and Orange Blossom Cupcakes

and now for the cream
Orange Blossom Cupcakes

I offered to bake cupcakes for a 60th birthday party. Knowing that the cake was going to be chocolate of some description we selected the Orange Blossom Cupcakes from a Women's Weekly Cupcake cookbook. I have quite a few Women's Weekly cookbooks and I love baking from them.

Here is the recipe:

Orange Blossom Cupcakes

Makes 12
Preparation Time : 20 minutes
Cooking Time : 25 minutes

Ingredients
** for the cupcakes **
1 cup self-raising flour
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup almond meal
125g softened butter
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp finely grated orange rind
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup dried cranberries/craisins
2 tbsp milk

** for the butter cream **
90g butter, softened
1/4 tsp orange essence
1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
peach food colouring

Method
** to make the cupcakes **
Preheat oven to moderate 180oC [160oC for fan-forced ovens]. Line a 12-hole standard muffin pan with paper cases.
Beat butter, sugar, rind and eggs in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in sifted flours, almond meal, craisins, juice and milk. Divided mixture among cases and smooth surface. Bake for approximately 25 minutes. Turn cakes onto wire racks to cool.

** to make the butter cream **
Beat butter and essence in a small bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in sifted icing sugar and milk. Beat in the food colouring.

Spread cupcakes with buttercream.

At this point the recipe gets you to create little flowers out of home made rolled icing. But this went straight into the too hard basket. After much searching of the junk food isle I found individually wrapped chocolate orange segments and just put them on top instead. Obviously you can use sugar flowers or any type of lolly or chocolate you want.

My Photo

His Photo

My boyfriend also loves creating things in the kitchen. Although I am the main baker in the house, he has his favourite recipe, Salted Caramel Truffles. Or as he likes to call it, chocolate salty balls... It is also a recipe from a Women's Weekly cookbook. This time their chocolate one. It just occurred to me. The recipe I used was on the cover of one book and my boyfriends recipe was on the cover of the other book.

My photo

His photo

His photo of me taking a photo

As you can see, my boyfriend is a little artier than me when it comes to photo taking. But hopefully I will learn more about the camera and composition and all the other tricks for taking great photo's.

We didn't make it to the second party. Which although the second party would have been great, I am thankful this morning for not going. Although I only had one cider I am not feeling too good this morning. I think it may be from the overload of sweets and junk food. Unfortunately there wasn't a single healthy thing on offer last night and my body is struggling to cope.

I hope to only eat healthy today but we have a lot of left overs in the fridge and cupboard, so I may fall to temptation.

Love, love Elle.