Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate & Coffee Buttercream

Golden Gaytime Cake

Recipe from Tinman's Treats.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Cheesecake Frosting

Happy new year! My new year's resolution is to bake and blog more so here it goes first post of the year.

This dark chocolate cupcake recipe has been my go to recipe lately. It's so easy and the best thing is that the cupcakes remain moist and fresh even after a couple of days. Every time I go to the website I end up having to convert some of the quantities of ingredients, so I've decided to re-write the recipe below with the quantities in grams.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes (from Two Peas & Their Pod)

• 110 g unsalted butter
• 60 g dark chocolate (I use Nestle Club Dark)
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup plain Greek yoghurt

I topped off the cupcakes with a cream cheese icing scaled down from this recipe (250 g cream cheese, 70 g unsalted butter, 1 and 1/3 cups icing sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract) and a strawberry. Mr Mi's favourite flavours! Mi xo

MiNaScope

The MiNaScope microscope stage with various "biological" samples.

Yes, I know it's been a very, very long time since we've posted anything. I've had this one saved in the drafts folder since August and just haven't had the time (or motivation) to finish it off. Better late than never I guess!

A few months ago, Na sent me an email about the "Great Microscopy Bake-off 2013" held at The University of Sydney. The brief was to make a science or microscopy-themed cake, cupcake or biscuit. This was right down our alley and we really wanted to make a joint submission. We brainstormed and came up with various ideas, being so like-minded we actually came up with very similar ideas so it made the final decision easy. As we are both microscopists, we felt very strongly about making something microscope-related but a microscope seemed too obvious. In the end we decided on a microscope stage and various "biological" samples, this way we could easily make the components separately and then arrange them together on the day.

The MiNaScope microscope stage was chocolate brownie on the inside covered in basic vanilla buttercream and fondant. I bought the white icing at the supermarket and black fondant at The Essential Ingredient. Na's gingerbread cookies were covered in royal icing and decorated using a feathering effect described here. The writing on the "glass slides" was achieved by using a pen with edible ink.

Anthea Leonard from Sweet Art was there to judge the cakes and we came second! How amazing is that? Mi xo

Gingerbread cookies with "fluorescent cells" made by Na.

"Bacterial plate"gingerbread cookies made by Na.

Gingerbread "glass slides" made by Na.

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Nutella Ganache

A friend of ours is totally obsessed with Nutella, it has been so long since I had some. I remember as a kid spreading a thick layer of it on a fresh slice of white bread (crust off of course!) or eating spoonfuls of it straight from the jar. So when we had our baby reunion last week, I wanted to make some Nutella inspired cupcakes. I made a dark chocolate cupcake using this recipe and covered it with a Nutella ganache. It turned out pretty well, but next time I think I will have to boost the quantity of Nutella. It's a shame that she couldn't make it in the end, guess I will just have to make it again! Mi xo

Cheesecake Brownies

I've been wanting to try this recipe for ages, it's from one of my favourites cook books David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert. Life has been a bit chaotic lately and having a little one makes it difficult to put time aside to try a new recipe, but having him sleep in a hug-a-bub wrap has really saved my life. It gave me freedom to have both my hands free to bake! And boy have I missed baking!! Anyway, I volunteered to bake something for our weekly new parent's group and wanted to make something super-scrumptious. To me, baking for someone is the best way to show them you care, nothing pleases me more than seeing someone bite into a sweet morsel of goodness and smile with content. I pretty much stayed true to this recipe, except sprinkled some extra choc chips on top just because I could. I didn't have a square tin so had to use a larger rectangular one which meant the brownies were a bit flatter - more like a choc cheesecake slice I suppose. Nonetheless, they tasted delicious and moist in the centre much like black bottom cupcakes. If you love chocolate (and who doesn't) this is the cookbook for you! Mi xo

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream

As seen in my previous post Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting this recipe makes amazingly dark chocolaty cupcakes. This time I followed the recipe all the way and used the raspberry buttercream frosting. A perfect combination, the raspberry nicely balances the richness of the chocolate. Mi xo

Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting

Happy 1st birthday to MiNa's Food Adventures (well, one year and 2 days)! I can't believe it's been a year since our very first post, Christmas Cupcakes. What better way to celebrate this milestone then to post about our most favourite sweetie in the world, cupcakes!

