Pink strawberry cupcakes

In Norway the last days have been beautifull and quite warm for the time of the year. I got spring vibes and bought some strawberries (from Spain but what can you expect in march). So a little Hello Kitty inspired pink girl-ish strawberry cupcake. My daughter loved it!

Have a nice week further

Jelrik

Pavlova - a heavenly merengue dessert

Today, we celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday and for the occasion, I made this fantastic Pavlova.

Pavlova is a merengue lower layer topped with whipped cream and a thick layer of fresh inviting fruit. The dessert was made for the first time when the Russian dancer Anna Pavlova visited New Zealand in 1926.

The difficulty of a Pavlova is to obtain a crispy outside while inside there is a fluffy marshmallow-ish fill. I got inspired while watching Masterchef Australia and the fabulous Donna Hay speaking with love about Pavlova. So I used her recipe which you can find by clicking here.


The best tips are:
- Be very precise measuring the ingredients
- Make the eggwhites really stif before carefully whisking in the castor sugar.
- Low heat, long baking time
- Let the Pavlova cool totally down in the oven before opening.

It looked like this ready baked:

A crispy side

Top right before serving and serve directly. Otherwise you risk collapse of the meringue and a wet meringue

Good luck with the Pavlova and thanks to Donna Hay for the perfect recipe.

Jelrik

Orchid Inspired Cupcakes

Today we had a family birthday party for my niece, my nephew and my sister in law. I was asked to make cupcakes and I made a lot of those carrot cake cupcakes with the orange roses (like I blogged a few days ago). But those roses were quite difficult to make beautifull on a few of the cupcake forms I had which were like big yellow crowns. Really nice...

The crowns made me think of the top of buddhist temples and chinese building style. One of the most used flowers in Asia is the orchid and there came the idea to make some orchids to cover the cupcakes.

So with white icing, I made a curled flower with some instructions of the book of Manuela Kjeilen (Love, Manuela, which you can order by clicking here!
Afterwards I made with eatable lillac, gold and yellow glitter some details ( i used a brush which is normally ment to be used to apply eyeshadow. It is a soft brush) and sprayed them with a pearl spray.

A little orchid flower for all the mothers on this mother's day :-)

Jelrik

10 th Birthday Cupcakes "Vintage-Tivoli-Style"

My niece is having her 10th birthday party together with some girls tomorrow so she asked me to bake and here are the results. The cupcake above is a vanilla cupcake with whipped vanilla bean frosting ( a blend of eggwhite, sugar and vanilla; whipped au bain marie. You find the recipe on www.passionforbaking.com
The blue color is kinda vintage-ish and is a real nice pastel-color

The cupcake under is topped with a fluffy white chocolate frosting with whipped cream and sprayed with a pearl spray by Cacas.

Looks like a tivoli :-)

Happy Birthday!

Jelrik

Fluffy and moist Carrrot Cupcakes

A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues served us a carrotcake at work (feel free to visit her blog by clicking here ; she's a good amator photographer). I really liked the cake, got the recipe and thought about using this recipe in cupcakes. And here is the result.



Recipe:

- 6 medium grated carrots
- 4 eggs
- 3 dl vegetable oil
- 2 ts natriumbicarbonate (Natron in Norway)
- 2 ts baking powder
- 2 ts vanilla sugar
- 1 ts salt
- 1 ts grounded cinnamon
- 280 g wheat flour
(made about 36 cupcakes)

Topping:

200g butter
400 g cream cheese (Philadelphia)
300 g flour sugar
2 ts vanilla sugar

Warm the oven to 200 degrees C (392 F)

Whip the eggs with the sugar untill white. Whip in the oil and carrots. Blend the dry ingredients very well and mix in.

Now those cupcakes are growing like crazy so if you don't want them to open the oven and come out you need to fill the forms only for almost 1/4 part.

Put them 17 min in the oven. And here you are. Let them cool down well before you top them

The topping is easy: just mix well every ingredient. To make the orange/white effect i made 1/2 part of the topping orange and had one side of the spraybag with white topping and the other side with orange.

You can make some fun children cupcakes too. Children love carrotcake.

What about this curious snake? Isn't he cool?

Or make a nice swirl and sprinkle with orange eatable glitter

Bon appetit!

Jelrik

Birthdaycupcakes for a Real Madrid-fan

Today my good Spanish friend Juan Carlos is having his birthday party and asked me to make some cupcakes for tonight. As he is a big Real Madrid fan, the cupcake-theme must be in Real Madrid-spirit. So here they are. By the way I am football neutral so no Barcelona fans where harmed while making these cupcakes… :-) By the way, if you are in Oslo, i can suggest you to visit his restaurant "La Sangria". A pearl of Spanish food in the heart of the city with authentic Spanish dishes; some of them made on a family recipe. You can read more on the restaurant at the restaurant's homepage

Cupcaketower

HALA MADRID !

Jelrik

A little winter rose

 Today it's snowing a lot outside and the whole world is white so it's a nice day to create a little flower inside the kitchen.

So I made a standard vanilla cupcake and made a decorating icing with 120g butter, 120g  margarine, 500g flour sugar, some vanilla extract and pink colour. I used a flat tip on the spray bag and just made small leafs. You find the exact way of making it on passion4baking .

Isn't the cupcake just delicious??

Have a nice weekend all of you!!

Jelrik