Muffin Tin Monday - Big & Little

** If you have a moment to spare, please vote for my Maple Macadamia Carnival Cakes (see this post for recipe) in Cupcake Mystery Box, over at The Sweetest Kitchen! It doesn't take long & you won't have to sign up for anything! Thank you!!**

And now, on to Muffin Tin Monday...

This week's theme is "Big & Little" - here is our take:


Top Row: Cheddar cheese circle with elephant pick (big) & string cheese circles with mouse pick (little); Yoghurt with little & big sprinkles; Musk stick (a little piece and a big piece).

Bottom Row: Carrot hearts (little); Salami sandwich heart (big); Cherries (which we decided were simultaneously little and big - cherries generally being a small fruit, and these particular ones being particularly large cherries) :o)

The After Shot:

Woo hoo! I could not believe she ate this many carrots!

To see what other mums did this week, go to the Muffin Tin Mom's blog - and don't forget to vote in Cupcake Mystery Box!

Aaaand, let the voting begin!

Step right up, folks! This month's Cupcake Mystery Box theme ingredient is POPCORN, and the voting has begun! Click on over to The Sweetest Kitchen to join the fun!

There are twelve cupcakey competitors this time. You can vote for your two favourites - and if one of them just happens to be my Maple Macadamia Carnival Cakes, that would be all kinds of awesome...!

You only have until January 26 to get your votes in (and to check out all the other awesome entries!) So why not pop over there right now?

Maple Macadamia Carnival Cakes!

(and an ample allocation of alliteration to all...) :o)

I haven't competed in any baking competitions for a while - Christmas is always kinda hectic without the added pressure of becoming Completely Obsessed about a single ingredient for weeks at a time... But when I saw the theme ingredient Jamieanne of The Sweetest Kitchen had nominated for this month's Cupcake Mystery Box... well. Let's just say, I haven't been quite this inspired by a theme ingredient for A Very Long Time. Because it's so different!! And yet... so everyday...

POPCORN!

Yes, popcorn cupcakes. Genius, right? And a worthy challenge, because, well... how to use it?

I tried a few things. Following Jamieanne's suggested (though untried) recipe was, I thought, A Good Place To Start. And I must say, the raw batter tasted great. It tasted like buttered popcorn. Then I baked it, and it didn't anymore. Hmm...

Second attempt: Popping my own popcorn in our popcorn maker (ie using hot air rather than oil/butter/miscellaneous chemicals), blitzing it in the food processor, sieving it, then substituting it for some of the flour in Billy Reece's vanilla cupcake recipe. This resulted in an unmitigated baking disaster of massive proportions. Mixture everywhere in oven, sullen little cakey puddles at bottoms of muffin tin. That didn't even taste nice. Hmm....

Third attempt: SCORE! And thus I present to you, my Maple Macadamia Carnival Cakes. With a delicious, moreish, surprisingly sophisticated flavour, made slightly mad by topping them with maple caramel popcorn balls on a stick. 'Cause you can't be making popcorn cupcakes and take yourself TOO seriously...

But seriously, these are SOOO good. The subtle, smoky sweetness of the maple syrup and the buttery crunch of the macadamia nuts are the perfect backdrop for the creamy popcorn frosting. Don't you love it when a plan (eventually) comes together?

The winner of January’s Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:

Bake It Pretty; a $5 electronic gift card
Beanilla; 3 Madagascar, 3 Mexican & 3 Indian vanilla beans
ExoDesign; a wire whisk charm necklace
Hello Hanna; a pack of Sweet Stands cupcake stands
Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
Simply Caked; 600 brown greaseproof cupcake liners
Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25
Tundra Books; a selection 3 very sweet children’s books

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

And here's the recipe:-
Ingredients
1 bag of butter flavoured (or in my case, "Triple Butter Flavour Explosion!!!!!" flavoured) microwave popcorn
1 cup whipping/pouring cream (thin enough to pour, and around 35% fat)
1 cup full cream milk