I'd been searching a while for a really chocolaty cupcake recipe and came across this one from Two Peas & Their Pod. Thought I would give it a go and boy was I glad that I did! At first, I was a bit uncertain about the addition of Greek yogurt but the result was worth the wait - super moist and super chocolaty cupcakes. If you love chocolate, then look no further then this recipe and the best part is it's really easy to make. I was in a salted caramel mood, so decided to team these cupcakes up with a delicious buttercream from Sally's Baking Addiction. Very naughty...very YUMMY! Mi xo

Old Fashioned Chocolate Ice Cream with Brandy Snap Baskets

What better way to welcome the warmer days than to indulge in a delicious ice cold dessert, Mr Mi's old fashioned chocolate ice cream so creamy and rich served in a brandy snap basket covered in strawberries and lashings of Hershey's chocolate syrup. YUM! Mi xo

Christmas Tree Cupcakes (Chocolate & Peppermint)

These Christmas trees featured alongside Mi's delicious red velvet cupcakes last Christmas and were part of our very first blog post! Unfortunately, the recipe was not included in that first post...just a pretty picture. So here it is...just in time for Christmas!

Chocolate and Walnut Oat Cookies

I had a hankering for a biscuit that incorporated oats and chocolate so I tinkered with my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe and came up with this! They're slightly crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside, which is just how I like them!

Chocolate Chai Cupcakes

A slight modification of the chai cupcake recipe that I posted earlier. I was asked to make a batch of my chai cupcakes for a special occasion but I wanted to change it up a bit since I was growing a little tired of basic vanilla. I'm a chocolate fiend, so the first thing that came to mind was adding chocolate to these spicy chai cakes. You can find my full recipe on the Chai Cupcakes post. Just add 2 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder to the basic vanilla cupcake batter. Simple! Next time, I would like to make them a little bit more chocolatey by adding some choc chips or melted chocolate. Na xo

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

What do you get when you mash together a cake with a cookie? Whoopie pie! I came across this recipe from one of my favourite food blogs, Not Quite Nigella. The first time I tried this recipe, I used rock salt thinking somehow that the granules would dissolve...well it didn't! So, second time around I just decided to omit the salt and instead of the marshmallow filling I made a peanut buttercream. I also made them much smaller, using a teaspoon instead of an ice cream scoop. They rise and expand quite a bit in the oven, you have been warned! I used Na's buttercream recipe with some slight modifications:

Peanut buttercream recipe

• 125 g unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup of smooth peanut butter
• 1 and 1/2 cup of pure icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp milk

1. Beat the butter and peanut butter with an electric whisk
2. Add the icing sugar, vanilla and milk
3. Beat until smooth and creamy

I love peanut butter and while I thought this buttercream was pretty good, I think I would add more peanut butter next time. Enjoy! Mi xo

Chocolate & Raspberry Tart Recipe

I've always thought to myself that if things don't work out for me as a scientist, then my back-up occupation would be a voice actor for an animated film preferably Disney and preferably a princess but if not then any cute critter will do. So how happy was I when my extremely talented writer friend Miss T (who is also an incredible baker) asked me to read the part of Snow White! Hooray! To celebrate this happy occasion I decided to bake a tart. Hair black as ebony and lips red as blood = dark chocolate and raspberry tart, well...sort of. I've never made this sort of tart before and so raided my cook books to find one, enter 500 Chocolate Delights. I love these little books, especially 500 Cupcakes. The tart was easy to make and turned out pretty well with a delicious light and mousse-like texture. Miss T, this post is dedicated to you, thank you for letting us be a part of your artistic journey and for all the times you fed us yummy treats! Mi xo

Instagram Camera Cake

My sister loves cameras and all camera related items. I wanted to bake a cake for her birthday and a camera cake was an obvious choice! She loves digital cameras, vintage cameras and uses Instagram. I thought that a plain black digital camera cake might look a little boring so I made a cake that looks like the Instagram app! This cake was a bit of a challenge to make and I would call the end result "rustic". Let's just say that I have a new found respect for the folks on Ace Of Cakes.

The actual cake base is a vanilla sponge made using my favourite basic sponge recipe that I adapted from you guessed it, Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess, but you can use any basic sponge recipe that you like for the base. Once the cake is baked and completely cooled it's time to decorate! Clear everyone out of the kitchen because things are about to get serious!

Beetroot Cake Part 2

You may recall the beautiful beet cake video that I posted earlier well....today was the day that I finally tried it out. The actual recipe can be found in written form at the Tiger In a Jar blog. Having now baked and eaten this cake, I can say that it's essentially a chocolate cake with some beetroot in it, which makes it quite lovely and moist.

Chocolate Brownie Recipe

OK, so I'm just going to admit it...I've never made chocolate brownies before! There I said it. A few years back, I tasted the most amazing chocolate brownies made by a friend of a friend. I subsequently asked for the recipe but have never actually made them. I was rummaging through my recipe book the other day and came across it. I don't know the original source because she typed it up in an email for me, perhaps it was a family recipe? In any case, they taste really good and the glossy ganache is so decadent. Enjoy! Mi xo

Walnut Whoopie Pie with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Monchichi loves whoopie pies! Thanks R.E. :) Mi xo