Peppermint Candy Cane Cupcakes

One of my favourite parts of baking for Christmas time (or for any holiday or birthday or whatever) is making cupcakes and getting creative in regards to decorating them. I mean, cupcakes are awesome at any time of year, but it’s always a blast to jazz them up to suit the occasion!

I don’t exactly do a lot of cupcake-decorating, though. I don’t even own a piping bag, so I can’t do that fancy swirly-whirly icing that always looks so pretty. But I’ve got tonnes of ideas – I even have a whole board on Pinterest dedicated to snazzy-looking cupcakes.

For Christmas this year though, I decided to keep it simple – choc-mint cupcakes topped with mini candy canes. After I kind of failed at making peppermint marshmallows (hey, it’s my first time attempting marshmallows, don’t judge) I still wanted to whip up something sweet and pepperminty for my extended family at Christmas… so I figured, why not cupcakes? Everyone loves cupcakes!

These guys are super simple to make, and can be made in normal- or mini-form depending on what floats your boat. If you’re making them as mini cupcakes though, just remember to bake them for 12-15 minutes rather than 18-20; otherwise, just follow the recipe.

Peppermint Candy Cane Cupcakes

80g of butter, softened
½ cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 cup self raising flour
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon peppermint essence
1/3 cup milk
pinch of salt
1/3 cup dark choc chips

ICING:
1 cup milk chocolate buttons
¼ cup cream
½ teaspoon peppermint essence
12 mini candy canes

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius, and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake liners.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy, then stir in the egg until well combined.
Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and salt, and add the milk, peppermint essence and dark choc chips. Stir until combined.
Divide the batter amongst each cupcake liner, and bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes, until cupcakes are risen and spring back lightly when touched (and a skewer pierced into the centre of one of the cakes comes out clean). Leave to cool in the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the topping, melt the milk chocolate buttons with the cream and peppermint essence in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool and thicken slightly, then smooth over the surface of each cupcake. Top each with a mini candy cane.

Gingerbread Snowballs

Christmas is approaching fast, guys; two more sleeps! YAAAY! And I’m really enjoying the holiday break. Like, it’s Monday today, and it’s the first Monday in just about forever that I didn’t have to wake up at 6 in the morning. Oh sleep, how I have missed you.

So, remember my post from the other day – the Pepparkakor? Yeah, well, I made a lot of that stuff… perhaps even a bit too much. Sure, I’ve given it away to friends and family and work colleagues, but there was still so much left! I decided that it might be fun to find a way to up-cycle some of the excess cookies into something new.

I kept it quite simple – I just took a bunch of cookies, crushed them up and mixed them with condensed milk. Then I added some desiccated coconut for a bit of extra flavor, and coated them in it so that the final product was a bit less sticky to handle.

These little guys are quite sweet and the gingerbread flavour is still very prominent. They taste almost like bits of cookie dough. I’m fairly happy with how they turned out, and I hope you will be too. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Gingerbread Snowballs

About 350g crumbled gingerbread cookies
395g can of condensed milk
¼ cup desiccated coconut, plus extra for coating

Combine the crushed cookies, condensed milk and ¼ cup of the desiccated coconut in a large mixing bowl and stir until combined and smooth. Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls and roll them in some of the extra coconut. Place on a large tray lined with baking paper and store in the fridge for 3 hours or until firm.

Makes about 15 or so snowballs.

Pepparkakor – a Swedish Christmas Delight!

So, life has been ridiculously hectic this Christmas season. Between college, my internship, and other commitments, I’ve barely had time to immerse myself in all manner of Christmas goodness. Well, I mean, I’ve had a little time. I somehow managed to finish all my Christmas shopping ages ago and even had a spare evening to go Christmas light spotting (which I really must do again quite soon!) And just the other day, I finally got around to baking up a storm. A festive, tasty, gingerbread-y storm.

So for those of you who follow Sneaky Pudding’s facebook page, you may have noticed that I posted a little sneak preview of a recipe I attempted from a Kikki.K catalog – “Pepparkakor”. I absolutely adore Kikki.K and was delighted to find a little recipe hidden amongst the catalog’s pages!

When I actually read over the recipe, I was a little skeptical at first. 8 cups of flour? Um, wow. That’s going to make a tonne of cookies. But I thought, hey, I need to bake up some gifts for people… so instead of just halving the recipe, I decided to attempt the entire thing.

Just a small word of warning to everyone though: when a recipe says to “chill in the fridge overnight”, it generally means overnight. Not “chill in the fridge for over 24 hours while you go to work and then get home super late”. The dough was pretty hard once I got it out of the fridge, although with a little kneading it softened quite nicely.

Then it was time to bake some cookies. It was 10.30 at night, but I was determined.

Two trays of pretty star/angel/gingerbread-man/tree shaped cookies made their merry way in and out of the oven that night. And there was still a mountain of dough left over. By that point, it was approaching midnight and I seriously needed some sleep, so I popped the rest of the dough back in the fridge and decided to call it a night. I baked the rest of the cookies the following evening (a lot earlier in the evening, by the way!) and I’m pretty sure by the end of it I ended up with over 100 cookies. The recipe said 60-70, but my cookie cutters are rather tiny so I ended up with more.

