Terry's Chocolate Orange Cup Cakes

I always associate Terry's Chocolate Orange with Christmas! They are about all year but everyone goes mad about them at Christmas time! Who knows why?

So, I thought I'd make a Cup Cake inspired by this festive (all year) treat!

The mixture is a little different to my previous ones (Wow, I know!! haha) as you can see below, orange extract of course and some coco powder to bring that Chocolate Orange favour to life!

The mixture is:

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

3 eggs

1 Teaspoon of orange extract

Splash of baking powder

2 Tablespoons of coco powder

This part is the same as usual! Place all elements in a mixing bowl and whisk for 2 – 3 mins until the mixture looks light and creamy! Bake for 20 minutes, until golden (if you can tell!) or until a wooden skewer comes out clean!

While your waiting for the cakes to cool, it's time for the Buttercream! Use a block of butter (or a little less) then add icing sugar, milk, some coco powder (enough to change the colour) and add some orange extract till you can taste the favour really come through! About 2 spoons full should be enough, depends how orange you like it! I also decided to sneak some chocolate sauce in the Buttercream to make it extra chocolatey!

Whip the Buttercream for around 6 minutes to make sure it is extra smooth!

And that's how it's done! So, if you want a Cup Cake for Christmas and feel the way I do about Chocolate Orange then this may be the way to go for a festive treat!

Have a Merry Christmas! 

Strawberries & Cream Cup Cakes

This is a very quick & simple recipe if you wanted to do something different to the normal Cup Cake! It's perfect for little Afternoon Tea parties, maybe to replace scones? Sounds mad as scones are so yummy!

Again, use the standard cup cake recipe and add where necessary. This is for a batch of 12, so if you wanted to make more, just double, tripe the recipe to how many you wanted!

My standard mixture is:

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

3 eggs

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla essence or extract, whichever you prefer!

Splash of baking powder

Very easy to do, just place all elements in a mixing bowl and whisk for 2 – 3 mins until the mixture looks light and creamy! Bake for 20 minutes, until golden or until a wooden skewer comes out clean!

Now, when the cakes are cooled, core out the middle of the cake and add a teaspoon of Strawberry Jam in and place the lid back on top.

For the topping, you can either use whipped cream and pipe this on to make it more the traditional 'Strawberries & Cream' Afternoon Tea!

But with mine, I've done a Buttercream. I use one block of butter, usually nearly a bag of icing sugar, a splash of milk and some vanilla essence. This time, I also used one vanilla pod, I find that the vanilla beans make the icing look & taste better!

Sparkly Strawberries – very simple, you can either buy edible glue or use a thin layer of left over Buttercream and coat the bottom of the Strawberry then sprinkle the edible glitter over the counter and roll the strawberry in the glitter until completely covered!

And that's my take on a Strawberries & Cream Cup Cake! 

McLaren Cup Cakes

By Jessie

Again, the standard Cup Cake mix, very simple, no one could get this wrong (apart from my sister!).

My standard mixture is:

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

3 eggs

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla essence or extract, whichever you prefer!

Splash of baking powder

Very easy to do, just place all elements in a mixing bowl and whisk for 2 – 3 mins until the mixture looks light and creamy! Bake for 20 minutes, until golden or until a wooden skewer comes out clean!

Want to add a bit more McLaren to the sponge?! Add some red food colouring to the mix to make these Cup Cakes McLaren's iconic Rocket Red!

Make some Buttercream for the standard piping as a base to your decorations! Once you've done that, pipe onto the now chilled cakes.

From McLaren's logo, I cheated today and bought ready made red icing (I'm sorry!). I rolled and made the icing into circles. I then had a icing cutter to make a semi circle for McLaren's iconic tick logo and positioned.

For the F1 one cars, by some miracle I did find a F1 chocolate mould! So melt the chocolate as usual, and then put them into the moulds. Make sure you tap the mould so there is no air bubbles at the end result!

