pumpkin spice cupcakes

pumpkin spice cupcakes

9 Nov 2020

You can tell Thanksgiving is around the corner when instagram is flooded with all things pumpkin. How could I not add my own pumpkin flavoured cupcakes to the mix?

Originally this was going to be pumpkin bread but when I walked past the shelves and spied the friand tin, I decided to turn the pumpkin bread into cupcakes.

The cake mixture itself is very tasty but the cream cheese icing with pecans atop, make these little cakes into very tasty treats. I shared these with my neighbours and workmates and when one asked for the recipe, you know you have a hit on your hands.

Here’s the recipe for you which makes 9 friands or 12 cupcakes. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with cream cheese icing - inspired by the Flour Bakery Famous Banana Cake recipe

Cake 

¾ cup plain flour 

½ teaspoon baking powder 

¼ tsp bicarb soda 

½ tsp ground cinnamon 

¼ tsp ground ginger 

pinch nutmeg 

pinch cloves 

pinch sea salt 

¼ cup brown sugar 

¼ cup caster sugar 

1 egg 

¼ cup canola oil 

200 gm pumpkin puree

1 tbs yoghurt 

1 tsp vanilla 

Icing 

30 gms unsalted butter, softened 

60 gms Philadelphia cream cheese, softened 

½ tsp vanilla extract 

1 cup sifted icing sugar 

Whole pecans to decorate (mine were maple glazed)  

Glazed Pecans 

12 pecan halves 

¼ cup maple syrup or maple flavoured syrup 

Pinch of sea salt

Method 

Position the rack in the centre of the oven and preheat to 180°C. Butter 12 cup muffin pan or line with paper liners. I used a friand pan. 

In a bowl, sift together the flour, bicarb soda, spices and salt. Set aside. Using a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment, or a handheld mixer, beat together the sugar and egg on medium speed for about 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. With the machine on low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil. Do not pour the oil in all at once. Add it slowly so it has time to incorporate into the egg mixture and doesn't deflate the air you have just beaten into the batter. Adding the oil should take about 1 minute. Add the pumpkin, the yoghurt and vanilla, then continue to mix on low speed just until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. No flour streaks should be visible.

Carefully spoon the batter into each muffin or friand tin. Fill each tin about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes or until risen and golden and tests cooked when a skewer is inserted. Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing from the tin. Ice when completely cold.

Pecans

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (conventional). Toss pecans in maple syrup then spread out in a single layer on a baking paper lined baking tray. Sprinkle the pecans with a few flakes of sea salt. Bake until maple syrup is caramelized and pecans are toasted about 10 minutes. Normally I check the pecans after 5 minutes, and then turn them over. Remember the maple syrup is hot so use tongs or a fork for this step. Let cool completely on baking sheet before storing the pecans in an airtight container.

Icing 

While the cupcakes are cooling, blend the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and icing sugar in a food processor until smooth or you can do this using hand beaters. Refrigerate the filling for an hour to allow it to firm. Top each cupcake with a generous dollop of icing before topping with a pecan. Store in a sealed container in the fridge but bring to room temperature before serving.

Like the rest of the world I was on tenterhooks all weekend awaiting the outcome of the US election. 

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen. 

Bye for now,

Jillian

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chocolate compost brittle

chocolate compost brittle

7 Dec 2015

I like to make something from my kitchen to give to my neighbours and friends at Christmas time. I'm planning to make sour cherry amaretti this year but after reading this post from Smitten Kitchen I thought it would be nice to make some brittle as well. 





Inspired by this recipe for compost cookies, I thought I'd make some chocolate coated compost brittle using pretzels, popcorn and peanuts for the 'compost'.



I love peanut brittle and even though it's easy to make, I chose not to make it very often as it's way too addictive. 



I'm warning you because I don't think this version is any less addictive.






Here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. My oven is not fan forced so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Chocolate Compost Brittle

1 cup caster sugar

30 mls light corn syrup or golden syrup (I used 15 mls of each)

¼ cup water

30g butter

½ teaspoon bicarb soda (baking soda)

½ cup broken-up chunks of thin salted pretzels

½ cup roasted salted peanuts

½ cup coarsely crumbled salted popcorn pieces

125g coarsely chopped dark chocolate

Method

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F. Line a lamington tin (12 x 8 inch tin) with baking paper and place the pretzels, peanuts and popcorn on the tray. Put the tray in the oven to keep the pretzel mixture warm while you're making the toffee.

