Friday 31 October 2014

#2 Giant Cinnamon Scroll




My sister and I have a shameful weakness for the Donut King cinnamon scrolls, so once I saw this giant one on Sally's blog I had to give it a go. I haven't had a huge amount of experience with doughs and half expected mine to be tough and heavy. But no, this was so light and sweet! So dangerously light in fact that I accidentally ate two pieces without even blinking.



The dough needs two rising periods, so it took me a total of 2.5 hours to make, but it was so worth it and in my opinion was better than the ones at DK. I used one 7g sachet of Tandaco dry yeast (found at coles and woolworths) and it rose beautifully. I used a 9 inch (23cm) springform cake tin and during cooking covered it with foil after about 10 minutes.

The glaze was simply icing sugar, milk and vanilla (I omitted the maple syrup to keep it as a standard vanilla flavour) and it poured it on the scroll while it was still warm because unlike other cakes, this is at its best when it has just come out of the oven.

I've already had requests to make this again for breakfast and honestly I don't think I have the willpower strong enough to say no!


Thursday 30 October 2014

#1 Apple Spice Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting



After avidly following my fair share of food blogs, I thought I would create one of my own. Any time I can avoid studying and whip up something in the kitchen I seize the moment. I found the recipe for these delicious apple spice cupcakes on Sally's Baking Addiction along with the salted caramel frosting. Normally I gravitate towards the chocolate upon chocolate option, but testing new recipes is always fun, and the sound of apple and caramel was very tempting. 


The batter is so simple, but the addition of cinnamon, nutmeg and diced apple creates a brilliant combo, and the end product was so light. I may be late to the game, but for one of the first times I used an ice cream/cookie scoop when placing the batter into the patty pans and WOW it makes the job ten times easier, and all my cupcakes were the same size! I do regret not taking a photo of what the cake looks like on the inside (blog fail #1).

The frosting was a new venture for me away from simple butter creams and ganache and it had me making a caramel on the stove which proved easier than I thought. I'm still looking into larger piping tips for that classic cupcake frosting swirl (Wilton 1M has my eye at the moment), so my Wilton #32 had to do. I tried piping the icing while still warm- that produced cupcake fails 1-3, but after about 10 minutes in the freezer swirls held perfectly. 

Nearly everyone who ate these ones commented that the cake itself didn't even need icing, and a little icing went a long way. As usual, Sally's recipe didn't fail to deliver and I will be surely making these ones again!