My first attempt, I put them in the fridge to cool but then I couldn't get them out, a lot of melted chocolate and broken wheels!

Second attempt, I put them in the freezer and this worked like a dream! About 5-10 minutes of being in there, I got them out and they particularly fell out in perfect shape!

And there you go! You have a Cup Cake fit for any McLaren fan, whether its for their birthday or to celebrate the end of season (why I made them!). I suppose you could do similar themes for the other teams, but I wouldn't be too impressed! :P

Have fun baking and let's hope for a McLaren 1-2 tomorrow!!

Good Luck Boys! And Goodbye Lewis! :(

Lemon Meringue Cup Cakes

By Jessie

For all my cup cakes, I use the standard cup cake recipe and add where necessary. This is for a batch of 12, so if you wanted to make more, just double, triple the recipe to how many you wanted!

My standard mixture is:

150g unsalted butter

150g caster sugar

175g self raising flour

3 eggs

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla essence or extract, whichever you prefer!

Splash of baking powder

Very easy to do, just place all elements in a mixing bowl and whisk for 2 – 3 mins until the mixture looks light and creamy! Bake for 20 minutes, until golden or until a wooden skewer comes out clean!

Now, to make a plain cup cake into a glamorous Lemon Meringue Cup Cake!

The first step is to leave the cup cakes until they are completely cool, then you can either cut a hole in the middle of the cakes or use this fancy new device called a 'Cup Cake Corer' to take the middle out! Once you've done this, you just need to add a drop of Lemon Curd (I find tip tree is the best brand to use).

Now, you can either use the cake you have taken out and use it has a lid or you can leave the lemon exposed as it will be covered in meringue later on. With this try, I left them without the lid.

Now, to make the Meringue, again, just a standard recipe or if you have a Meringue recipe you're use too, either one is fine!

8 egg whites

200g caster sugar

Whisk the eggs and gradually add the sugar until soft peaks form. You can do the head test, if you dare!

Once this is done, pipe the Meringue mixture onto the cakes.

The next part, you can do 3 different ways, I've tried two of the ways.

The first way, you can (if you're professional enough to have one!) use a torch until golden on top.

Second way, pop them in the oven and keep an eye on them until they are golden. I tried this way but I found my Meringue mixture would dribble from the sides!

And the third way, which I was the most successful for me, was to pop them under the grill, this pretty much took about 30 seconds and came out perfect, with no side dribbles!

On the outside, Lemon Meringue Cup Cakes can look very scary and complicated to make but once you get going, you're see how easy it is and the outcome is very impressive!

Have fun baking!

The Beginning

Once upon a time there were two girls with a Dream…Now, what was that old saying…Oh yes! ‘If you can dream it, you can do it!’ and that’s just what these two girls are going to do; we must never forget that it all started with delicious Buttercream!

Nothing is impossible if you have a twinkle in your eye, and a dream in your heart, and our dream is to one day sell our Cups of Cake to you! Maybe even a little Bakery?! But for now, we are sharing our passion with you whilst we wish upon a star! 

1st Girl with a dream - Gina, 24, from London (originally a Southern Winchester girl!) 

Baking Questions:

What is your favourite cupcake to bake so far?

-       I’m pretty standard when it comes to cupcakes! My favourites to make are the chocolate fondant ones, vanilla or chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache (Jessie’s favourite word!) in the middle! *delicious*

If you opened a Bakery, what would it look like?

-       Like Jessie said (below), I would love a vintage style bakery like the one in the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Although, my dream since I was a little girl was to open a 1950’s ice cream parlour (I designed one and everything) so maybe I could open a 1950s Bakery instead!

  If you could be taught baking skills by anyone – who would it be and why?

-     Baking… Paul Hollywood definitely! Although, I’m pretty sure I’d drive him nuts! Other types of cooking… Nigella…that woman is a god!

What would be your dream bake? (aka something you think you could never bake, kind of thing?!)

-       Dream bake… I’d like to be able to decorate, so maybe great an impressive fancy subtle Disney design cake!

