Easter Chick Cupcakes

These are from the same recipe as these chocolate Easter cupcakes which I blogged about yesterday, but I couldn't resist decorating a few as Easter chicks.

Ages ago I was given a set of Easter silicon cupcake cases from Lakeland - they look like the bottom half of Easter chicks with legs and everything!

I made the cupcakes according to the recipe in the link above and baked them in the silicon moulds, which I stood in a baking tray in case they fell over.

When they were cool, I cut out circles of yellow Renshaw roll-out icing and put them over the cupcake. I cut out thicker triangles to use as wings, and coloured a little bit orange to shape a beak. I also had some Renshaw black icing that I'd opened and used for something else, so used a tiny amount of that plus a tiny amount of white fondant icing (which I also had open already) to make the eyes. Do you think they look cute?

I'm sharing these with Alphabakes, hosted by myself and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C.

 

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as their theme is Easter and spring.

 

The theme for We Should Cocoa, hosted this month by Linzi at Lancashire Food on behalf of Choclette at Tin and Thyme, is eggs so these cupcakes fit in well.

 

Easter and spring is also the theme for Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

 

And finally because it's Easter I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

 

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Chocolate Easter Cupcakes

I had a day off and decided to throw some quick Easter cupcakes together as the following day was my once-a-month visit to the design agency I work with and I always take them cake! My fiance snaffled a few before I went and declared them to be some of the best cakes I've ever made - and I think he's right. They are really light and fluffy and quite moist, and while the frosting is sweet, the cake itself isn't particularly - it's the perfect combination and these were gorgeous. And it's my own recipe!

I used a simple three-egg chocolate recipe but I ended up doubling the quantities as I only got 9 (large) cupcakes out of the first batch and wanted a few more than that. I decorated them in various ways.

Chocolate Easter cupcakes - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To make 9 large cupcakes, you need:
140g margarine or butter, softened - I used Stork for cakes
140g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g self-raising flour
40g cocoa powder
splash of milk
For the frosting:
150g margarine or butter, softened - I used Stork for cakes
250g icing sugar
50g cocoa powder
50g milk chocolate, melted
Mini eggs or similar to decorate

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream the margarine and sugar and beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and the cocoa power then the milk.

Spoon into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until baked but still springy to the touch.

If you take them out of the oven when they are only just cooked, they will firm a little as they cool but remain beautifully light and fluffy.

When the cakes have cooled, beat the marg and icing sugar to make the buttercream. Beat in the cocoa powder and melted chocolate.

Using a star piping nozzle and a disposable piping bag, pipe swirls of buttercream onto each cupcake. Normally when I pipe, I start from the outside and work my way in, creating height in the centre of the cupcake. But if you start this time from the centre and pipe outwards, it looks a lot like a bird's nest. Finish the cupcake by adding a few mini chocolate eggs in the centre of the nest.

I'm sharing these with Alphabakes, hosted by myself and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C.

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as their theme is Easter and spring.

The theme for We Should Cocoa, hosted this month by Linzi at Lancashire Food on behalf of Choclette at Tin and Thyme, is eggs so these cupcakes fit in well.

For the same reason I'm sending this to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

Easter and spring is also the theme for Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

And finally because it's Easter I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

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Maple and Tarragon Pork Chops wth Sweet Potato Traybake

I bought a copy of Sainsbury's magazine recently, even though I already have enough cookery books, so wanted to make sure I got enough use out of it and have been working my way through several of their recipes!

I made this maple and tarragon pork chop and sweet potato tray bake and it was delicious. It takes an hour to bake in the oven but you can do all the other preparation in advance; or it's a good thing to make on a lazy Sunday at home.

You can find the full recipe on the link above; I started by pre-heating the oven and microwaving the sweet potatoes until they had softened a little, then putting them in a roasting tray with the onion wedges.

Next I mixed the oil, mustard, maple syrup, paprika, fennel seeds, garlic, lemon zest, thyme and seasoning in a small bowl, and poured half of it over the vey in the tray.

