Jun 21
It just turned winter here in Sydney. Fellow Sydney residents will think I’m crazy for posting about popsicles when it’s so chilly outside, but my friends in the US have just seen the first of summer and will, I’m sure, welcome some recipes for popsicles! Read more
Apr 16
I take my 4-year-old daughter to ballet classes on Tuesdays. She really enjoys it and has made a new friend in her class. It’s neat to see her perform some of the poses at home – one day she did a plie. Ballet term 2 is now starting after a 2-week long Easter holiday, and my daughter says she wants to continue with ballet.
Ballet class lasts only 30 minutes. Luckily, if I practically run, I can make it over to the nearby Westfield shopping center for a special treat for myself. I visit T2 Tea and sample all four of the teas they have on display that day and have a chat with the friendly ladies who work there. And then I do a fast-walk to get back to ballet to pick up my daughter.
As it turns out, my daughter also likes to sample the teas at T2 Tea, so before the holidays I started going to T2 before ballet class so she could try the teas too, and I sat in the lobby area of the ballet studio and read magazines while she was in her class. They only have a handful of magazines and always the same ones, but I did find an Australian Women’s Weekly magazine (from March 2009!) that I hadn’t seen before and flipped through the recipe section. I found some beautiful mocha cupcakes and read the recipe for them. I was immediately intrigued by it because it used real melted chocolate, almond meal and buttermilk.
Nov 24
Our 3 years back in the US have been great, but it’s time to settle down and raise our kids in one spot. As hard as it is to leave your family behind, it’s something that happens every day; kids grow up and leave their families behind to start their own life.
I’m leaving my family behind here in Indiana and moving to Sydney, Australia this weekend. I have lived in Sydney before, from 2001-2006 and it was fabulous. It’s definitely a place I feel happy spending my life in. I know my kids will love it as well.
This will be my last post from the US; expect all future posts to be from Australia and upside down! 
Anyway, a friend of mine requested one last batch of cupcakes from me before we left. She wanted cookie dough cupcakes and chocolate/white chocolate cupcakes. Of course I’ve done cookie dough cupcakes before, so I won’t post about them again, but I made the chocolate/white chocolate cupcakes into white chocolate mocha cupcakes. I was inspired to do this because my friend is a big fan of Starbucks’ white chocolate mochas. These were the last cupcakes I made in the US.
I know, the photos aren’t that great because it was late afternoon and there wasn’t enough natural light from the sun so I didn’t even bother with my usual set up.
These are chocolate cupcakes, filled with chocolate coffee ganache and frosted with white chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC). I’m really proud of these because while most mocha cupcakes have coffee in the cake where it cannot be tasted, I put my coffee into the ganache and the coffee flavor is quite prominent. This isn’t just any chocolate coffee ganache, by the way. It was made using the brand new Starbucks VIA Italian Roast instant coffee.
The white chocolate really came through in the SMBC, as well. SMBC is always an extra effort to make, but the results are so rewarding. The texture was silky smooth and full of white chocolate flavor.
My main point of this post is to share the coffee ganache tip with you. If you want coffee flavor in your cupcakes, don’t put the coffee in the cake (or well, you can, just be aware that the taste isn’t going to be very noticeable) – fill the cupcakes with coffee-flavored ganache!
If you’d like to try the ultimate white chocolate cupcake, the recipes are below. Just choose your own favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (mine is Hershey’s or Martha’s Devil’s food cupcakes) and follow these recipes.
Chocolate Coffee Ganache Filling
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Makes enough to fill 12 cupcakes (with a little leftover)Ingredients
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 packet Starbucks VIA Italian Roast
1 tablespoon butter, room temperatureMethod
Chop the chocolate and transfer it to a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream until simmering then empty the packet of Starbucks VIA into the cream and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and pour the cream over the chocolate. Let it sit for one minute and then stir until smooth. (If this has not sufficiently melted the chocolate, you can return it to a double-boiler to gently melt what remains. 20 seconds in the microwave, watching carefully, will also work.) Add the butter and stir until combined.
White Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Adapted from Whisk Kid
Makes enough to frost about 18 cupcakesIngredients
1 cup sugar
5 egg whites
18 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened slightly and sliced
1/4 cup white chocolate, melted and cooledMethod
Cook the egg whites and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly, until the sugar is completely dissolved (test by rubbing some between your fingers. If it’s completely smooth, it’s done).Pour into another bowl (a stand mixer is preferable) and whip on high speed until room temp.
Then, on a medium-slow speed, add the butter, waiting until each piece is completely incorporated before adding the next. The buttercream may turn into a soupy curdled mess, but I assure you it will be ok; just beat it for a few minutes longer. It’ll come together!
When the buttercream has reached the ideal consistency, add the melted and cooled white chocolate carefully. Try not to get any on the walls of the bowl as it will cool and harden there. Whip to incorporate.
Jun 23
I love making coffees at home. I’d love to have a nice coffee maker or an espresso machine, but I don’t; I have my good old 1-cup coffee press that I use religiously. Awaiting my return in Sydney, Australia, is a Senseo coffee maker, that I look forward to using again, but the drawback is that it requires special pre-packaged coffee pods.
Anyway, this post isn’t about coffee makers, it’s about a recipe for a cinnamon mocha that I adapted from my big Taste of Home cookbook. The original recipe yields 6 cups, but I scaled it down to 1 cup.
The amounts of the ingredients can be changed according to your tastes, so feel free to experiment.
Cinnamon Spiced Mocha
Adapted from Taste of Home
Serves 1Ingredients
3 tablespoons ground coffee
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
About 1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon light brown sugar, unpacked
1 tablespoon chocolate syrupMix nutmeg and cinnamon into coffee grounds and brew as usual. In my coffee press, I brew this for 3 minutes.
While coffee is brewing, fill your coffee mug with the 1/2 cup milk, or about halfway. Stir in brown sugar and chocolate syrup and warm in microwave for about 30-40 seconds. Stir again.
When coffee is finished brewing, pour it into the milk in the mug and give it another stir. Top with whipped cream and cocoa powder if desired.
Mar 7
Yesterday was my birthday, so I just had to bake a cake. It took a while for me to decide what kind of cake I wanted and I ended up with a couple of recipes inside of a Ghirardelli 100% Cocao baking bar (that’s an unsweetened chocolate baking bar, in case you weren’t sure). It was for a one-bowl devil’s food cake and mocha buttercream.
This was going to be a bit of a dare, however, as the recipe asked for shortening – 1) I don’t have any shortening because 2) I don’t like shortening. I had read many comments from people who always substitute butter for shortening with minimal or barely noticeable differences, so I took a chance and substituted unsalted butter for the shortening.
What I thought would happen though, ended up happening. The recipe tells you to sift a flour mixture into a large mixing bowl, then put all the wet ingredients on top of that and mix for 2 minutes. That’s a really strange way to make cake batter, in my opinion. I thought that the butter wouldn’t mix in thoroughly and would leave butter chunks in the batter. And, well, I was right.
I didn’t want to keep beating the batter so I wouldn’t overbeat it, so I poured it into a pan and sat it on the stove over gentle heat for just enough time to melt the butter. I kept thinking I should have went with a different recipe, because this one would end up a disaster and I would have wasted a whole bar of that 100% cocao!
However, the cake ended up baking just fine, much to my surprise!
Note, number of candles not relative to my age (although some could argue that)
The buttercream was very strange to make as well, even though I did have all the required ingredients for that. The recipe says to melt a bar of 100% cocao. Then dissolve two teaspoons of instant coffee in 2 tablespoons of boiling water, and stir it into the melted chocolate. This turned the melted chocolate into a sticky clump of chocolate and my first thought was that this would not be able to mix into the frosting without clumping. And, well, I was right again.
I beat the frosting for quite a while (maybe two minutes?) at medium-high speed just to work out the clumps and this did actually work. It’s a very light and creamy buttercream with a strong mocha taste. I didn’t need to add all of the milk the recipe asked for, I left about 2 teaspoons (give or take) of the milk out. If I added more it would have been to wet to stick on the cake, I think!
So, how did this cake end up, overall? First I will say that I will not be making this cake again, even with using shortening. I personally don’t think this cake tastes all that great, but it isn’t bad. I feel like I wasted my nice unsweetened chocolate on this cake, though.