Who or what has inspired you to bake?

-       My grandmother used to bake fruit buns (horrible things, I’m not a fan of cooked fruit!) and I used to help, and my mum used to make my sister and I a lush Cadburys chocolate birthday cake every year (which I was never allowed to help with!) which I need to replicate! I never been able to get baking right, I can cook meals but baking was never my thing, until I had a banana loaf in a renowned lunch location and I hated it! Really oily, and made me feel awful after eating it, so took matters into my own hands and made my own! Which is now an office favourite!

Now some general questions,

What do you do in your spare time?

-       Not as much as I used too! I love going out for dinner, food is a massive part of my social life, trying new restaurants is one of my favourite things to do. I go to an awesome workout class called ‘Westend Workout’ which is great fun. I love movies, and I’m little bit of a computer game geek, there’s nothing better than Mario Kart, and I will beat you all :P.

Favourite kind of food (normal meal time food haha)?

-       Chinese, Italian, American, Salad. I’m a big lover of salad, there is so much you can do with it, and it really helps bulk out a meal! I really really really dislike fish….I cant understand why people eat it…apart from coconut covered shrimp from the Rainforest Café in Orlando… YUM!

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

-       Well London is amazing, but if I had to move, or had the option the choices would be… New York City… its amazing, I’ve never felt so at home somewhere I’ve only been once. Edinburgh is another one on the list, I really loved the city. And obviously, last but not least would be Florida, the weather, the theme parks… how much better can it get!?

What Disney character do you most relate too?

-       Eeek this is hard…. I’m going to think on this and update later on… keep your eyes posted!

2nd Girl with a dream - Jessie, 21 from London

Baking Questions:

What is your favourite cupcake to bake so far?

If I had to chose, I think my Oreo Cup Cake! Everyone seems to like them, well at least they say this!

If you opened a Bakery, what would it look like?

I imagine something like a picture Gina sent me once, I believe it was a bakery in Walt Disney World and it looks perfect!

If you could be taught baking skills by anyone – who would it be and why?

Paul Hollywood – master baker, need I say more?!

Who or what has inspired you to bake?

I'm not really sure how it started, probably with a Bake Sale at work years ago and just grown from there! I love going into shops and looking at sweets, and thinking how can I make a Cup Cake out of this? Like the other day, I was looking at Kit Kats and thinking how I could make a cake around that! I got some chocolate sauce to put in the Buttercream and then from wafers and crunched them down and sprinkled on the top and put those on a standard cake recipe and tada! – Kit Kat Cup Cake!

Now some general questions,

What do you do in your spare time?

Erm, bake?! What else would I do?! Aside from that, I love going to the theatre a lot – some of my favourites – Phantom of the Opera & Jersey Boys! I also love Formula One, so when it is a race weekend, your probably find, I won't be baking! But nearly the end of this season, so I have a good few months of baking ahead of me! Then the usual, I love spending time with my family and occasionally, giving in and letting my stalker - Gina see me, haha :P

Favourite kind of food (normal meal time food haha)?

I love french & Italian food, especially foods with a mushroom sauce! And garlic too! Which must be why I love these types so much. I love traditional English food, pies, stew, roast dinner, etc! I do not like anything spicy – not good! How can you taste food when your mouth is burning so much?!

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Well, I love London and I pretty much live there! (A little on the outskirts), this city has everything, period & modern! It is perfectly balanced, and not to mention, the West End – dinner & a musical = the best of nights out for me! I love when you go round London, every time you always find something new or something you didn't know about!

But if you made me pick another country, I think Italy, particularly Rome. Beautiful city and very similar to London (which might be why I love it so much?!), it also has that perfect balance of period & modern. It is also the safest city I've ever been too and need I mention the food?!

What Disney character do you most relate too?

I'm not too sure, my sister keeps saying Flounder from Little Mermaid because he is scared of everything, so mean! According to my family, they say I'm like Bambi too.