Custard filled shortcrust pastry cupcakes

The recipe for those cupcakes comes form story book for children. It wasn't very precise so I had some difficulties with sticky batter but final result was amazing. Buttery, sweet, crunch cake filled with vanilla custard ...we loved them. 

Ingredients for 12 cupcakes:

• 250g flour
• 250g butter
• 90g icing sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• custard

Prepare the custard from 500 ml of milk, follow the recipe on the box. Set aside to cool down. To prevent from forming a thick skin cover with cling film.

Put the ingredients for cupcakes into a blender and mix them until form smooth pastry. Then wrap the sticky pastry with cling film and put into freezer for half and hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Remove the chilled pastry form the freezer and 3/4 of the pastry divide evenly among all muffin tin holes. Stick the pastry around each muffin tin hole so there are no places for custard to leak. Put the baking tray again into the fridge for another half and hour.

Fill each pastry shell with cooled custard and cover with remaining pastry.

Put into preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes. 

Remove form the oven and leave in muffin tin for a few minutes.

Then release the edges using sharp knife. Place a tray on top of muffin tin and turn over so all cupcake will land on tray.

Decorate with  royal icing.

Royal icing ingredients:

• 2 egg whites
• 1-2 cups icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• chocolate hearts

Put egg whites and sugar into a bowl and stir with a spoon until thick paste. Add the vanilla extract and mix well. When achieve thick but runny icing pour it over each cupcake top. When finish place a chocolate heart on each top. 

 

Enjoy ! 

 

Chocolate muffins

Chocolate muffins. Who doesn't like them ? Those ones were very delicious. Very chocolaty, fluffy and moist inside with crunchy crust. Covered with icing sugar :) Really tasty. The recipe comes from 'Easy food'.

Ingredients for 12-14 muffins:

• 50g chocolate
• 140g butter or margarine
• 100ml sour cream
• 3 eggs
• 140g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 140g caster sugar
• 100g ground almonds
• 6 tbsp cocoa powder
• 85g glace cherries

Preheat the oven to 190C. Line with paper cases or grease muffin tin.

Chop the cherries and set aside.

Break the chocolate and place into a bowl or in a sauce pan. Add the butter and melt them together ether in microwave or on the heat. Stir them well until smooth. Set aside to cool down.

Into a separate bowl sift the flour, baking powder, soda and cocoa powder. Then add the sugar and almonds and whisk well. Set aside.

Take the melted chocolate and add the sour cream and beaten eggs. Pour this mixture into a dry ingredients add the chopped cherries and stir together. 

Spoon the batter into muffin tin. Bake for 20 minutes until well risen. Leave them in baking tray for a few minutes then transfer to the wire rack.

In a meantime prepare the icing.

Ingredients for icing:

• 140g icing sugar
• 1 tsp custard powder
•  water
• chocolate sprinkles

Mix the sugar, custard with a bit of water to make a thick icing. Spoon the icing over each muffin top and sprinkle with chocolate sprinkles. Enjoy !

 

Raffaello cupcakes

Those cupcakes were supposed to taste like Raffaello sweets. Just in case you do not know what Raffaello is, a few words of explanation. The Raffaello is waffle ball covered with dessicated coconut filled with creamy custard and whole almond inside. I have to say I have almost achieved my goal. I liked those cupcakes a lot, their smell , their texture. The only one thing I didn't like about them was the fact that custard inside spread instead of creating small ball in the middle of the cake. Hmmm... I think I will try to make them again just to improve this and that and of course to eat them agian. 

Ingredients for custard filling:

• 100 ml coconut milk
• 50g sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tbsp flour

Pour the milk and add sugar into a small sauce pan. Bring this mixture to boil  stirring from time to time. Remove from heat. In a  meantime in a small bowl combine the egg yolk with flour. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of hot liquid into egg yolk and whisk immediately. Then return egg yolk to the sauce pan. Bring it to the boil again stirring it all the time. When the custard is ready pour it in a bowl and leave it cool down. If it happened that the egg scrambled a little bit pour ready custard through the sieve. 