Let me just say that I love this recipe. It may make a ridiculous amount of cookies, but they taste sensational. It’s definitely all the spices – ginger, cloves, cinnamon… seriously, they just taste like Christmas. It’s like putting a slice of Christmas in your mouth. Oh, and they’re quite addictive. Be warned.

If you want the recipe (of course you do!) click here and enjoy!

Carrot “Angel Wing” Cupcakes

I cannot believe there’s less than a week until Christmas! It’s come up so fast. Time has just flown by. I’m super excited, of course. I love Christmas! Wrapping presents, singing carols, baking…

Ah, yes. Baking. Oh the many delicious treats I love to conjure up during the festive season! Gingerbread cookies shaped like little stars and Christmas trees, buttery shortbread that melts in your mouth, fruit mince pies (which I’ve never actually made… but I like eating them!)
Unfortunately, I’ve hardly had any time to bake. Story of my life, right? I never have time to bake. Yet I somehow run a baking blog. Weird.

I really didn’t want the Christmas season to whiz by without a good amount of delightfully festive treats popping out of my oven. Just tonight I started baking some “Pepparkakor” – a Swedish recipe that I actually got from a Kikki.K catalog (blog post coming soon, I promise!) But while the dough rests in the fridge overnight, I figured I’d share with you a recipe I’ve been making for the past few Christmases which is always a big hit.

So, for the past few years, I’ve whipped up a batch of Carrot Cupcakes to share with my extended family during our annual Christmas gathering. They’re fairly quick and easy, they taste delightful, and your arm gets a good workout grating up the carrots, burning off all those pesky Christmas calories in advance.

Last year, in the spirit of the season, I decided that rather than icing them like regular old cupcakes, I’d make them into “angel wing” cupcakes. I love doing this with cupcakes – it looks so pretty, yet it’s the easiest thing ever – just slice off the top, cut it in half, drop a generous glob of icing onto the cupcake and stick the “wings” on top. And don’t forget to dust them with icing sugar for the whole “fake snow” look!

Carrot Cupcakes

½ cup brown sugar
¾ cup olive oil
½ cup golden syrup
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup self-raising flour
½ cup plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ cup walnuts or pecans (optional)
250-300g grated carrots

ICING:
250g spreadable cream cheese
½ cup icing sugar
3 tablespoons maple syrup

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake liners (if you wish, you may want to get a second tray and add two or three extra liners if you’d prefer smaller cupcakes)
Place brown sugar, oil, eggs, golden syrup and vanilla in a large bowl, and whisk to combine.
Sift flours, bicarbonate soda, and cinnamon over the top and fold through. Add grated carrot (and nuts if using) and stir to combine.
Pour mixture into the muffin tray. Bake for 20 minutes or until cooked (the tops of the cupcakes should spring back lightly).
To make the icing, simply place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy.
When the cupcakes are cooled, carefully slice a circle off the top of each one, and cut each circle in half. Place a spoonful of the icing into each cupcake, then top with two of the halves as “wings”.
Before serving, dust with icing sugar.
Makes 12-15 cupcakes.

The Versatile Blogger Award!

A couple of weeks ago, I got some rather exciting news – Sneaky Pudding was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award! Yes, I know… two weeks ago? This post is waayyy overdue, and my blog has been feeling the impact of my busy and hectic life, with posts coming out several weeks later than I’d prefer :P But with the Christmas season coming up (and a MUCH NEEDED two weeks break to go along with it!) I’ll hopefully be treating you guys to an array of delightful festive recipes.

So anyway, back on topic – the VBA. Here are the rules, according to http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/

•  Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
•  Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.
•  Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)
•  Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site.
•  Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

 

So firstly – a big thank-you to Charismatic Baking for the nomination!!! :D

Secondly – 15 bloggers that I’d like to nominate for this award – in no particular order…

The Smiling Chef

Julie’s Design Adventures

Heidie Makes

Simple Made Kitchen & Crafts

Charismatic Baking

Easy Baked

Imperfect Kitchen

BLYSSfully Yours

Inspired Test Kitchen

Butter Baking

Paint Chips & Frosting

At 350 Degrees

My Thin Eats

Whipped Baking

Top With Cinnamon

And finally – 7 things about myself! Well, I don’t exactly know tonnes about myself, but here goes…

1. I study graphic design. I love making things beautiful, I love paper and I love colour.
2. My favourite season ever is Autumn. Perfect weather for wearing cozy sweaters and drinking tea, but not so cold that I want to stay in bed all day.
3. I rock a lot of polka dots… and bird prints – seriously, check out my wardrobe. Everything is either covered in dots or birds… I’m most definitely a crazy dotty bird lady.
4. I absolutely adore Studio Ghibli films.
5. I own two dogs – a Labrador named Laddie and a Kelpie x Border Collie named Jerry.
6. I used to keep a dream journal when I was younger.
7. I love coffee (but, I mean, if you read my blog… that’s kind of obvious)

So that’s all for now – keep baking, everybody, and I’ll get back to you all with some tasty new recipes quite soon! :)