As I'm sure you have all read about already, the awesome Billy from A Table for Two and Karen from Citrus and Candy organised a picnic for the Sydney Food Blogger community a few weeks ago. There was a great turn-out, with lots of new faces as well as familiar ones, and of course there were mountains of tasty food which spanned across at least 3 picnic rugs!
We were all encouraged to bring a plate to share, and to put some effort into it as well since there were some great prizes up for grabs, including restaurant vouchers and a brand spanking new KitchenAid which was won by Anita from No Red Meat. Congrats Anita!
It was the weekend before my thesis was due so I decided to whip up something easy like cupcakes. Since Nuffnang was sponsoring the picnic one of the categories included a prize for the best blue dish. Whilst trawling the internet for some cupcake decorating ideas I came across this Cookie Monster cupcake which I thought was an awesome idea and I set out to replicate it.
It seems great minds think alike, since there were two other offerings of Cookie Monster cupcakes at the picnic (one of which was made by Sook from Nommy Nom Nom). Even though we all had the same basic idea, all the cupcakes were slightly different. I decorated mine with dessicated coconut which had been dyed blue to give it a 'furry' effect and piped dark chocolate for the eyes instead of using choc chips.
My favourite part of the cupcake though is the cookie that is shoved in Cookie Monster's mouth! If you're going to make these it's probably best to insert the cookie on the day you're going to serve them to avoid the cookies going stale as mine did. I was getting worried at the amount of blue food colouring that was going into the whole product so I skimped a bit on colouring the coconut (you can see some white flecks where the coconut didn't manage to be dyed blue), but feel free to go crazy on the blue food colouring if you want a really vivid, intense blue colour.
I remember the first time I baked a cake from scratch. It was a chocolate cake from a kids cookbook and I was so excited because I was baking it for my grandpa's birthday. But I was also lazy and so I skipped an instruction that my 12-year-old brain deemed unimportant - I didn't sift the flour. As a result, my cake batter was lumpy with little clumps of flour that no amount of beating could seem to get rid of, and instead of being gorgeously chocolatey, the cake had a bit of a flour taste to it.
Since then I've learnt to follow baking recipes pretty much word for word: if it says to sift the flour I will sift the flour, if it says to use 125g I will use not 124g or 126g, but 125g. And if it says to use icing sugar I will use icing sugar instead of something else.
I've also learnt that you can have a bit of leeway with recipes if you have good reason for it. If the dough seems far too wet to be able to be rolled out nicely, add some flour. If a batter doesn't taste like what it should, add some more flavouring to it. For me, when it comes to baking, following instructions, tasting your dough/batter and a bit of common sense usually leads to a good result :)
When I read a recipe for Milo cupcakes with condensed milk icing on raspberri cupcakes, I instantly wanted to make them and taste the awesome combination of Milo and condensed milk in cake form. Even though it was so easy (just dump the ingredients in a food processor and away you go!), I made sure I followed the recipe carefully so I didn't end up with a floury, lumpy cake. And it paid off, because I was rewarded with the smell of Milo wafting through the kitchen and soft fluffy cupcakes that had an awesome crunchy top. The cupcake is also the perfect vehicle for the sweet condensed milk icing and these were so addictive that they were polished off in a couple of days! (I swear I didn't eat them all....)