Ingredients for 6-8 cupcakes:

• 170g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 70g melted margarine
• 80g sugar
• 80 ml milk
• 1 egg white
• 30g white chocolate
• 6-8 almonds
• dessicated coconut

Melt the margarine and set aside. I used liquid margarine.

Grate the chocolate, set aside.

Pour some hot water over almonds and then remove their brown skin off.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.

In a big bowl sift the flour, add the sugar, baking powder, salt and chocolate. Whisk them together and set aside. 

In a measuring jug whisk together the milk, egg white and margarine. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients. Combine all ingredients together.

Spoon one table spoon of the batter into each paper case, then put one teaspoon custard in the middle, place one almond in each cupcake and cover with remaining batter. Sprinkle each cupcake with thick layer of dessicated coconut.

Bake for 20 minutes, until well risen. let them cool down a litte bit and enjoy !

Custard filled white chocolate muffins

Since I have received those beautiful sugar butterflies I was wondering what kind of muffins they may go with. I was thinking about vanilla cupcakes with butter cream frosting but I have already bake something similar and I do not like to repeat recipes. So when I came across this recipe I though it is perfect. Those muffins are spongy, well risen, sweet with drop of custard and white chocolate in the middle coated with white chocolate ganache. They were very tasty !

Ingredients for custard filling:

• 1 batch of vanilla custard powder
• 350 ml milk
• white chocolate chips

To make those muffins start with making vanilla custard as it has to have a time to cool down and thickened. Pour about 300 ml of milk into sauce pan and heat it up. In a jug stir the powder into remaining milk. When custard is dissolved, pour this mixture into warm milk.Cook it stirring constantly. When starts boiling, pour the hot custard into a bowl. Cover with cling film, so the cling film will touch the custard. It protects the custard against creating thick layer on the top. Set aside to cool down.

 

 

Ingredients for 12-15 muffins:

• 340g flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 150 g melted butter
• 160g sugar
• 150 ml milk
• 2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.

 

Melt the butter and set aside to cool down.

 

Sift the flour, baking powder, soda and salt into big bowl and whisk them together. 

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs with sugar, add the milk and cooled down butter. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients bowl. Combine all ingredients together. Do not over stir the mixture. 

Spoon the batter into paper cases. Put one spoon of the batter then one teaspoon of cooled down custard and few white chocolate chips and cover with another layer of batter. Do not overload the paper cases, try to put no more then 3/4 full.

Bake for 15 minutes. until well risen. Place on wire rack to cool down.

 

In a meantime prepare white chocolate ganache to coat the muffins.

Ingredients for white chocolate ganache:

• 50 ml milk
• 50 ml cream
• 100g white chocolate
• some sugar sprinkles for decoration

Pour the milk and cream into sauce pan and heat them up stirring continuously. Gradually add the chocolate. Cook until get creamy, thick sauce. set aside and let it cool for a moment, stirring from time to time. When slightly cooled and thickened pour over each muffin. Sprinkle wit sugar sprinkles if desired. Enjoy !
 

  

 

Custard muffins with pears

There was last, lonely pear in the fruit bowl and I decided to try recipe I found some time ago. The custard muffin with pears were really nice, soft, spongy and very easy to make. I modified the original recipe and I was really happy with the result.

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

• 110g flour
• 2 tbsp custard powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 55g caster sugar
• 30g brown sugar
• 85g milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 1 egg
• 55g melted butter
• 1 pear

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.

Peel of the pear, remove the core and dice the pear on smaller pieces.

Sift the flour, custard, baking powder, salt and sugars and whisk the together, set aside. In separate jug melt the butter (for example in microwave) cool it down, add egg, vanilla and milk and whisk together. Pour wet ingredients into dry add pear and combine together. Spoon the batter into muffin cases, bake for 20 min and enjoy !