175g salted butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
160g SR flour
100g Plain flour
150mL milk
50mL maple syrup (use the real stuff - it tastes stronger and better. Fact.)
75g macadamia nuts, chopped

125g unsalted butter
200g icing sugar
About 1/2 to 3/4 cup of Popcorn Cream (see below)
A pinch or so of salt

1/4 cup popping corn (or I guess you could buy ready-made plain popcorn if you don't have an air popper)
Whatever recipe you would normally use to make caramel, and the ingredients to do so.
50mL maple syrup

To make Popcorn Cream
Cook microwave popcorn as per the instructions on the pack. Blitz briefly in food processor or similar if desired (you're not trying to powder it or anything, just chopping it up a bit smaller to let more flavour out when you infuse it).
Next, heat the cream and the microwaved popcorn together in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, then remove from heat, and push mixture through a sieve. Put the popcorny cream into the fridge, and the solid husky bits back into the saucepan. Add the milk, and bring to the boil again. This time, allow the mixture to cool completely before pushing it through a sieve. Add the popcorny milk to the popcorny cream, mix together and refrigerate. Discard popcorn husks.

To make Cupcakes
Cream salted butter and caster sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift flours together and fold about a third of this into the mixture. Combine milk and maple syrup and fold half of this into the mixture. Add half the remaining flour, the rest of the milk mixture, and finally the rest of the flour, folding gently between each addition.
Spoon mixture into cupcake cases, filling about two thirds full, and top each one with some of the chopped macadamias. These will toast happily on the top, creating a yummy crunch.
Bake at 180 degrees Celsius (350F) until they test clean (around 18-20 minutes)

They will not be this colour. The lighting always looks weird in my night time photos.

To make Popcorn Frosting
Remove Popcorn Cream from the fridge, and blend it with a stick mixer or similar just until smooth. This will break down all the teensy lumps of popcorn that came through the sieve. It will also thicken the mixture slightly. This is fine, as the milk should protect the cream from whipping too much at this stage, but don't blitz it for too long - it should still be pourable). Beat unsalted butter in a stand mixer (or with handheld beaters) until pale. Add icing sugar (half at a time to avoid sugar blizzards) and cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add half a cup of Popcorn Cream, and beat briefly (the cream will whip quickly at this point, so don't overdo it). Taste, and have a look at the texture. Add salt to taste, and a little more Popcorn Cream if you want to (don't add too much or the mixture will start curdling), and beat for a few more seconds. Pipe or spread onto waiting cupcakes.

To make Popcorn Balls-on-a-Stick
Pop the 1/4 cup of popping corn, and put it in a heatproof bowl - don't season it with anything.
Make caramel, adding the maple syrup to your usual recipe. Let the caramel get as dark as takes your fancy (I did it quite light this time, as I was serving these mainly to kids, but personally I would have preferred it darker), and remove it from the heat.
Immediately pour enough caramel over popcorn to only just barely coat it (you don't really want a big lump of candy in this case - the caramel is mostly there just to hold the popcorn together and make it pleasantly sweet and mapley). Toss quickly and thoroughly using two large greased forks. When the mixture is just cool enough to touch (but still pliable), form popcorn into balls with greased hands, and insert a lollipop stick into each. Place on baking paper to set.

Insert a popcorn ball-on-a-stick into each frosted cupcake, and add colourful sprinkles!

All the fun of the fair! (or possibly topiary trees, as Husband just pointed out)

YUM.

The Aforementioned Roundup of Sweet White Chocolatey Goodness

is now up! And voting has begun. Yes, more voting! I know. Don't worry, it will all be over soon (until next month).

And can I just say, wow. Twenty eight entries in this one. Twenty eight separate ways for your taste buds to be very happy, and your waistline not so much. They all look pretty awesome. Go check it out (and did I mention, VOTE) at Sweetest Kitchen.

Good luck to everyone who entered!