Place the pork on top and drizzle over the rest of the sauce. Roast for 30-35 minutes until the pork is cooked through.

I threw some roast potatoes that I had parboiled in as well to save using another cooking tray.

This is a really easy, no fuss recipe that you can bung in the oven and pretty much forget about until it is ready. It would be good with some green veg; here you can see the traybake after I've served it before I've added anything else to the plate- it made a lovely Sunday dinner.

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Restaurant review: Caravaggio, London

I’m looking at the photo of the starter I ate at Caravaggio and trying to remember what it was – it wasn’t that long ago that I ate there but it’s one of those places that delivers beautifully presented dishes leaving you struggling to remember what it said on the menu, even only ten minutes after you ordered (or is it just me that happens to?).

I’ve resorted to looking up the menu online and decided this must be the Stornoway salmon and sea bass gravadlax with rye bread and horseradish crème fraiche (£9.80) – I’m sure I remember eating that, but when I looked at the picture I thought ‘that’s not smoked salmon and bread!’. The bread isn’t in the picture though and the little rectangles of salmon and sea bass are presented rather differently – the oval on the left is the crème fraiche.

My main course is much easier to remember as it was very unusual – homemade cocoa pappardelle with cinnamon scented wild boar ragu (£15). I’ve had chocolate pasta once before from the Hotel du Chocolat and tried out two recipes, deciding that it tasted better with cream as a sweet dessert (their suggestion as I recall). So I wanted to try it again as a main course and see what I thought. The pasta had more of an earthy flavour than a chocolate one – more like adding shavings of very dark plain chocolate to a dish rather than the sweetness you’d get from milk chocolate. The wild boar ragu complemented the earthiness of the flavours perfectly – I’d definitely recommend trying this if you get the chance.

 The portions weren’t huge and my friend and I both decided to have a dessert, which all sounded very nice but I didn’t fancy anything sweet. Instead I chose the selection of Italian cheese with mountain honey and grissini (£9) which came with a generous amount of cheese, some celery and grapes as well as the honey; though I would have preferred biscuits I could actually put the cheese onto, which of course you can’t do with breadsticks. Eating lumps of cheese then pieces of breadstick separately seems a bit strange somehow but perhaps this is how it’s supposed to be done!

I would imagine a high-end restaurant like this does everything in the proper Italian way – there’s no Hawaiian pizza to be found on the menu for instance! I was meeting a friend after work who came in by train to Liverpool Street Station, so wanted somewhere in that area, and really fancied Italian. It was fairly short notice so it wasn’t that easy to find somewhere I could book that was in the right area, so that’s how we ended up at Caravaggio. We were the only people in there not wearing business suits and the restaurant was more hushed and business-like than I was expecting – it would be good for a romantic meal I think but people at the adjoining tables were probably forced to listen in to my tales of wedding planning and wishing we would shut up!

Caravaggio often has set menu prices or special offers if you book through Open Table, otherwise it is quite expensive (£9.80 for a starter is a lot!) and probably somewhere you’d be more likely to go for a special occasion or a business lunch on expenses than to catch up with a friend where the food is secondary to the conversation.

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Meal Planning Monday Week 13

I can't believe it's Easter already - and worryingly that it's nearly April as I'm getting married in June and there is still so, so much to do! It's a short week at work but that just means I have to fit more work into less time as well so I am expecting it to be a pretty hectic week!

Monday - day off to catch up on things I need to do
Lunch - leftover pasta from weekend
Dinner - slow cooker chicken korma

Tuesday - at a chocolate making blog event

Wednesday - tuna steak and veg for me, gammon and fried egg for him

Thursday - home a little late as I'm going to a mindfulness session after work (anything to help me stress less!). So we can have something quick from the freezer - some kind of chicken and chips

Friday - bank holiday. My parents are coming up and my mum and I are going out for afternoon tea with the ladies who are soon to be my in-laws.
Lunch - full English so we can have a little something to eat and my dad and fiancé can have a proper lunch
Dinner - not sure we will want much or what time we will be back; the men can find something from the freezer!