Combine the sugar, corn or golden syrup and water in a medium saucepan, stirring to combine. Cook without stirring until the temperature of the mixture reaches 150°C. Take the pretzel mixture out of the oven. Remove the saucepan from the heat and quickly stir in the butter, the warmed pretzel mixture and the baking soda (which will make the mixture froth up). Mix until the pretzel mixture is coated in toffee then immediately pour the brittle back into the paper lined pan. Using a knife or an off set spatula flatten out the brittle as much as possible. Leave the brittle to set. 

While the brittle is cooling, melt the chopped chocolate in a small bowl over simmering hot water or in the microwave. I reserve about 15-20% of the chocolate and put the rest of the chocolate into a small bowl. Zap the chocolate on high in 30 second bursts until most of the chocolate has melted. Give the chocolate a good stir until it has completely melted before adding the reserved chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate has completely melted.

Once the brittle is cool and has set, gently remove the brittle (still on the baking paper) and then turn it upside down onto a cooling rack. Remove the baking paper, then pour the chocolate over the flat base of the brittle smoothing it out using a spatula. Leave until the chocolate has completely cooled. If you can't wait, you can refrigerate the tray for about 20 minutes to speed up the setting process.

Once the chocolate has set break the brittle into shards. Store the shards of brittle in an airtight tin between waxed or baking paper. As its pretty warm in Sydney at the moment, my tin is stored in the bottom of the fridge to stop the chocolate from melting.

All packed and ready to share.

See you all again next week for a full week of posts for Christmas week 2015.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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sour cherry panforte - 5 days of Christmas

sour cherry panforte - 5 days of Christmas

18 Dec 2014

Hi every-one and welcome to Day 4 of the 5 Days of Christmas. Last year I made candies for the 5 days of Christmas. Some items were a great success, like the Peppermint Bark, whilst others (white chocolate and rosemary nougat and pan pepato you know I’m talking about you) were a bit of a disaster. I recently remade the white chocolate nougat and it was much more successful the second time around.



I don't like to be defeated by a recipe so I decided to find another recipe and slightly adapted the Siena Cake recipe from the Australian Women’s Weekly Italian cookbook. 

I changed some of the fruits and added a pinch of black pepper to the mix and decided to bake the cakes in four 10 cm tins. I toasted the hazelnuts but forgot to lower the oven temperature when the time came to bake the cakes. Then I forgot to reduce the baking time so although the cake tastes delicious it's a little dry. Next time I’ll cook the mini panforte for about 20 minutes.

For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Here's the adapted recipe for you -

Sour Cherry Panforte - makes one 8 inch (20 cm) cake

Ingredients

125g (4oz) blanched almonds
125g (4oz) roasted hazelnuts
60g (2oz) dried figs
60g (2oz) dried sour cherries
60g (2oz) candied orange peel
⅔ cup plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch black pepper
60g (2oz) dark chocolate
⅓ cup sugar
½ cup honey
icing sugar or cocoa

METHOD

Spread almonds on an oven tray, put into a moderate oven (180°C/350°F) for 5 to 7 minutes, until lightly golden. Chop hazelnuts and almonds roughly, combine in a bowl with the chopped figs, the dried sour cherries, the chopped candied orange peel, the sifted flour, the sifted cocoa and cinnamon then mix well.

Cut a strip of greaseproof paper 8cm (3in) wider than depth of 20cm (8in) round cake tin and long enough to go around tin. Fold over 2.5cm (1 in) of paper strip on long side, cut this folded piece into 2.5cm (1 in) diagonal pieces to enable paper to fit around curve of tin. Cut a piece of greaseproof paper to fit in base of tin, grease before placing paper in tin, press firmly on base over the cut paper.

Melt chocolate in top of double saucepan over simmering water. Put sugar and honey in separate saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar has dissolved, brushing down sides of saucepan with brush dipped in hot water to dissolve any sugar crystals. Bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer uncovered approximately 5 minutes or until syrup forms a soft ball when a few drops are dropped into a glass of cold water. Add syrup and melted chocolate to fruit and nut mixture, mix them well.

Spread mixture quickly and evenly into prepared tin. Bake in moderately slow oven (170°C/325°F) for 35 minutes, remove from oven and cool in the tin. Turn out, remove paper then wrap the panforte in aluminium foil. Leave at least one day before cutting. Before serving, sift icing sugar or cocoa thickly over top.