Rhubarb & White Chocolate

I am actually quite a busy person. Honest.

But despite all the other things I probably should have been doing, and despite having already entered two different cupcakes into this month's Cupcake Hero competition, I nevertheless got very excited when I found out what the theme ingredient is for this month's Cupcake Mystery Box over at Sweetest Kitchen.

It's white chocolate. Oh, yum. And I had some in the cupboard.

I also have a rhubarb plant in my garden, valiantly soldiering on through the Winter months with a few spindly reddish stalks (I was worried until I looked at a gardening website. Now I'm just hanging out for Spring).

It was destiny.


Now I have your attention, right?


This baby is a white chocolate & rhubarb almond cupcake, topped with a to-die-for white chocolate cream cheese frosting. And sticky rhubarb.

To make these cupcakes, I made some fairly major alterations to a Delia Smith recipe (from "The Delia Collection: Chocolate" book), and ended up with this:-


White Chocolate Rhubarb Cupcakes
Ingredients
100g fresh rhubarb stalks **see note below**
75g white chocolate, coarsely grated
55g butter
75g caster sugar
2 eggs, separated
55g ground almonds
75mL milk
85g self raising flour
Modus Operandi
First, chop rhubarb finely and cook it on its own in a small saucepan over a low heat until soft. Basically you want rhubarb mush; it should only take about five minutes. Set aside to cool.
Next, cream the butter and sugar. Add egg yolks gradually (about a teaspoonful at a time), beating well until all incorporated. Beat in the stewed rhubarb until combined. Fold in ground almonds, chocolate, and milk. Sift the flour and gently fold it in.
In a clean bowl, whisk egg whites to soft peaks, then fold these very gently into the mixture.
Spoon mixture into cupcake papers - fill about 2/3 full if you're feeling timid, otherwise to 3/4 full - they will rise alarmingly in the oven at first, but will subside a little. Mine didn't overflow, although they looked as though they were heading that way for a while...
Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 15 - 20 minutes, or until they test clean.

**NB: I actually used 65g in my cupcake batter, but couldn't taste it in the end result. Two options here: turf it completely (it really isn't necessary, the cuppie is beautiful as is), or increase the amount. I plan to try it with 100g next time.**


White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients
135g cream cheese
50g unsalted butter
200g icing sugar
75g white chocolate
Modus Operandi
Melt the white chocolate. Beat the cheese and butter until smooth. Add sifted icing sugar; beat until fluffy. Add melted chocolate and beat until all combined. Try very hard not to eat it all.


Sticky Rhubarb
Combine 100g rhubarb with 35g caster sugar in a colander over a bowl, and refrigerate for 24 hours. Then put the rhubarb and the drained liquid into a small saucepan and cook gently until rhubarb is soft. Add a good squeeze of lemon juice (to taste). Cool completely before using on cupcakes.

Assemble cupcakes as follows: cupcake, frosting, rhubarb, optional white chocolate curl.





What surprised me about these is their texture - they're actually quite light and fluffy. With all that almond meal and white chocolate, I was expecting something fairly heavy - until I was filling the cupcake cases, at which point I was all like, this mixture weighs nothing! And sure enough, I have just proved to myself that there is in fact room in the world for baked goods that are not massively rich and squidgy. As long as they taste as good as this.


Now what are you waiting for?? Head on over to Sweetest Kitchen and check out the roundup of sweet white chocolatey goodness - or at any rate, do that after the 21st August.
And don't forget to vote for your favourite!


For that matter - there's still time to enter! Check out the incentives:


The winner of August’s Mystery Box Cupcake Challenge will receive prizes from:

• Bake It Pretty; $5 electronic gift card


• Beanilla; 3 Indian + 3 Tahitian vanilla beans & a jar of Ground Vanilla


• CT2Designs; a cupcake ring


• Miss Kitty Creations; a cupcake charm of your choice


• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a prize pack worth $25

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!