Saturday
In London shopping for my mum's outfit for my wedding
Dinner - don't expect to get back very early as trains are a nightmare over Easter so either something from the freezer or if we are really late, the chip shop!

Easter Sunday - finally a day to relax at home!
Lunch - I'm going to do a proper Easter roast chicken
Dinner - Easter tea of Scotch pancakes, hot cross buns, crumpets and cake. Only the cake will be homemade as I have enough to do already this weekend!

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Kiwi and Lime Cupcakes

I love to bake but need to lose a lot of weight, and with my wedding coming up that's a pretty good incentive (though I'm not managing to do very well!). I'm trying to indulge my love of baking without indulging myself, and make things for other people to eat. A good way to do that is to use ingredients I don't actually like!

We had some kiwi fruit left over in the fruit basket at work one Friday so I took a couple home. I was going down to Dorset for my wedding hair and makeup trial, and thought it would be a nice touch if I baked some cupcakes. A bridesmaid and I went to the house of the hairdresser - a beautiful cottage in a pretty little village - and the makeup artist joined her there. We did the trial in her kitchen watched by two dogs and a cat so it wasn't like I was taking cakes to a busy beauty salon - it was a nice homely way to spend the day.

 

I had a massive tub of Stork for Cakes in the fridge so had a look at the Bake with Stork website and found this recipe for coconut, lime and kiwi cupcakes. I wasn't sure if I still had any creamed coconut in the house so decided to leave it out; I didn't even know dried kiwi existed so I left that out too. I chopped up the flesh of two kiwi fruit and stirred that in to the cake batter, which I found made the cake really light.

I didn't have any Midori either so added some lime juice to the buttercream frosting, which I piped in very satisfying little swirls on the cupcakes and topped each one with a little piece of kiwi. I don't normally eat kiwi at all but I tried a little bit of one cupcake and found the taste wasn't overpowering and it was a really light, bouncy cake and the icing was great too. The hairdresser and makeup artist seemed pleased with them too and asked if they could take a couple for their kids!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at The Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi as their theme this month is Easter and Spring. The vibrant green colour of these cakes makes me think of spring and the zesty flavour might be quite welcome amid all the Easter chocolate!

Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at The Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage has the same theme so I'm also sending these to that challenge.

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Spiralized Salmon and Broccoli Balls with Carrot Pineapple Rice

This recipe comes from Ali Maffucci's book Inspiralized, and takes a bit of preparation but the cooking time itself is minimal - and more importantly, it tastes amazing. If you've only spiralized courgette or butternut squash and used it instead of pasta so far, you are really missing out - there are so many ways you can use your spiralizer, but you could also make this recipe even if you don't have one.

I don't want to repeat the entire recipe as I'm sure Ali would appreciate it if you bought the book but I'm going to describe what I did. The recipe consist of three elements - salmon and broccoli balls, which I thought would be like fishcakes minus the potato but actually were quite different; homemade teriyaki sauce; and carrot 'rice' cooked with spring onion and pineapple.

I started by making the salmon balls. Preheat the oven, and pulse some broccoli in a food processor. Add a piece of salmon, some garlic and ginger and onion or shallot and pulse again. Turn the food processor off, and scoop the mixture into balls. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile make the teriyaki sauce by mixing soy sauce, mirin, honey, garlic and ginger.

After the salmon balls have baked for 15 minutes, drizzle over a couple of spoonfuls of the teriyaki sauce and bake for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile spiralize some carrots -you need to choose quite thick ones otherwise it's tricky. I used three carrots; once they are spiralized, wash out the bowl of the food processor and pulse the carrots until you have a rice-like consistency.

In a small pan, heat a little coconut oil and fry some chopped spring onion, garlic and ginger. Add the carrot rice, some chopped pineapple and a little teriyaki sauce and stir fry for a few minutes. Serve the salmon and broccoli balls on top of the carrot. This was a delicious meal and I felt very healthy!

I'm entering this in Spiralizer Saturday, the blog challenge I run for all things spiralized. If you have any good recipes, link them up here!

I'm also sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

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