These would make lovely little Christmas gifts but I decided to be selfish and have kept all four for myself. I've already eaten one panforte and I have a few stored away for those moments when you need a piece of something sweet to go with a cup of tea. 



See you all again tomorrow with something special for the last of the 5 Days of Christmas.

Jillian

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macadamia nut brittle

macadamia nut brittle

27 Jan 2014

It's the Australia Day holiday here today and I thought about bringing you something very Australian like lamingtons or pavlova. Instead I've gone a little lateral to bring you macadamia nut brittle. This was on my list of Christmas candies but I just ran out of time so here it is, better late than never.



Did you know the macadamia nut is native to Australia? Growing up in Brisbane we had a macadamia nut tree in our back yard. I don't ever remember using them in cooking but I used to love cracking the nuts open with a brick. Thankfully these days they're available at my local shops already shelled and good to go.



The recipe is based on this one I found with a few tweaks. 



Macadamia Nut Brittle
150 g coarsely chopped unroasted macadamia nuts
pinch salt
heaped ½ teaspoon bicarb soda
½ teaspoon water
½ teaspoon vanilla
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup water
½ cup light corn syrup
25 g butter

Heat the oven to 180°C. Place the nuts on an oven tray and cook for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Lightly sprinkle the nuts with salt and set to one side.

Line a 7 x 11 inch tin with baking paper; spread the nuts evenly over the paper and keep warm in the oven.

In a small bowl, mix the bicarbonate of soda with the ½ teaspoon water, the ½ teaspoon vanilla and set to one side.

Mix the sugar, the ¼ cup water and the corn syrup in a large saucepan. Cook over a medium heat stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Continue cooking until the mixture turns a light golden brown. 

Immediately remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarb mixture and the butter. The mixture will foam up.Tilt the saucepan from side to side about 10 times to incorporate the butter then pour the toffee mixture over the nuts; quickly spread about 1/4 inch thick. 

Cool completely, at least 1 hour before breaking into pieces. Store in an airtight container.



The brittle was easy to make and even easier to eat. Once again I managed to polish off most of the brittle without much help at all.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends. 

See you all again next week,

Jillian

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summer berry jam

summer berry jam

20 Jan 2014

We're in the height of summer here in Sydney with very hot days. That means berries have made their way into my local fruit shop. Now summer berries like raspberries and blackberries are never cheap in Sydney but when a punnet costs less than the GDP of a small African nation, I'll buy a few.



I have no idea why, but I suddenly decided it was time to make some jam. I think it has something to do with me now owning a digital thermometer which has made me brave. I like making jam but I do tend to over cook it terribly. I remember the time I made plum jam which was closer to plum toffee by the time it was bottled. It was completely inedible and I had to throw it out. 



When I looked through my freezer I found a few packets of frozen berries lurking so I made this jam using fresh blackberries and strawberries combined with frozen, defrosted blueberries and raspberries. I used this recipe but halved the quantities, added a vanilla pod and slightly modified the technique. It made a lovely runny, flavoursome jam which I served with some freshly baked scones.



Here's the recipe for you. It made two 400 mls pots of jam.
Summer Berry Jam
2 cups white sugar
1 lemon

375g strawberries, washed, dried, hulled and quartered if large

100g blackberries, washed, dried

1 vanilla pod

100g raspberries, washed, dried

100g blueberries, washed, dried

To sterilize jars, wash in hot soapy water and rinse. Place the jars and lids in a deep saucepan. Cover with cold water. Bring water to the boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium and boil for 10 minutes. Line a baking tray with paper towel. Remove the jars using metal tongs and allow to air dry or dry with a clean paper towel.

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Place the sugar on an oven tray and warm the sugar for 15 minutes. Meanwhile place a saucer in the freezer to test the jam’s setting point.

Juice the lemon and reserve the seeds. Place the seeds in a small piece of muslin and tie with kitchen string to secure. Combine the strawberries, blackberries, lemon juice, lemon seeds, the vanilla pod and sugar in a shallow saucepan over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil stirring occasionally for 20 minutes or until jam is reduced by one-quarter.

