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By Kate, 31 January 2010 12:49 pm

More cupcakes this week. This time, I returned to something my mom used to make all the time—black bottomed cupcakes. I haven’t made them in about 2 years so I forgot how awesomely good they are. This is made even better by how easy they are to make. So I’m going to post the recipe, because more than one person at work asked for it, and everyone should be able to make these as there’s no real trick to it.

I know Starbucks has these sometimes, but I’ve tried one of theirs, and as with almost every kind of cake they have, they make it far too sweet and ruin the chocolate and cheesecake flavour balance. Do yourself a favour and make your own. Not only will it be tastier, but also far, far cheaper.

Black bottomed cupcakes

For the chocolate cake:

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 c cocoa
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 c water
• 1/2 c oil
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla

For the cheesecake topping:

• 1 (8 oz) package cream cheese  (And don’t mess around with anything that’s not full fat.)
• 1 egg
• 1/3 c sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt

Optional:

• Chocolate chips or bits of a dark chocolate bar

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
2. In one bowl, mix all chocolate cake ingredients together (and no, it’s not a mistake, there’s no egg in the chocolate cake bit). It’s probably best if you do this with some kind of beater, but if you like your baking to exhaust you, you could whisk it up by hand.
3. In another bowl, beat together all the cheesecake topping ingredients.
4. Line a 12 muffin tin with cupcake cases and fill each about halfway with chocolate cake mix.
5. Top each with a tablespoon or two of cheesecake mix. Try to drop this in the middle of the chocolate cake mix. It will look kind of like it’s sinking, but don’t worry about it.
6. Top each cupcake with a few chocolate chips or bits of dark chocolate if you want to.
7. Bake for around 15-18 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. The chocolate cake part is extremely dense, so it will probably look a bit more moist than you’re used to seeing with other chocolate cake.

In general, the cheesecake bit is supposed to stay kind of in the middle of the cake bit on top. Mine was a bit runnier than usual this time so it ended up around the outside of the top. Either way, it tastes just as good, so don’t fuss too much over what it looks like.

These are ok right out of the oven, but they’re the best when they’re cold, so if you can resist long enough, wait til they cool, pop them in the fridge for an hour, then eat one. Tasty times.

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By Kate, 24 January 2010 8:41 pm

It’s about time I start using this thing for what I meant to use it for in the first place rather than boring you with my rants and raves about society’s stupidity. So I’ll start with some craftiness and move on to the food.

My first embroidered elephant.

A while back, I mentioned that I had taught myself a new skill. Huzzah! But was not able to post the results of said new skill because the project in question was part of a super secret quilt meant for my best friend Kelsey’s baby, who was not yet born. Booooo. Well, Ms. Etta has now entered the wide world so the quilt is a secret no more.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the whole thing, but our friend Kedre got a bunch of Kelsey’s friends and relatives got together and got them each to do an animal square in their own style. I did see the finished quilt over Christmas and it’s awesome. All the squares are different but they pull together nicely.

For my square, I decided to dive into the world of embroidery. The results did not suck. And I found that I enjoyed doing it, especially because it’s something I can do while watching TV, which means I feel like less of a lump while sitting on my couch. Double bonus! I’ve done some more little projects since then (a stocking for my parents’ new dog Randle, who is awesome, and a set of dish towels for their new beach house), but this is the only one I’ve got a picture of at the moment.

Unforgettable Elephant from Sew Everything Workshop.

Continuing with the elephant theme, I made a little stuffed elephant with a pattern from Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp. It was fairly easy except for sewing up the top seam. I’m absolute shite at handsewing, and even more hopeless at slipstitch, so I gave up on trying to hide the stitches and just did as neat a seam as I could. It ended up ok, especially because no one, let alone a baby, cares about a little visible thread when an elephant is involved. I also figured it was more important to make the stitch strong rather than invisible, because kids like pulling at stuff. In any case, I think I’ll be making more of these little guys, because I sort of want one, and there are other babies I know who are about to enter the world.

Back in the present, this weekend I decided it’s been far too long since I’ve done any baking of the cake variety. The urge to bake was further spurred on by a visit to the Cup Cake Caffe, which is basically the wee coffee shop extension of the restaurant in the main National Gallery Complex. I was in the gallery shop buying some stuff with the gift certificate I won in the staff drawing before Christmas (Score! Good way to start a new job.) and I had been meaning to try out these cupcakes I’d been hearing about. No cupcake in my world can ever go uninvestigated. Especially when the few I’ve bought lately haven’t been up to scratch. In any case, these particular Cup Cake Caffe cupcakes were actually pretty good. They only had two kinds left at the time, so we tried both. One was a coconut cake with vanilla frosting and fresh blackberry-ish jam, and one was pretty much victoria sponge with raspberries and cream. Both were super tasty. I’ll have to go back and try the dark chocolate and cherry one. Too bad there’s no employee discount on the cupcakes.

Mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing.

As I said, all the cupcake sampling got me in the baking mood. I made Rachel Allen’s mocha cupcakes with Kahlua and coffee icing today. They are pretty freakin’ good. I feel like maybe they could be a bit more coffee-ish. I used all coffee instead of coffee and water like the recipe says, but maybe next time I’ll go get some espresso and use that. The texture is awesome though, really light and moist and a good complement to the buttery icing on top. I may put more Kahlua in the icing next time. We’ll see.

As for the burger I mentioned, we went to Guilty Lily for lunch today and both had burgers. I think it may have been the best burger I have ever had in this city. Burgers in this country tend to be disappointing because I think the whole hoof and mouth thing a few years back freaked people out and they really don’t like cooking a burger any less than very, extremely well-done. I, as you may imagine, am not cool with this. Scott is even less cool with this, especially after he had an amazing burger at Brewer’s Alley in the states that was just about raw in the middle. Now, I don’t need my burger to be as bloody as my steak, but you just can’t cook the hell out of a burger, because it looses all its flavour and dries out and isn’t at all pleasant anymore.

The burgers at Gulty Lily aren’t quite pink in the middle, but I have a feeling if they were cooked about 2 seconds less, they would be. They were nice and juicy and fatty, as a good burger should be, and the sweet onion chilli jam that was on top of mine I could have eaten from a jar. They only had one beer in the cask, but I had a nice glass of wine (ok, two) and we’ve had the cocktails there before, which are fantastic. Highly recommended. And I think we’ll be going back and trying the breakfast, because I spied one or two plates that made my mouth water.

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By Kate, 6 July 2009 8:14 pm

For hands-free luggin' around.

Although I tend to feel like I’m being too lazy all the time, I’ve got a few things that I’ve finished recently, and some other things I’ve started.

The first project is top secret for now, so I can’t post pictures for a few months, but I tried a new skill and did not suck at it, so I’m proud of myself.

Project 2, a yoga mat bag. I got tired of carrying my mat in my hand after one class. I have to bring it to work with me and then bring it most of the way back towards home before I even get to class, so that’s 3 miles before I even unroll it. I made use of some scrap IKEA fabric I had from my sister’s christmas present and whipped this up in about 3 hours. I’m pretty happy with it. The bottom was sort of fiddly, and the stitiching on the top of the strap is kind of crap, but overall, a good result.

Third on the list is a pair of pajama pants, which I don’t actually have a picture of. I’m not too big a fan of the waist, mostly because it relies solely on a drawstring rather than a drawstring plus elastic, but they’ve got super wide legs, and since I made them myself, I was able to make them long enough for my legs, so they’re cozy. The fabric is maroon cotton with little cartoon elephants, giraffes, lions, pineapples, and palm trees. Awesome!

nomnomnom

Next! So I make a lot of cake. I get used to having it around. When it’s not, I can get a little stroppy. Because dammit, I like cake! I don’t want a chocolate bar, I don’t want a lollypop, I might want a cookie depending on what it is, but really, I just want some cake. So I raided my cabinets and my recipe books and decided to make chocolate cupcakes with some raspberries on the top. (I had frozen ones. If I had fresh ones, I would have just eaten them on their own. Scottish raspberries in season are THE BEST IN THE WORLD.) I used Rachel Allen’s chocolate cake recipe for the first time. It’s all right, but it would probably do better with frosting instead of raspberries. For the record, every other cake I’ve made from her book, Bake, so far has been absolutely freaking incredible, so it’s a good book to have. Anyway, that put some cake in my house, and by some miracle, it’s still not gone. Mission accomplished.

I’ve also started a few longer-term things. The first being a batch of homebrewed ginger beer. Scott’s been doing a lot of beer with mixed success rates, but I hadn’t tried anything myself yet. Then I saw our homebrew shop had a ginger beer kit from Coopers, so I jumped on it. It was even easier to brew than a beer kit. I decided it had to be refrigerated for the best result, so this was our first foray into bottling (we’ve just kegged everything else). It seems to have gone well. It tasted pretty good before it went into the bottles, and now we just have to wait 3 weeks til it’s done conditioning. It’s supposed to be about 3.5%ABV, so I’ m looking forward to having properly alcoholic ginger beer around whenever I want it. We’ve got 40 pints of it. I think it will last a while. I might even try making a cake with it.

Soon, there shall be tomatoes.

Last on the list are some tomato plants I started about 3 weeks ago. It was a little late in the season, but they’re coming along nicely. I need to put them in bigger pots soon and hope they do well enough in the window to give me a bunch of tasty tomatoes in a month or two.