Given that the whole inner ear thing meant I couldn't use the computer as much as I wanted this weekend I was in a cooking mood again :). Now my dear friend
lost_house bought me the most wonderful giant cup cake baking tin (like this one but not quite the same) for Christmas and so I decided to use it. This is my first creation:Giant Banana Cup Cake
Now this was done using the banana cupcake recipe I posted a while back. The only differences being I cooked it in the giant cupcake tin for somewhere between 45mins and 1hr and I only used half the icing mixture.
If you want to have a go, then make the cupcake mixture and put it in to the bottom half of the giant cup cake tin. Then cook it for 45 mins and test it with a skewer or cocktail stick - if it comes out clean it's done, otherwise keep going in 5 or 10 min intervals until it's done. It domes up nicely. Then you make the icing, slap it on with a spatula and throw some sparkly, sweet stuff on and you're there.
We ate this for pudding for lunch today and it's very yummy :)
This is my second.
Giant After Eight Cup Cake
This one is my own creation :). We had a surfeit of After Eight mints at the Christmas party and so I said I should make a cake with them, so I finally came up with one. The recipe is a different take on the one that came with the cake tin, with my own twist. The original cake was a double choc pound cake, and this is a double choc and mint pound cake, just a little darker than the original.
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 tspns instant coffee
- 1/2 cup boiling water
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (in two halves)
- 2.5 cups plain flour
- 1/2 tspn baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
- 1/2 tspn baking powder
- 1/4 tspn salt
- 1.5 cups/ 3 sticks/ 339g butter, softened
- 2 cups caster sugar
- 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 tspns vanilla extract
- 1 cup sour cream
- 3/4 box of After Eight mints (300g) cut into chocolate chip size (you could use any bitter chocolate mints)
Icing/decoration
- 200g cream cheese
- 2 tblspns milk
- dash salt
- 5.5 cups icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
- 1.5 tspns peppermint essence
- 4 after eight shapes, some normal after eights
Equipment
- Kitchen aid mixer or big bowl and electric hand mixer
- sieve
- large bowl
- spoons
- knife
- scales
- Measuring cups
- Spatula
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 160C/325F
- Grease and flour the pan
- Dissolve the coffee in the boiling water
- Add 1/2 cup of cocoa and mix until smooth then leave aside to cool
- Sift flour, other half of the cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the large bowl
- In the mixer or a large bowl, beat the butter and both of the sugars until creamed well together so they are light and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure each one is mixed in before adding the next. (done worry if it looks curdled, it isn't :))
- Add the vanilla and mix in
- Combine the cocoa mixture and the sour cream
- In the mixer beat in the flour and cocoa/sour mixture, alternating between the two, starting and ending with the flour until everything is combined.
- Fold in the chunks of after eight mints
- Put 4.5 cups of the mixture into the top half of the cupcake tin and the rest into the bottom half.
- Put in the oven and bake for between 60 and 70 mins or until it's done (use the cocktail stick/skewer method mentioned above to check if it's done).
- Leave to cool on a wire wrack in the pan for 15 mins and then turn out onto the wrack to cool completely
- Clean your mixing bowl and then put beat together the cream cheese, milk and peppermint essence until smooth.
- Add the icing sugar a bit at a time until you have a thick icing
- Trim the cakes so that the two halves that will be going together are flat
- Use half a cup of the icing to sandwich the cakes together
- Throw the rest of the icing on the top of the cake and smooth with a spatula
- Plonk on the after eights in decoration.
- EAT :)