Remove the lemon seeds and vanilla pod from the jam then add the raspberries and blueberries. Cook, stirring occasionally for a further 5 minutes or until jam has reached it’s setting point (105°C). To check when jam is set, remove the jam from the heat and place a spoonful of hot jam onto the chilled saucer. Return to the freezer for 1 minute. Run your finger through the jam to test if it wrinkles and jells. If it doesn't, return to the heat for a further 5 minutes then repeat the test.

Take the jam from the heat and allow to cool for a minute or 2 before spooning the hot jam evenly among the sterilized jars. Seal immediately then turn the jars upside down for 2 minutes before turning upright. Set the jam aside to cool completely before labelling and dating.



It's Australia Day next weekend and I'll be on pavlova duty. I'm making a pavlova to take with me to dinner so if I get a chance I'll take a few snaps to share with you.

See you all again next week,

Jillian 

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white chocolate and rosemary nougat - 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

white chocolate and rosemary nougat - 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

20 Dec 2013

So here it is, the final recipe in my 5 days of candies and it's a doozy. One of my all time favourite Sydney restaurants is Sean’s Panaroma down at Bondi and it's where I first tried this white chocolate and rosemary nougat about 10 years ago. It was absolutely delicious and I've been meaning to make it ever since.

I have Sean's recipe tucked away in one of my recipe boxes but the effort involved in locating it (we're talking a 6 foot ladder here) was way too much for me at this time of year, so I tracked down a version on the internet. I decided to change some of the proportions in the recipe, so I can’t promise this is exactly the same as Sean’s version.




You need a stand mixer to make nougat and as I didn't own one until recently, the recipe was put to one side until now. I've never made nougat before so I held my breath and crossed my fingers that it would turn out okay. I accidentally overcooked the syrup so the nougat is much firmer than I would have liked but it still tastes delicious. I still have most of the ingredients in my pantry, so once I'm back home from my Christmas break I'm going to make this again because this is one recipe I do want to master. 

Here's the recipe for you adapted from Sean Moran’s ‘Let It Simmer’.
Ingredients
100 g white chocolate, chopped

4 sheets confectioners’ rice paper
440g (2 cups) caster sugar
½ cup honey
1 cup liquid glucose
¼ cup water
2 egg whites
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 sprigs rosemary leaves picked and finely chopped
100 g dried strawberries, chopped
100 g candied orange rind, coarsely chopped
100 g toasted pistachio kernels
100 g white chocolate, chopped
100 g unsalted butter, chopped

Place the chocolate in the freezer to harden. Line a 7 x 11 inch cake tin with half the rice paper. Preheat the oven to 100°C. Place the dried fruit and nuts in the oven and keep warm. Divide the caster sugar, glucose, honey and water between two small saucepans. Place both on the stove and cook over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Beat egg whites and salt in an electric mixer until firm peaks form. Increase heat on the saucepans and bring to 125°C on the sugar thermometer. Remove both from the heat and pour the first saucepan into the egg white mix in a steady stream while the motor is running. 

Heat the second saucepan to 155°C and gradually add it to the egg white mix while beating. Add butter and beat until combined. Stir through the warmed fruit and nuts, the cold chocolate, the vanilla and rosemary and working quickly pour mixture into the prepared tin. Smooth surface and cover with the remaining paper. Refrigerate until cold and then cut into desired sized pieces. Store the nougat in an airtight container at room temperature.
I'll be back briefly on Monday but then I'll be taking a 2 week break from the blog until Monday January 6 2014. I'm a bit cooked out at the moment so I'm taking a break to recharge my cooking batteries and to spend Christmas with my family.

By the way, if you haven't had enough of my recipes already this week, my Delicious Bites recipe for Pavé aux Chocolate recipe is featured here on decor8. It's a very old recipe for an easy, tasty dessert. After I photographed it for the column, I took the cake into work and it disappeared in a flash, which is always a good sign.

Have a great weekend and see you soon,

Jillian

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passionfruit marshmallows - the 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

passionfruit marshmallows - the 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

19 Dec 2013

I've always loved marshmallows and I've had this recipe for passionfruit marshmallows bookmarked for ages. It’s passionfruit season in Sydney and as soon as I saw them appear in the fruit shop, I knew I had to dust off the recipe and give it a try. I didn't fancy beating the mixture for 10 minutes with my electric hand beaters so making the marshmallows gave me a reason to unpack the stand mixer that’s been languishing in it’s box for the past 4 months! 