Feb 19
This month’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge has been pretty hard for me. See, I love coffee and normally have two cups a day. The problem is though, that since becoming pregnant I don’t like coffee anymore! It’s really crazy. Through all my three pregnancies I have had at least one strong food aversion with each one – 1) eggs; 2) pepperoni; 3) coffee. But since I didn’t enter last month’s Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge, I tried to overcome my coffee aversion to make a hazelnut mocha cupcake.
The cupcake is a mocha cupcake, made with strong coffee and a scattering of ground coffee. It is filled with straight Nutella. The frosting is my Nutella coffee frosting that has been featured at Cupcakes Take The Cake. The cupcake is finished off with a hazelnut, dipped in chocolate by my own self.
Do these taste like a hazelnut mocha? They do. A very rich hazelnut mocha! The Nutella filling may have been a bit much. The coffee taste isn’t very strong in the cupcake, and you cannot feel the crunchiness of the ground coffee. The strongest coffee taste comes from the frosting, which smells absolutely gorgeous. The cupcake itself is just a teensy bit dry, but very chocolatey.
Our February ETSY PRIZE-PACK is from artists:
As an added bonus for February, SWEET CUPPIN CAKES BAKERY AND CUPCAKERY SUPPLY will be tossing in a variety of cupcaking supplies, http://www.acupcakery.com/index.html.
Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS,http://www.fiestaproducts.com, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, http://blog.hellocupcakebook.com, JESSIE STEELE APRONS http://www.jessiesteele.com; TASTE OF HOME books, http://www.tasteofhome.com; a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM http://www.upwithcupcakes.com/. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers,http://www.1800flowers.com.
Now, on to the recipes.
View printable PDF recipes
Mocha Cupcakes
makes 12Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup cold brewed coffee
1/2 cup canola oil
3 teaspoons cider vinegar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup baking cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground coffeeMethod:
In a large bowl, beat the eggs, coffee, oil, vinegar and vanilla until well blended. In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into coffee mixture until blended.Fill paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool.
Nutella Coffee Frosting
makes enough to frost 12 cupcakesIngredients:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
4 tablespoons Nutella
3 cups powdered sugar
2-4 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
1 teaspoon vanillaMethod:
In a small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon milk with 1 teaspoon instant coffee and stir until coffee is dissolved. It may help to dissolve the coffee if you warm the milk in the microwave, just be sure to cool it off afterwards in the fridge before adding to the frosting.In a separate bowl, combine butter, Nutella, powdered sugar, vanilla, and the 2 tablespoons coffee-milk mixture. Mix well with electric mixer, adding more milk as needed to make a fluffy spreadable/pipeable frosting.
Updated the next day: I just had one of these cupcakes without the Nutella filling and I enjoyed it much more. The Nutella filling was just a bit too much for me. I’d recommend that if you make these to not fill them with Nutella, but ultimately that choice is up to you! :)
In my search for a coffee and banana cupcake, I decided to try the following combination.
Mocha cupcakes from Genius of a Cook: Obviously I did not use the Kahlua frosting, but I can say that these are the best mocha cupcakes. They were so soft, delicate and moist and had just a hint of coffee. I would have liked a stronger coffee flavor, but maybe my brewed coffee should have been stronger.
A personal note on these cupcakes – the recipe, I believe, should yield 12 cupcakes if you fill the liners 3/4 full. I did fill my liners to that recommended level, but had overflow while baking. If I make these again, I may try filling the liners a bit less than recommended and end up with a couple extra cupcakes.
Banana frosting from Chef Lilian: I was a bit disappointed with this frosting. While it did taste nice, it ended up looking nothing like the photo on the recipe page. It was very runny, too runny. After researching a bit more, I am wondering if that recipe could be missing an ingredient – perhaps, butter.
Overall, a great tasting cupcake. In future, I might try baking these cupcakes again with Nutella frosting. Also I will eventually try the reverse of this recipe – a banana cupcake with mocha or plain coffee frosting.
Jamieanne has a passion for food and baking that dates back to her early childhood. She is the author of The Sweetest Kitchen blog, which features her favorite recipes from magazines, cookbooks and other food blogs. Keep up to date with Jamieanne and her blog by following on:
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