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

Raspberry Friands

I've had a little bit of a baking drought lately, just been busy with life and haven't had the time to make anything. Last night, it was my turn to bring along some food to share with everyone at choir rehearsal with so little time to prepare I decided to make something that was easy to whip up yet delicious and satisfying. Raspberry friands are kind of my thing, I always make them and it seems to please everyone. I started off using the recipe from my favourite little 500 cupcakes recipe book, the only thing is it uses 6 egg whites which isn't a problem when Mr Mi feels like making ice cream which uses the 6 egg yolks but we don't always have time to whip up both! So I tried to source out another recipe that uses whole egg. I'm quite fond of this recipe, the egg yolks gives the friands extra richness. I had to use patty cases to line the tin, as my friands always got stuck. Try this recipe out, it's super-easy and tastes really good. Mi xo

MiNa's Thursday Lunch: Pot Pies & Pudding

Lentil (centre) and chicken (top right) pot pie with sweet potato mash and peas.

Every Thursday at our workplace, we have what's called "Thursday lunch" where we take turns cooking lunch for all our work buddies. It's been a long standing tradition and is a great way to bring everyone together. Soon it was our turn and for weeks leading up to the day we dreamt up all these fabulous dishes that we would make...then we stopped and realised that we had to make it for 30 odd people and suddenly we decided to re-think the plans and make something that is easy to upscale yet still delicious. This is when Jamie Oliver came to the rescue! We are both big fans of his cookbook Jamie's 30-Minute Meals, so turned to this for inspiration. What would people want to eat on a cold winter's day? Steaming hot pot pies with a side of mash and peas topped off with soft-centred chocolate puddings, raspberry coulis and double cream! Perhaps this was also inspired by our recent trip to the Pie Tin.

Butterfly Cupcakes

I absolutely love the smell of vanilla cupcakes baking in the oven. I've made a lot of cupcakes in my time and I still think the best recipe for a basic vanilla cupcake is equal portions of butter, sugar and flour. I got this recipe from 500 Cupcakes one of my favourite baking cookbooks. It's super easy and you can't go wrong. In fact it's very similar to Na's basic cupcake batter in her recent post Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. Just make sure the butter and eggs have come to room temperature before beating together.

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