I halved the recipe as it makes a large quantity of marshmallow and adapted the recipe slightly with the addition of some liquid glucose to prevent the sugar mixture from crystallising. 



I also decided to roll the marshmallows in toasted coconut instead of icing sugar. Rolling the marshmallows in the coconut was the most fiddly part of the process.



Here's the recipe for you.
Passionfruit Marshmallows
90 mls passion fruit juice

250 gm caster sugar
2 teaspoons glucose
½ cup water
1 egg white
2 cups toasted shredded coconut
Icing sugar

Method

Lightly grease and line an 8 inch square cake pan with baking paper and dust the base liberally with icing sugar. 

Combine the passion fruit juice and gelatine in a bowl and set aside. 

Combine caster sugar, glucose and water and in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves, then increase heat to medium and cook for 5-10 minutes or until syrup reaches 125°C on a sugar thermometer. 

Remove from heat, add passion fruit mixture to syrup and stir until gelatine dissolves. You may need to put the pan back on the heat for a minute to fully dissolve the gelatine. Meanwhile, using an electric mixer whisk the egg white with a pinch of salt until frothy. Gradually add the passion fruit mixture, whisking continuously on medium speed until mixture has doubled in size, then slowly decrease speed and mix until mixture is warm, about 10 minutes.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan, and using a lightly oiled spatula, spread evenly, then dust top with the toasted coconut. Stand at room temperature for 3 hours or until firm. Place the remaining coconut onto a large piece of greaseproof paper. Turn the marshmallow out the onto the coconut then using a sharp knife, cut the marshmallow into 2.5 cm squares and roll in the coconut to coat. Store the marshmallows in an airtight container in the fridge.

See you all again tomorrow for Day 5, the final day of of Christmas Candy Week,

Bye for now,

Jillian 

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peppermint bark - 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

peppermint bark - 5 days of candies - xmas 2013

18 Dec 2013

I put out a call to my friends for Christmas candy ideas and an old school friend who'd spent last Christmas in the States, suggested I make chocolate bark. Now I love after dinner mints and I admit I may have a box or two stashed away in my cupboard for a rainy day. Chocolate and mint go so well together and as Williams Sonoma has recently opened a store in Sydney, I couldn't go past recreating their peppermint bark. Now I've never seen their peppermint bark before nor tasted it so I relied solely on the internet for help. 

The recipe I used is adapted from here and it's more an assembly job than cooking. There's a bit of melting and some crushing but seriously that's as stressful as it gets. Good chocolate is important here so please don't skimp.



Here's the recipe for you.
Peppermint Bark
Ingredients

4 oz pack candy canes

250 g good quality dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

250 g good quality white chocolate, coarsely chopped

Peppermint extract

Instructions

Line the base and sides of a lamington tin with baking paper.

Place candy canes into a plastic bag and use a rolling pin or the back of a heavy knife to crush into pieces, about ¼ inch long. Separate the larger pieces by shaking the candy through a sieve. The cook gets to eat the crumbs.

Dark Chocolate Layer

Place the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 30 second bursts. Stir frequently until the chocolate has just melted; do not overheat as the chocolate can burn easily. When the chocolate has melted, add ½ tsp of peppermint extract and stir until thoroughly combined. Pour the melted chocolate into the prepared pan, and spread evenly over the bottom of the pan with an offset spatula. Place the pan in the fridge and refrigerate until the chocolate is firm, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove the pan from the refrigerator while melting the white chocolate.

White Chocolate Layer

Place the white chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 15 second bursts at 50% power and stir frequently until the chocolate has just melted; white chocolate chocolate melts more quickly than dark chocolate. When the white chocolate has just melted, add ¼ tsp of peppermint extract and stir thoroughly. Pour the white chocolate directly over the semisweet chocolate layer. Use an offset spatula to quickly spread the white chocolate evenly. While the white chocolate layer is still soft sprinkle the larger candy cane pieces evenly over the top. Use the back of a large spoon to lightly press the candies into the chocolate. Allow the chocolate to rest in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes until just set. When the chocolate has set, remove from the pan before breaking into irregular pieces or use a sharp kitchen knife to cut into rectangular pieces about 2 by 4 inches. Store the bark in an airtight container.

P.S. Don't tell any of my friends this but they'll be getting some peppermint bark from me this Christmas.

I'll be back tomorrow with day 4 of Christmas Candy Week.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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