as how to buy the right cut of meat...


descriptions of pulses...



and more. In the baking section you can find recipes for all kinds of pastry, cakes, breads and delicious recipes like this..


While I have many cupcake books and recipes, I chose this basic recipe for the wedding cupcakes because I know it works and I know that those who eat these cakes usually groan with delight when they bite into them. So I'll write the basic recipe and then I'll tell you different ways you can alter it.

Basic cupcake recipe:
Makes 12

100g Butter
100g Sugar
100g SR Flour
2 Eggs

Beat butter and sugar until very light colored and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time with about a spoonful of flour.
Fold in remaining flour.
Divide the cake between the 12 cupcake cases and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 deg for 14-18 minutes. The time will vary according to your cooker and whether or not you use a fan assisted oven.

Resist the urge to over cook. When you take a cake out of the oven it will continue to bake for another minute or so anyway.

For Lemon cake: Add one to two teaspoons of grated lemon rind to the mix

For Chocolate cake: Replace 25g of the flour with cocoa powder (For the wedding cakes I added 25g of grated dark chocolate to ads a bit of depth)

This recipe is so adaptable. You can make it into carrot cake, raisin cakes, chocolate chip cakes or anything that you feel like. You could even add coloring to the cake if you want them to be interesting for kids although I personally prefer to avoid adding colors and add sprinkles or something similar for decoration.


The basic buttercream icing recipe is from the same book.

100g Butter
225g Icing sugar, sifted
20 ml Milk
Couple of drops of vanilla extract

Beat the butter, milk and vanilla until very soft then beat in sugar.

For the wedding I added a couple of drops of red coloring (to match the wedding theme) per triple quantity of icing and I add the seeds from some Madagascan Vanilla Pods.


Vanilla pods are rather expensive to buy in the shops. I recently saw some at the supermarket for 5 Euro for one! Obviously it helps to have a Madagascan friend (Hi C) who just so happens to have returned recently with a supply for her crazy cupcake making friend!


Tip: After you have scraped the insides out of the pod, you can put it into a jar of sugar and you will get wonderful vanilla sugar which is great for all kinds of sweet baking or in your coffee if you take sugar. I always have a jar on the go.


OK... so you don't get the aroma through a photo.

For the chocolate cakes I added 25g of melted and cooled white chocolate to the icing. I use slightly less milk when I add melted chocolate.

Again you can do all sorts of variations with this recipe: You can make it citrus flavored with lemon or orange rind, you could add espresso powder, cocoa powder and many other things.

Enjoy experimenting! Remember not to over cook them!

We survived! (part one)

Well that was an adventure!


I am pleased to say that everything went perfectly with regard to making the cupcakes. My biggest concern was the transportation but I didn't need to worry, since they all arrived at the venue safe and sound.

Yes, you can fit 725 cupcakes in a VW Passat!


Where to start? We had decided to make two flavours and the previous week we had a practice run to see how we wanted them to look. The flavours we decided on were:

Lemon sponge with Madagascan vanilla frosting (in pink) topped with a handmade sugar flower; and

Dark chocolate sponge with white chocolate frosting and a milk chocolate drop.








I decided to start Thursday evening by preparing the pink frosting for the lemon cakes, since I was going to be baking them first. I had one of my capable assistants (our poor guests) measuring out icing sugar and butter ready for me to get working on. It took a couple of hours to get the 3 kilos of butter and more than 6 kilos of icing sugar whipped up into a delicious frosting. We tried out an old Kenwood free standing mixer belonging to my MIL but I was not used to using it and I felt like I could get things done faster with my ordinary hand mixer. The bride had told me that her dress was pale pink but I hadn't actually seen the color and when I saw the color of the dress and the color of the frosting I couldn't have been more pleased! They looked a perfect match.

After the kids went to bed, we put together the boxes and set out the first of the ingredients for the lemon cakes. Scrubbed the lemons from the trees in the garden at Palaio Faliro.

We went to bed fairly late and I for one didn't sleep well. Every time I dropped off, I had dreams of hundreds of cupcakes!

Friday morning dawned and my plan was to get the kids their breakfast, send them off merrily to school and start work. Things of course didn't turn out exactly as planned!

To be continued...

A challenge

So here's the thing. My Brother in Law is getting married in on Saturday. My future SIL asked me just over a week ago if it might be possible for me to make cupcakes for a treat (kerasma) for the guests. 700 of them!

It is rather a large number to turn out from my kitchen. It is rather a long way from our house to the venue. It's a bit scary. Still I am confident I can do it. This is when a spare freezer, a kitchen aid and a van might be useful! We'll think of something! (If the follow up to this story requires that I use the tag 'disaster' I will retire from making cupcakes forever.)

They won't be too large, and probably just two flavors. I am not going to be giving anything else away for now.

I have a more pressing concern: what to wear!

That, and I have guests this week.

If you do one thing today....

Make these cheesecake marbled brownies!!! They are wonderful. So good in fact, I had to make them twice to make sure I hadn't imagined it! Plus... the blog writer just had a baby last week and has also posted some pics of a baby that you just want to eat!

Now, I am thinking of making them into cupcakes (brownies, not babies!) You know, just to see how they would taste in a different shape! Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the sake of science.

Liz

Red velvet - I don't think so!

This week I haven't been in a baking mood. I think it is to do with the fact that I feel there are so many more things that we need to be getting on with regarding the move, but we can't until we get some other things out of the way. One good thing is that Fin finished school this week for the summer. We have to collect his "grades" on Monday. I put "grades" in inverted commas because he has only finished the first year and I am not sure yet how serious grades are at that age. No doubt we will find out on Monday! In a another week to ten days we should be able to turn our attention to actually finding a place and moving.

Anyway, today was the first day I felt like getting the mixer out and I decided to have another go at making red velvet cake/cupcakes. The trouble is... I just cannot under any circumstances bring myself to put that amount of red food coloring into a cake! I JUST CAN'T DO IT!! This is my second attempt. The first time I did vanilla cake which turned out a pleasant pink shade but by no means could you call them red velvet. This time I added a dash of cocoa powder. It just turned out looking like a very tasty chocolate cake. So the big problem is the coloring. It just seems to go against my whole being to add so much fake color just to get it red! It's not like it adds to the flavor after all.

I am beginning to think that red velvet won't be featuring on my menu in the shop. I did read somewhere out there on the net that someone of a similar mind to me made them with beetroot for coloring and it's something I might consider trying when I have a little time to experiment. Maybe I can add them to the vegetable range. It could be quite good. Chocolate and courgette (that's zucchini to the Americans reading, and I'll tell an amusing story about my first attempt at those another day), sweet pea, carrot (of course) and another recipe I found on tastespotting and really want to try is brownies with spinach! I can market them to parents whose kids won't eat healthily, although I am not sure the value of getting kids to eat cake in order to eat veg... How many cakes will they have to eat to get their RDA? How about 'get your 5 a day from 5 different cakes' a day??? Maybe NOT!

Oh well. I didn't have the chance to frost the nice brown red velvet cakes so stay tuned for some pictures of those coming up and then I will mention another pressing issue.

Liz