White Chocolate and Rosewater Cupcakes

Today was very exciting.

I discovered that one of my biggest blog crushes, The Whisk Kid, has read my ikkle blog!

In honour of the whisk kid I decided to make one of my favorite recipes from her blog, which also happens to be from when she first stepped out into the world of bakery blogs, just like me.

Starting this blog has got me thinking about why I love baking so much. So I thought I would make a list.

1. This summer, boredom seems to be the main reason for my baking. I wake up at 2pm and lazy around all day doing nothing. Baking makes me feel like I have accomplished something in my day, without even getting out of my pajamas. 

2. My MASSIVE sweet-tooth. My mother has a violent hatred towards refined sugar of all kinds, so she refuses to buy biscuits, chocolate, juice, sweetened cereal, fruit is even a luxury in our house. But sometimes I just HAVE to eat some thing with sugar in it. So instead of spooning it straight out of the sugar pot, I bake something delicious. 

3. Peoples reactions. I love making tasty little treats and hearing people ooo and ahhh over my baked goods. Granted I usually serve them to my family so they are obliged to eat every last crumb and love it. But every now and then I serve my goods to my friends, and believe me, my friends are brutal. If the cupcakes are ugly I will hear the standard 'I am SO full, no thanks.' If the cookies don't taste good they will be crumbled and left half eaten in the tin. And if the cake doesn't turn out great, there will be another cake, made by a fellow baker friend, that looks and tastes 10 times better. 

So it makes me really very happy when people voluntarily gobble up whatever I have made and actually like it. In fact I think the highlight of my week, bar the email from Whisk Kid, was when I posted a picture of these bad boys on my facebook page and I got over 21 responses, some from people I don't even know, ALL positive. I could not stop smiling all day.

4. The baking bug. I'm not sure I can describe it to anyone who hasn't caught the baking bug, but it is a feeling, like a scratch that needs to be itched, an urge to get into the kitchen and play around with sugar and butter and flour. When I bake it is important to me that it looks pretty but twice as important that it tastes good because ultimately it all looks the same once its mushed up in your mouth. 

This recipe is interpreted from the Whisk Kid version but is actually a bit different: 

1 cup (123g) plain flour

1 cup (123g) granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1/4 cup (57g) butter  

200 g white chocolate 

For the base of the white chocolate cupcakes follow the recipe from the vanilli cake from the previous post:

Vanilli Sponge

If you cant be bothered to read it all then you suck, but I will summarize it all just for you because I'm so great.

1. Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and slowly add the milk, like so:

Mixy mix

 2. Remember its normal for it to curdle and look like bleached baby poo.

Oh Dear

 3. But add the flour and have faith, get on your knees and pray to the bakery gods.

Mix mix mix

 4. See, smooth as ice, ice baby.

All done!

5. Chop up the chocolate into little pieces and put it into a glass bowl over simmering hot water. Make sure no water gets into the chocolate or it will get all bitty and gross. 

Smooth white chocolate

6. Fill up the cupcake holders 2/3 of the way with mixture. Then put a teaspoon of white chocolate on the top of the mixture and swirl it in using a toothpick or your finger, which is much more tasty. 
The front cupcake in the photo is an example how NOT to fill up a cupcake holder, its wonky and waaay to filled up but the swirl looks pretty.

Into the oven you go little babies

7. Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes poke at it with a toothpick, not a chopstick which leaves a big ugly hole, and if it comes out clean then the little cakelette is done. 

Big ugly chopstick hole

These cupcakes are not the prettiest cupcakes I have ever made, but frosting covers that all up and they were still yummy so fear not my friends. 
I had some spare melted chocolate, so instead of eating it like a normal person, I just smeared it on the top of a few of the cupcakes, why not eh? I'm just that crazy.

Ugly little duckling cupcakes

Now let the ugly little ducklings cool for a while. 


Prepare the frosting so that by the time the frosting is ready the cupcakes will be cooled. 
Make butter-cream frosting as usual but flavor with a few drops of rose essence instead of vanilla essence. The floral taste takes away that sickly frosting taste that you sometimes get.


To Decorate:


I have seen these little fondant roses a lot in the world of baking blogs and I love them. 
So I watched a lot of  youtube tutorials and read many how-to's and wept over how I had none of the right equipment, no petal cutter, no flower pin, not even a petal shaped icing tip.


But I was bored and I really really like these little roses, so I decided to wing it.
I coloured the fondant rolled it out, played around a bit and this was the result:

Handmade fondant roses

Believe me this was not how they started out, Here is my first attempt, and bad blurry photography: 

My first attempt 

The way I did was in no way the right way, but the roses turned out real pretty. 
So I'll try explain how I did it as best as I can.
I used cling film to stop the fondant from sticking to the rolling pin instead of icing sugar, which would dry it out. 
I then rolled  it out as thin as I possibly could.

I used a knife to cut out petal shapes.
I made a cone shaped lump with the fondant which I used as the flower pin.
I pinched one edge of the petal to make it even thinner and petal like and rolled it in between my fingers and placed it around the top, narrower end of the fondant. 
Then I cut and pinched more petals and placed them around the  first rolled up petal.

I just kept layering it up until I was satisfied that the rose was big enough. 

Every now and then I pushed the top of the petals slightly outwards to open up the rose.

To garnish I used a rolling pin to crush up some pistachios and sprinkled them over the top.

I did a few with just raspberries because the red looked pretty with the white frosting.
Also each rose took me about 10 minutes and I did not have the patience to make 18 roses.   

Nut free cupcake

Every cupcake is different, I left a few without pistachios for my nut allergic friends. 
Poor friends, they don't get the joy of peanut butter, Reeses peices or other such goodness so I thought at least they could enjoy a little bit of Sugar and Slice. 

All three types of decoration

And so with a bit of frosting a a bit of love,
the ugly ducklings grew into beautiful cupcake swans   

Sugar and Slice notes on this recipe:

I pretty much made it up so I haven't quite worked out how to incorporate the white chocolate into the cupcakes. I swirled it into the cupcakes once the batter was in the holders but perhaps it would have been better to mix it into the all off mixture evenly or mix in white chocolate chips.

Feel free to experiment, comment below to tell me how it goes!